Technology

Creating a winning balance between automation and human support in customer service

Priya Iyer, chairman and CEO at Vee24, offers insight on how retailers can balance automation with live customer experience in the digital strategy to produce the ideal customer experience.

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November 19, 2020 by Priya Iyer

Nearly 80% of American consumers say speed, convenience, knowledgeable help and friendly service are the most important elements of a positive customer experience. As growth in online shopping continues to accelerate, retailers need to focus on providing that fast, satisfying service experience digitally.

Whether it's to confirm a package delivery, process a return, or place a new order, a convenient, frictionless digital experience is essential to converting website visitors to customers, retaining and expanding existing customer relationships, and delighting them all throughout the engagement.

One of the most pressing challenges for retailers perfecting their digital strategy is how to balance automation with live customer service to deliver the ideal experience. Automation of customer service helps brands handle online volume cost-effectively. But a key element of a strong digital experience is allowing a self-service engagement to move seamlessly to live assistance when the need for a human touch arises. As retailers consider how to balance live help with automated service, here are a few things to keep in mind.

Embrace the strengths of intelligent chatbots to free up live agents

Chatbots can be a fast, effective tool to improve the customer experience, and free up bandwidth for your customer service agents. The best way to get started is by keeping it simple. What is causing friction for customers and customer service agents that chatbots can easily address? Common inquiries to customer service are for basic questions: What are your store hours? What's the return policy? Where is my order? A chatbot can answer these questions in seconds or co-browse with the visitor on the retailer's website to lead them to the appropriate information. These quick answer inquiries often represent a large percentage of customer service traffic, so employing chatbots to address these questions can have a significant impact on efficiency and satisfaction.

If a retailer can identify this low-hanging fruit — easy questions or use cases that can be addressed immediately by a chatbot — then a tremendous amount of pressure can be taken off of live agents immediately. Those agents can then focus on providing stellar service to customers whose needs are more complex. This kind of chatbot solution can be deployed quickly — in weeks, not months. With advanced journey analytics, Natural Language Processing, and deep learning, these chatbots learn over time and can expand their role solving more complicated problems and successfully taking on more of the customer service load.

By creating a seamless link between live and automated customer care, savvy retailers can speed up response times, improve customer satisfaction, and secure the loyalty of customers who value fast, responsive service.

And, customer service agents benefit as well. Working in a contact center isn't an easy job. chatbots designed to pass on engagement history allow the service agent to understand the situation without needing to ask a frustrated user for the same information again. chatbots help to streamline the agent's job and give them the information and tools they need to help high-value customers with more complex needs.

Train chatbots to provide a fast, seamless transition to a human helper when needed

Given human nature, customers need to feel that they are getting a personalized, immediate response to their inquiry. This is the key to creating a balance between automation and service from live agents.

When a chatbot is unable to provide a fast or satisfactory answer or the customer's behavior indicates that assistance by a human is warranted, it is imperative that the BOT facilitate a seamless hand-off to a live agent via text chat, voice, or video. The key to building trust with consumers is to reassure them that they won't be lost in an automation black hole, but rather will be quickly, effortlessly connected to a real person if the bot isn't able to meet their needs.

Taking automation beyond customer service

Once a retailer has successfully deployed chatbots to support its customer service operation, they can expand the use of chatbots to other use cases, including sales and marketing.

For example, a chatbot handling a customer service return may be able to qualify the customer for an additional sale and pass them over to a salesperson to close. Beyond chatbots, other live engagement technologies in a multi-experience platform such as text chat, video chat, and real-time collaboration co-browsing and c-form fill can further bolster the online experience for retail customers.

As online retail grows, businesses can capture new customers by providing an online shopping experience that is comparable to or better than in-person shopping. Seamlessly blending live agent assistance and automation can help retailers maximize their resources, while delighting customers and building long-term relationships.

Priya Iyer is chairman and CEO at Vee24.

About Priya Iyer

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Priya is CEO of Vee24, an Intelligent Conversational Experience platform company. Priya has won New England Entrepreneur of the Year; ranked on top 100 Entrepreneurs by the Boston Globe and Top Women Leaders by TSR. Priya holds a bachelors and masters in Computer Science and an MBA from MIT Sloan.

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