This is the age of the customer. Customer service accounts for almost 75% of all interactions a company has with its customers. Organizations now focus on creating positive customer experiences through best customer service — to improve retention and increase acquisition.
In order to enable deeper customer engagement, businesses are turning to smart technology — customer service that is empowered with the benefits of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) or Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Why Smart Technology?
It is hard to go through life and not see elements of RPA or AI. Booking a taxi through an application or ordering food online or booking an online movie ticket is made possible with the injection of these technologies.
Customers today are always connected. They want immediate contact and resolution. They want 24/7 assistance. Businesses have to respond to this demand. This is why dedicated customer support teams are crucial in delivering excellent customer service. If an in-house team is too costly for you to manage, you can always turn to the more cost-effective and time-tested option of outsourcing inbound call centre services or contact centre services . Experienced call centre outsourcing services provider will have the latest technology that you can leverage to reap the benefits of customer service automation. This way you can address legacy pain points and at the same time, delight your customers.
Increased Efficiency
Automation increases contact centre efficiency with noticeable gains. In a real-world scenario, call centre services agents handling legacy systems have to enter customer details repeatedly, when the customer is on the line calling in with a query or a complaint. They have to toggle between screens and multiple applications trying to find the information they need.
RPA can help your team can take up more innovative work, as the tedious, rule-based work can be handled by RPA bots. Simpler tasks do not get sidelined. Manual involvement is reduced and paperwork or spreadsheets are not used anymore. This reduces the risk of errors. Information from multiple CRMs is integrated into a single view, enabling the agent to recall customer history. This ensures smoother customer focused interactions. Average call duration is cut down in both inbound call centre services and call centre outsourcing services, with automation. Promotions, product launch information, offers, etc. can be sent to customers through automated emails, saving your employees hours of productive time. Transfer calls to the appropriate department bypassing endless redirections.
Faster Resolutions
When a customer calls in, the first step an agent takes is to ask the caller for their information. Following which, customer service agents shift between multiple screens and systems to retrieve the customer profile, prior purchase history, service tickets, etc. while addressing the customer query. Further, the data to answer the customer’s query or to resolve their complaint might be on different screens or systems. These multiple systems bring up multiple obstacles and slow down the interaction. And all the while, the customer will be on hold.
Robotic Process Automation eliminates obstacles agents face when trying to resolve an issue. Multiple tools and applications can be aggregated giving a single view of the customers’ history. Enable personalized service by utilizing customer data and keep interactions shorter by having all details at the ready. Agents can tailor interactions according to purchase history and previous tickets. Recall billing and account information from the account easily without having to toggle between systems. Offer discounts and promotions based on customer preferences. Swifter resolutions add to a positive customer experience and increases brand loyalty.
Reduced Time Spent on Tasks
With AI and RPA, businesses are saving billions of hours around the world. Your employees will spend lesser time on manual work. What previously took agents, say, 2 minutes, will take just a few seconds. We are talking efficiency gains and time savings. They are freed up to focus on high-value work. They can interact and engage with customers to build healthy customer relationships. RPA bots are intelligent assistants to the agents, helping them solve issues. They help in quality assurance and coaching agents by analyzing call recording and texts.
Match Agents Based on Skills
Once you assess who’s good at doing what, you can get AI-powered systems to match customer service agents to customer queries based on their skills and specialized area. You can assign suitable tasks to the right person. More work gets done, better, and quickly. Employees can focus on self-improvement improving the quality of assistance. Injecting AI and RPA into customer service or call centre services will help you get more value out of your agents and enrich their interactions with your customers. Agents feel less fatigued. You create happier employees. And happy employees can serve your customers better.
Increased Visibility Across Teams
Automation ties disparate departments together improving the flow of communications. This can prevent duplication, and ensure that information is always updated and current. You can eliminate the need for separate spreadsheets, accounts and processes. Centralized data and increased visibility into your business can do wonders in process improvements. For example, you can rule out bottlenecks, repeat calls, wrong call transfers, etc.
Well-established Workflows
AI enabled systems in call centre services help predict traffic spikes. You can streamline work, making it more measurable and compliant to standards. You will see reduced errors and simplified processes. Better division of work, improved communications and increased accountability are some of the compelling benefits. With automated systems, agents know what they are responsible for and when it is someone’s turn to do a task.
Ease and Convenience
One of the most important dimensions of best customer service is customer time. Customers value their time and want convenience. Automation enables ease and convenience for both the customers and the agents. Round-the-clock service, self-service options and intelligent chat-bots assist customers. They save businesses huge costs. Chat-bots reduce average handle times, which translates to huge savings. Omni-channel contact centre services provide a seamless customer experience.
Keeping these benefits in mind, it is clear that customers drive the move to automation and AI systems. Legacy systems will not win even the most rigged customer service contest. These manual systems are prone to errors. And repetitive tasks drain away energy and creativity. It is fair to say that RPA and AI have transformed contact centre services. Consistently successful outcomes and reduced escalations have endeared the intelligent contact centre to businesses. There is no doubt that AI and RPA enable the contact centre service agent deliver killer customer service.