September 17th, 2020 | Updated on June 28th, 2022
Automation is becoming more important in all walks of life. Automating onerous tasks is just part of our lives and allows businesses to streamline processes, creating simpler experiences for customers and agents.
Every contact center is figuring out how to use automation to offer a better experience while providing agents with more information. With a little automation, you can vastly improve the customer experience.
The Best Way To Use Automation
It’s important to understand the careful balance between using automation and an actual agent. Total contact center automation might seem appealing but is never the best possible case.
There’s no “ideal ratio” between the time a customer spends talking to an AI system vs. an agent; it’s just something you’ll need to determine.
Customers have tended to prefer talking to human agents rather than automated systems, largely because those automated systems have been so limited.
That’s changing fast as new technologies enter the market, but inbound contact centers still need to make allowances for customers who seek out a live person.
Making It As Easy As Possible
On the other hand, an increasingly tech-savvy consumer base is getting more comfortable dealing with contact center automation. Many people actually find it liberating to avoid talking to humans in service interactions.
Automated systems are generally ‘low pressure’ – they allow users more time, and they don’t judge! An AI system also allows consumers to feel a sense of accomplishment; around 65% of people feel good about themselves when they manage to fix their own problem.
So what’s the trick? The system needs to be easy to use! Make your self-service options intuitive and customers will choose them over a live agent. Navigation is especially important – frustration is the CX killer!
Your systems should also have a high level of supervision or access to in-person assistance. Just as a website should have some sort of chat function available, the contact center should always be prepared to deal with people who get confused or don’t want to deal with the automation.
It needs to allow that some people will never feel comfortable dealing with an automated system, no matter how well organized it is or how friendly it sounds. However, if the system itself is set up well enough then fewer and fewer people will ask for the agent.
Understanding The Needs Of Customers
A contact center needs to recognize the needs of its customers. This means questions need to be tracked, orders tabulated, and profiles built within your call center CRM for better automation.
Tracking the information accessed makes it easier to decide what needs to be built up and expanded on later on, as well as which areas can be edited down.
If you notice that customers have issues navigating past an area, then that’s an area which clearly needs work.
Listening to feedback from customers as well as tracking their decisions makes it easier to determine which areas you should adjust for the sake of customer ease.
This also means that over time customers will feel more comfortable using the automated side of the system; eventually, it should hit a point that the customers are using the automated side of the center more than they are looking for a person to help them through the process.
When that happens, you should see a lift in customer satisfaction as well; as noted, the more control over the system that customers have and the more they can operate on their own, the better they feel about the situation. Better yet, the more satisfied customers are the more that they will talk up the company.
This can lead to a greater number of referrals, and from there the company should take off, or at least become even more profitable, This means that successful contact center automation is a goal every company should strive towards.
After all, happy customers are always good to have on your side; they not only spend more but are a great way to obtain referrals and therefore more businesses.
With that in mind, creating a great system should be relatively easy; just keep in mind the needs of your customers and listen to them, and your contact center should be able to handle anything that they throw at it.
About Babelforce
babelforce is a global cloud communications platform focused on No-Code integration and automation. It allows non-technical people to build even the most complex integrated processes for customer-facing teams, particularly in the call center.
