A business is only successful if it has a large enough customer base to bring in a substantial profit. Customers only stay if they get a good product and excellent customer service.
In today’s digital-first economy, customer expectations for businesses are higher than ever. They want fast, accurate, and personalized support at all times. Of course, that is not feasible because of the manpower and costs required.
This is where automated customer support systems come in. They enable businesses to handle large volumes of support requests with ease and require much smaller teams to handle urgent issues.
Today, we will discuss how automated support systems are much more than a simple cost-cutting measure. They are drivers of performance, productivity, growth, and profit. Let’s get into it.
Why Automation Matters in Customer Support
Let’s be real about this, customer support is largely a manual job. You can’t have a fully automated customer support service. It just cannot work. At some point, you need human intervention.
However, many aspects of it can be easily automated to improve the customer’s experience and empower support agents. Automation handles the repetitive, time-consuming tasks while your agents focus on complex interactions and issues.
This shift not only speeds up resolution times but also reduces operational costs and improves consistency. Let’s see how all of that translates to business outcomes.
Key Functions of Automated Customer Support Systems That Drive Performance
Listed below are some of the major benefits of automatic support systems that boost your business performance.
24/7 Instant Support with Chatbots
Before automation, customer support could only be reached during office hours. That was highly inconvenient because if you had any issue with something outside of office hours, for example, at home in the evening, you were stuck with the problem for the rest of the night.
The next day, you had to call the support during office hours, often from your own office, and wouldn’t you know it, nothing could be done, because you weren’t home. That’s not good for developing customer trust.
The only solution was to hire another team for the night shift. However, that is expensive for businesses, especially small and medium ones.
With AI-powered chatbots, such problems can be mostly solved. These bots can remain active throughout the day and can resolve common queries instantly. This reduces response times from hours to seconds and eliminates wait queues.
Business Benefits:
- Higher customer satisfaction due to round-the-clock availability
- Reduced ticket volumes for human agents
- Increased lead capture during off-hours
So, those are the great outcomes of 24/7, automated support.
Automated Ticket Routing & Escalation
In manual support systems, creating and tracking tickets is a hassle. Things become even more cumbersome when escalation is involved. When tickets are escalated, they have to be transferred to a different department, and that just adds another layer of communication and tracking. Naturally, some tickets get lost or mishandled during such transfers.
This often results in disgruntled calls from customers because their issue wasn’t resolved.
With automated support systems, ticket management and escalation become a trivial task.
Support systems can categorize, tag, and route customer queries to the appropriate departments based on issue type, language, or urgency on their own. Agents can see all of that information through a portal, and a reminder system can tell them to focus on the older tickets first.
Business Benefits:
- Faster resolution time
- Lower first-response and handling times
- Better SLA adherence
As a result, you get more satisfied customers as well.
Self-Service Knowledge Bases
One great part about the automation of customer service is that you can actually make the customers do it themselves. Yup, you read that right, no need for your agents or chatbots to do anything, the customers can simply handle everything on their own. How does such a miracle happen? Well, the answer is simple: Customer-Facing Knowledge Bases.
An AI-powered knowledge base that is easy to access is great for boosting business. It can suggest helpful articles and provide troubleshooting steps, as well as guide customers on when to escalate tickets. As a result, your company gets the following benefits.
Business Benefit:
- Decreased ticket volume
- Empowered customers who can solve problems independently
- Lower support costs
- Higher customer satisfaction rate.
All of that combined leads to more returning customers, and that, in turn, leads to growth and sustainability.
Customer Feedback Collection & Sentiment Analysis
AI has a huge role in customer service automation. AI systems can be used to analyze customer sentiment. It can be used to handle post-interaction surveys and then analyze them for customer satisfaction levels.
Dissatisfied customers can be referred to other courses of action that may alleviate their problems. Many customer service platforms provide such functionality, so make full use of them. As a result, you will get the following benefits.
Business Benefit:
- Improved customer retention
- Real-time insights into service quality
- Data-driven improvement of support workflows
All of that will lead to better customer service over time and a happy customer base.
Workflow Automation for Agents
Automation also works wonders for support agents that do handle tickets manually. Customer support software can do menial tasks like:
- Auto-filling forms
- Preloading customer data from CRMs
- Suggesting responses
- Ticket management and tracking.
This saves the agents’ time and helps them to focus on their tasks. As a result, you get the following benefits.
Business Benefit:
- Higher agent productivity
- Reduced burnout and turnover
- More volume of handled requests
So, not only do you empower your agents and reduce their stress, you also get more work done.
How to Choose the Right Automated Support Platform
The easiest way to automate your customer support is to use a dedicated platform that integrates with your company software.
However, not all automation tools are great for every company. They all offer different features that are suitable for businesses of different sizes. You have to take into account your industry and support needs as well.
Popular helpdesk platforms like Zendesk are well-known for their comprehensive feature set, but they may not suit every budget or use case.
So you should look out for Zendesk alternatives that offer more flexibility, lower costs, or specific AI capabilities.
When comparing options, look for solutions that include:
- AI-powered chat and email support
- Smart ticket routing
- Seamless CRM integrations
- Customizable self-service portals
- Analytics and reporting dashboards
- Workflow builders with little to no coding
That way, you will find the best solution for your company.
Final Thoughts
Automated customer support is a great addition to any company’s arsenal. It has myriad benefits and results in happier customers, productive agents, and a stable customer base.
That stability is what is required for any business to grow, because without it, you cannot plan for anything. So, don’t underestimate automated customer support and start implementing it in your business.
