Companies spend a lot of money on customer service and support and executives are always on the lookout for new technology to improve the experience of their customers and employees. The technological buzz in recent years has been around artificial intelligence and automation in the contact center and in customer experience. In his recent article, Jeremy Watkin urges companies not to use technology simply to automate all of their customer service areas, because this could take the human element from the process and ultimately ruin the customer experience. Instead, Watkin discusses how emerging technologies can solve problems while saving money.
Improved Self-Help with Natural Language Processing
Online knowledge bases can be very useful to customers who prefer self-help support channels over traditional customer service. However, the articles within knowledge basis often aren’t considered a priority by support teams and can become neglected, which means the articles in the knowledge base become irrelevant. In order to avoid this issue, companies can use certain technological tools that use natural language processing to help customers find the right content they’re looking for easily, which pushes the most frequently asked questions back into the company’s priority list for updating. This technology helps customers solve issues on their own while making work easier for contact center agents by giving them a resource to find answers to inquiries outside of training and requesting supervisor assistance.
Tailoring Canned Responses (Macros)
Instead of having broad macros, or canned responses, to customer complaints, companies can use certain machine-learning technologies to tailor their automated or canned responses to customer needs. These technologies interpret customer complaints or comments and assists contact center agents by making recommendations on the best responses for the inquiry. This benefits the contact center agent by saving them time digging to find the best responses or make one on their own.
Summary: Gaining Value from Machine Learning
Companies shouldn’t completely automate their customer service because people don’t want only accurate information; they want the information delivered to them in a conversational, empathetic way that treats them like a human being. Customer service programs should be focused on providing customers with knowledge bases and other outlets for self-help. If canned responses are necessary, machine-learning technology should be used to ensure the responses are tailored specifically for the customer’s inquiry while enabling agents to be more effective at making a personal connection with the customer. Technology shouldn’t be used to replace contact center agents; it should be used to assist them by taking away tedious, time-consuming tasks, allowing them to develop in their customer service skills. When a company uses technology in this way, the result will be faster and more accurate answers to customer issues. Contact center agents will be able to develop their skills while the company saves time and money by streamlining menial tasks.
This blog post is based on an article from CustomerThink. To read the original article, please click the link below:
How Machine Learning Can Add Value to Customer Service Automation – Jeremy Watkin
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