Customer Service

Why retailers should embrace deflection for better customer service

Gabe Larsen, vice president, growth at Kustomer, explains why deflection is an increasingly important term in the customer service world that retailers need to understand to get the most out of a customer service strategy and create brand loyalty.

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July 7, 2020 by Gabe Larsen — VP Growth, Kustomer

When most people hear the term deflection, words like avoidance or blocking come to mind. Visually, deflection conjures up an image of a hockey goalie pushing the puck away. In reality, the opposite is true. Deflection is an increasingly important term in the customer service world that retailers need to understand to get the most out of their customer service strategy and create brand loyalty.

Deflection is a technique used to get the best answer for customers in the fastest way possible. This may involve rerouting a call or email query to a self service or chatbot solution. Or it may be determined that a chatbot is not the best solution and a customer may be directed to a customer service agent that is trained to manage complicated issues. Overall, it's a way to help retailers handle customer service volume in a way that gets the best answers for customer satisfaction as efficiently as possible.

At a time when customer expectations are skyrocketing, coupled with customer service teams needing to do more with less, many retailers are turning to deflection tools like AI, chatbots and routing technology to provide customers with the right resource at the right time.

So while the term deflection may sound negative and anti-customer, in fact it can be a powerful tool to improve a retailers' approach to customer service with added benefits for agents, customers and ultimately the brand. Here are a few ways retailers can incorporate deflection to turn the phrase into a positive manner of dealing with customers.

Self-service deflection

With efficiency and effectiveness the most important components of customer service, self-service is necessary and oftentimes preferred in solving customer issues. Recent consumer data from Kustomer found that 67% of consumers prefer self-service over talking to a company representative and 48% of consumers don't care whether a chatbot or a real human helps them. All this leads up to the prediction that 72% of customer interactions will involve an emerging technology like a chatbot or machine learning technology by 2022, according to Gartner.

Chatbots can be effective tools to help customers with repetitive and simple questions and to give updates to customers without involving an agent. Oftentimes the most tedious tasks on an agent's plate are manual and repetitive, and may not require human intervention. Chatbots based on machine learning can automate much of this work. For example: A customer contacts you asking to return an item. You receive this inquiry and a ticket is created in one system. You might need to look up that customer's order history in another system using their email. Using a third system you might need to create a return management authorization (RMA) order to return the item. And using a fourth system you might send a message to the person who handles those returns to ask to expedite the order for an important customer. With the help of AI and automation, a chatbot could start the RMA process, create the shipping label and notify a team to expedite.

Omnichannel deflection

Chatbots aren't the only way to use self service, as customers are also using a variety of channels to connect with a brand. Whether email, social, SMS, WhatsApp or online, automation can be used to direct and answer a customers' questions on the same channel they are using and also switch from one channel to another. For example, if a customer emails customer service with a query, auto-replies can be sent with articles/information that may help answer the customer's question. So instead of waiting for a response from an agent which could take days, customers are directed to information that may be able to help them immediately, without the use of an agent. This saves time for the customer, and delivers one less query for the agents to handle.

Route to the right agent

Despite all the advancements in technology, some situations still require a human to solve complex problems. But even finding the right human agent can be a time consuming challenge. No one, especially busy customers, has time to sit on the phone or chat and be transferred from one agent to another to find the right agent with the right skill set. Using routing technology based on natural language processing can help match the right agent for each unique question and can determine a customers' sentiment such as level of frustration and level of urgency to find the right person for the job. In addition, language detection can ensure that any language needs are matched up with a native-speaking agent to ensure that everything can be handled seamlessly from the get-go.

While deflection sounds like a way to not deal with customers, it is actually a useful technique to implement technology that can help customers with their service issues in a more efficient and effective manner. When done correctly, deflection frees up agents to handle more complex issues and leaves customers satisfied and more likely to become a repeat customer.

Gabe Larsen is vice president, growth, at Kustomer.