In this episode of the Customer Service Secrets Podcast, Gabe Larsen has a heart to heart with fellow business leaders, urging them to take advantage of the benefits of chatbots in customer service. Chatbots are also fantastic tools for lightening agent load, allowing them to tackle more complex customer inquiries. Tune in to the full podcast episode to learn more!
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Eliminate Mundane Tasks With the Help of AI
Many CX agents deal with low-level customer problems all day long, when their skills and energy would be best spent elsewhere. Virtual agents are the perfect solution for this. With the right AI, repetitive and mundane tasks are automated, thus saving real agents time and allowing them to focus on more complex inquiries. This helps agents to dedicate more time and care to a wider array of customers.
Consumers are also increasingly expecting to deal with chatbots. Kustomer research indicates younger generations have a much higher appetite for self-service and chatbots than older generations, with 77% of consumers under 25 saying that they find chatbots to be helpful.
Menial bits of the conversation like name, order number and reason for contact can all be automated. This results in faster solutions, higher CSAT scores, and lasting customer loyalty. As Larsen explains:
“For these types of inquiries, chatbots, I think they can be a huge advantage because with the additional time your agents have, they then have the freedom to be more empathetic, more engaging with other customers, as I mentioned, who might require that little bit extra attention.”
Admittedly, not all chatbots will work for every industry. They’re not the perfect, be all, end all solution for faster CX. To deliver fantastic service there still needs to be an element of human empathy tangible for your customers. AI is certainly capable of this, but it helps if customers know they can still contact an agent if needed.
Are You Available to Your Customers 24/7?
Customers will always need help with your product or service, regardless of time and date. CX doesn’t just stop at 5 p.m., but is an ongoing process, constantly evolving with the lifecycle of your consumers. Chatbots make it possible to deliver exceptional CX after hours because the software essentially acts as the agents that never stop working, that don’t hang up the headset at the end of the day. Round the clock CX ensures customers feel taken care of at a time that works best for them. We can’t always predict when a customer will need help or if a product will break, so chatbots provide solutions at any hour.
An additional benefit of chatbots in customer service is their efficiency. They can gather customer data to better shape their experience in future points of contact. People simply want faster service to fit their fast-paced lives. We surveyed over 500 people in the U.S. over the age of 18 and almost everyone agreed that CX as a whole could be more efficient:
“A whopping 90% of respondents think contacting customer service should be easier. 85% of respondents say customer service should be faster.”
AI is booming in CX and we predict it will only keep getting bigger and more intelligent. Old school customer service is great, but there’s always room for improvement. Combining chatbots with human agents is sure to boost loyalty and overall satisfaction, so why not integrate the latest technologies to make customers and agents happier if you have the means to do so? Why wait? There’s never been a better time than now to level up your CX with the help of chatbots and modern AI.
To learn more about the benefits of chatbots in customer service and how the right one can improve your organization’s CX, check out the Customer Service Secrets podcast episode below, and be sure to subscribe for new episodes each Thursday.
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Full Episode Transcript:
Why Your Business Needs Chatbots | The Benefits of Modern AI
Intro Voice: (00:04)
You’re listening to the Customer Service Secrets Podcast by Kustomer.
Gabe Larsen: (00:11)
Welcome everybody to the Customer Service Secrets Podcast. You’ve got your host, Gabe Larsen, and today we talk about the benefits of chatbots in customer service and why I think your business can probably benefit. So look, there are innumerable studies that highlight the future of customer experience and how chatbots are one of the most common ways to improve the customer experience. You’ve seen it. I’ve seen it. The word chatbot, yeah, it can be a little bit ambiguous. It does apply to a lot of different applications. Your Amazon Alexa can be thought of as a bot or SMS communication from your favorite retail brand. But one type of chatbot that has proven to help reduce costs and improve your CSAT scores is this idea of virtual agents. Now, those two reasons alone are beneficial enough to start leveraging chatbots today, right?
Gabe Larsen: (01:17)
Maybe, but how do you actually do this? What are the other values this idea of chatbot can bring to your business? So first and foremost, chatbots will help you automate repetitive or tedious tasks. In addition, they can help respond faster than oftentimes a human can. You get this after hours problem and chatbots can be fantastic there and they can eliminate the information gathering that takes place during the initial stages of a confirmation. Those mundane tasks, yes, those are great places to throw those chatbots. Now this alone will free up agent time and really help them determine the root cause of the customer inquiry and also help resolve their issues a lot faster.
Gabe Larsen: (02:14)
What else? In addition, utilizing chatbots, they can shift the workload of customer service agents from this idea of this low level, those mundane tasks, and allow them to focus on more complex issues from a variety of customers. Now, I believe this intrinsically links to improved CSAT. Why? Because one, the speed of resolution that your customers experience, but also it allows them to get what they want quickly, and then get those complex questions answered quick. Now we surveyed over 525 US-based consumers over the age of 18, trying to understand how this need for speed, if you will, translates into customer experience preferences. And the results, yeah, they were, I guess what you’d expect. A 90%, a whopping 90% of respondents think contacting customer service should be easier. 85% of respondents say customer service should be faster. I’m almost surprised it’s not a hundred, right?
Gabe Larsen: (03:26)
I mean, don’t we all want things faster? But it’s definitely something that consumers are looking for now. Look, granted chatbots, maybe they can’t help in every industry, but companies should consider if their unique business is best served by chat, and think strategically about the types of conversations they may want to try to automate. I want to chat a little bit, chat, chatbots, no pun intended. I want to talk a little bit about chatbots and agents. So yes, chatbots can be used to automate parts of a conversation. And what a lot of businesses don’t think about is that they can be then handed off to an agent after collecting that whatever basic information or as we talked about, there can be no agent involvement at all. Now, if someone is reaching out to understand, let’s say, what your shipping policy is, that seems easy enough for a chatbot to respond rather than taking up your team’s time, responding to this basic simple info, right?
Gabe Larsen: (04:33)
For these types of inquiries, chatbots, I think they can be a huge advantage because with the additional time your agents have, they then have the freedom to be more empathetic, more engaging with other customers, as I mentioned, who might require that little bit of extra attention. Maybe that little bit more, but other inquiries may need more attention. So perhaps your business, let’s say, in the finance industry, and there’s fraud detected on a customer’s account. In this type of scenario, customers, they probably want to talk to a human due to the sensitive nature of the situation and your organization should be able to service both scenarios. So when customer service agents are allowed to focus on more important cases, instead of those repetitive tasks that chatbots can handle, it allows agents to have a stronger role in developing relationships with customers, resulting in that loyalty I think we all want.
Gabe Larsen: (05:33)
Okay, so how do you get cracking? How do you get going on this? Well, you start by looking at your total conversation volume. Take the top ten contact reasons. Map out which of those are typically responded to within two, maybe three messages or that use of a canned response set up in your CX system, those are most likely the easiest conversations to start automating. As you introduce this prospect in your business, look, if you could automate those top ten contact reasons, and let’s say they make up roughly 30% of all inbound conversations, wow. In the future, you might be able to close out that additional call center or BPO that you brought in to support your CX organization. I mean, this is one of those more straightforward ways that chatbots can just help reduce costs. So chatbots can also give your business the opportunity to provide that 24 hour support.
Gabe Larsen: (06:40)
I don’t want to forget that. I’ve mentioned that before. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, which you just can’t put a number on. It makes such a difference. It will dramatically improve the trust your customers have with your brand. Nothing, well, I don’t know about nothing, but almost nothing is more important than making sure your customers feel heard no matter what time of day it is, what day of the week it is. When they need help, they need help. So look, by now, chatbots, you probably know, I mean, they’ve become sophisticated, increasingly sophisticated, and they are starting to trend towards more intent-based interactions. Look, as you see the value that automation can drive for your business, expanding your chatbots to more categories, more contact reasons, or even, I don’t know, maybe different verticals within your business, it’s all easily executed with the right tool. So if you are ever thinking about when is the right time to introduce this functionality in your business, I would say, yeah. I’d say it’s now. Thanks so much for joining. I wanted to talk about the benefits of chatbot customer service and why your business can benefit right now. Hopefully you enjoyed this session and have a fantastic day.
Exit Voice: (08:15)
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