Customer Service – Small tasks with big value from Automation
Service whether it is business customer or internal teams is often how reputations are tested.
“Moments of Truth” by Jan Carlzon, highlights how it is in these specific interactions that shape customer perceptions of a business and its operations.
The challenge is that Customer Service activities are expensive to deliver and there is a lot of small tasks to complete for each business process.
Automation delivers where there is volume and repetition.
Ticketing System is the Answer – Partly
Ticketing systems are widely used in service operations. They provide a mechanism to track and control activity. They are good at what they do.
People undertake actions based on the tickets.
The same “Category” of ticket requires the same “Action”.
That creates a potential opportunity for Automation to deliver efficiency and reduce manual workload.
Many of us will have experienced the “Frustration of Waiting in a Ticket Queue”, by proving an alternative channel to supplement tickets, perceptions can often be improved.
Chatbots are the Answer – Partly
Chatbots can engage customers in conversations which can lead to a menu of actions being available to resolve the query.
Matching the customer query to an available action which can be performed, without a staff agent being involved, offers the capability of “Self Service”.
Capturing Chatbot conversations, with summaries, so that they are available in CRM systems is an ideal, that not many implementations manage to achieve.
Analysis of conversations can help identify the need for additional information in knowledge base repositories that are used by both Customers and service staff.
With the advent of LLMs, conversations have improved significantly but providing a mechanism to route the call to a person for a conversation, can deliver a better perception when “Non Standard” conversations are required.
Customer Portals are the Answer – Partly
Once a user logs into a Customer Portal, all of the activity can be tracked. It creates an environment for sharing knowledge and enabling a wide range of “Self Service” tasks.
Empowering a customer to perform their own tasks rather than deploying a customer service agent to perform the task for the customer clearly offers a lot of attractions.
With the lack of customer interaction, the opportunity for Feedback and Context are lost. The “Why” a customer is taking an action is not being heard or captured.
Customer Portals treat all customers in the same way. The interaction is consistent but does not make any customer feel “Special”.
The administrative effort to manage customer on-boarding, removal, etc. from the functionality delivered by the portal will be a set of business processes. The repetitive nature of these processes can make them candidates for automation.
CRM is the Key – Partly
A CRM provides the repository to store information about customers, and the CRM can also hold the record of the interactions which have occurred across the range of channels available.
CRMs are often used to provide the automation of marketing activities such as emails of offers, newsletters, reminders, etc.
As customers are the focus of many business applications, CRM data often needs to be aligned with other applications. Keeping data synchronised is a common objective but ask any auditor or person who has performed a system migration, and they will tell you that “Differences” can creep in.
By using an automated process to reconcile a CRM data with other systems, can be an effective way to discover and rectify data differences internally within a businesses operation, before any discrepancy results in an impact on a customer.
Automation must be the Answer – Partly
With a range of computer applications being used, many core activities will be delivered.
One way to address gaps is to use Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to deliver the repetitive actions that would otherwise be performed manually or some cases never actually completed.
As Automation thrives on consistency and repetition, it can be a great tool to perform audit type activities to verify that data across systems is as it should be. Picking up the “Gaps”, “Errors”, “Inconsistencies” so that they can be investigated before they become a problem can provide significant value.
People are the Answer – They always have been!
People are the best way to deliver a Customer Service, but only when automation and a range of computer applications have delivered the basics.
People will be best for anything unusual, the complex and as well when empathy is a key aspect of the interaction.
By implementing core applications and deploying automation to deal with the regular, the routine and the expected interactions, people can have sufficient time to deliver quality service in the interactions that they do perform.
By delivering “Self Service” where it is required, will keep customer satisfaction levels high and operating costs low. Complementing “Self Service” with staff who have the time to prioritise quality over speed, can result in really effective Service Desk / Help Desk operations.
For more information on Robotic Process Automation (RPA) as well as Agentic Automation and the journey to implement automation please see our website: https://www.ether-solutions.co.uk/.
Manager’s Guide to Automation: https://www.ether-solutions.co.uk/managers-guide-to-automation-using-software-robots/
#businessbeyondautomation
Article Author
David Martin
Managing Director, Ether Solutions
https://www.ether-solutions.co.uk/
