Fantastic customer service isn’t possible without the dedicated work of your customer care team. Your operators need to be skilled, well-trained, and well-equipped to do their job to the best of their ability. And yet, we often see companies letting outdated and ineffective technology get in the way of their operators.
Outdated customer service technology slows down your operators. They have to wait for lagging software, use convoluted sorting systems, or check external systems that feel like they take a whole day to load. Good customer service technology can make your operators’ lives easier and less frustrating. And it can make even your best operators more efficient and successful at their roles. Ask not what you can do for your tech; ask what your tech can do for you!
Let Automation Do the Legwork
Automation in customer care operations is a vastly undervalued asset. There tends to be a misunderstanding that automation is either incompetent and risky, or it’s dystopian and puts people out of work. But automation can be both efficient for your customers and uplifting for your agents (to read more about how humans and bots can work together, check out our blog on automation in customer service jobs). You just have to know how to apply it. Simple chatbots can do a lot of the menial work for your advisors. This can be as simple as letting automation gather customer data (more on this in the next section). But the big one is letting chatbots answer FAQs like “where is my order?”.
Since most FAQs are a case of just retrieving data from the relevant location, there really isn’t any risk in letting a bot answer these for you. And, with chatbots, you’re totally in control of what they say and when they say it. Plus, you can add in an exit strategy for customers who just want to talk to a human agent from the get-go. So, the risk is non-existent. In fact, it’s even less risky than a human agent since there’s no rogue element with chatbots.
Most chatbots aren’t advanced enough to answer more complicated and nuanced questions, so you need your team for backup. But bot can still gather data that the advisor might need like names, order numbers, account numbers, etc. With software like Gnatta, all that data gets delivered into the same UI so your advisor is armed with all the relevant information to resolve the query and put the customer at ease. Not only can automation help improve your customer satisfaction (CSat) and resolution rates, it just makes your advisors’ lives much easier. Why spend time every day plugging data into an unwieldy spreadsheet when you could let the system do that work for you and offer it in a neatly bow-tied package?
All Your Information in One Place
Whilst automating isn’t inherently risky, it’s also not guaranteed to be effective if you don’t take full advantage of everything else surrounding it. Good customer relationship management (CRM) software can take simple automation and elevate it to become a fully-realised and successful customer service solution. The best customer service technology puts everything you need into one, intuitive user interface, making it so much easier for your advisors to do their jobs.
What does that actually look like? Well, for Gnatta, it means that every conversation, no matter the channel, is located in the same place. Your customer data and advisor notes sit right alongside that same chat. External systems (such as logistics) can be integrated. Automation, like workflows and canned responses, can be edited and implemented from within that UI. And it’s all tracked through embedded analytics. (To learn more about what makes Gnatta truly unique, check out our explainer page.) All of that adds up to a system that is actively helping your agents work quicker and smarter. Tech like this makes your company and your advisors look competent, professional, and experienced. Even the best advisors can benefit, taking them over the line from good to truly great.
Omnichannel
Seems like an obvious one, right? Omnichannel is something customer service experts have been shouting from the rooftops for years now. But, still, not every company is embracing a truly omnichannel customer service solution. Sometimes, there’s confusion between the terms “multichannel” and “omnichannel”. It isn’t enough to just be offering every channel available and hoping for the best. An omnichannel solution puts the customer at the centre of those channels, allowing the conversation to revolve around the customer instead of having multiple, broken conversations.
This should really be a staple of customer service, but it just isn’t. How many times have you had to talk to multiple advisors about the same thing? Or even had to contact a company on a new channel when the one you chose didn’t garner any response? Having an omnichannel strategy in place shouldn’t be that mind-blowing, but the truth is that doing it effectively can be a nice surprise for customers. It makes your customer journey hassle-free and proves that your advisors are skilled and knowledgeable. They can provide more efficient responses now that they aren’t having to talk internally to three different previous agents. And, having that information readily available also helps improve your first contact resolution rates.
Technology should be a customer service operator’s best friend. It shouldn’t be confusing or frustrating to use. It shouldn’t be slowing your advisors down. Outdated and inefficient technology can make your best advisors look incompetent, and that’s never a good feeling. Plus, if your advisor is struggling with their tech, that frustration is shifted to the customer who has to wait even longer for their resolution.
And even if you think your tech is perfectly fine, we still suggest having a chat with your advisors who are using it every day. You might be surprised by what you hear.
Ultimately, your technology should be a springboard to success, not a wall to scale. If you’d like to chat more about how our tech can help improve your customer service, get in touch with us today.
