Customer support plays a vital role in maintaining customer satisfaction and loyalty. As technology continues to advance, self-service support options and the integration of bots have revolutionized the way businesses interact with their customers.
At Collab, we believe that Self-Service Customer Support is an empowering and growing trend that provides an array of benefits for the customer while giving companies a flexible solution for providing support 24/7. Bots are leading the race and can be a game-changer in customer experience. This blog post aims to shed light on the benefits of self-service customer support and the increasing prominence of bots in enhancing customer experiences.
Customer care and support are an important part of any business. Traditionally, people had to call a number or visit a store to have their issues and doubts solved. With self-service customer support, there’s no need to interact with an agent or representative.
The Power of Self-Service Support
Self-service customer support empowers customers by providing them with the tools and resources to find answers to their queries independently. From online knowledge bases and FAQs to video tutorials and community forums, self-service options offer convenience, accessibility, and instant assistance. Customers appreciate the freedom to troubleshoot issues on their own terms, saving time and effort in the process.
Self-service options give customers faster solutions that they can find in their own time. In fact, most people prefer to solve issues on their own and only reach out to support channels when they have no other solution.
Let’s jump to a real example: bots. A bot is an automated application designed to interact dynamically with the user, simulating the way a human would behave as a conversational partner. A bot with Artificial Intelligence can resolve more than 70% of customer queries.
The Emergence of Bots
Bots, powered by artificial intelligence (AI), have emerged as game-changers in the realm of customer support. These intelligent automated assistants are capable of understanding and responding to customer inquiries in real time. Bots can handle a wide range of tasks, from providing basic information and order tracking to processing refunds and facilitating product recommendations. With the ability to handle multiple inquiries simultaneously, bots significantly reduce wait times and enhance customer satisfaction.
Usually, bots start by handling simple questions through webchat, providing customers with info from FAQs or knowledge bases. They are valuable to perform tasks that are simple and repetitive and often do it faster than a person could. This kind of simple bot is very easy to build and can retrieve information from various sources (databases, FAQs, websites) and use it to provide customer support.
Nowadays, bots can handle more complex customer needs. Thanks to Artificial Intelligence, bots can solve questions about customer private accounts that need authentication or even perform operations (like buying, selling, transferring money, or others). They can recognize speech (voice recognition), evaluate sentiment, detect intents, reply in a customizable voice, and flag unusual occurrences. Thanks to AI, bots know when to search for an answer from a knowledge base, when to ask for clarity, and when to direct users to a human agent.
Bots are:
- Easy to build, deploy and enhance;
- Available for chat and voice interactions;
- Brandable and customizable to your needs.
Benefits of Self-Service Tools & Bots
Availability and Accessibility: self-service options and bots are available 24/7, allowing customers to seek assistance at any time, regardless of business hours or geographical location. This ensures customers never feel stranded or left waiting for support.
Faster Resolution: bots can swiftly analyze customer queries, providing accurate and relevant responses in a matter of seconds. This expedites issue resolution and improves the overall customer experience.
Cost Efficiency: self-service customer support and bots help businesses save on labor costs by reducing the need for a large support team. With automated responses and comprehensive knowledge bases, companies can handle a larger volume of customer inquiries without compromising quality.
Personalization: advanced AI algorithms enable bots to analyze customer data and personalize responses accordingly. This enhances the customer’s experience by providing tailored recommendations and solutions.
Agents have more time for more important interactions.
Customer Stories
Self-service channels are easy to implement. At Collab, we have many projects that deliver this experience. They rely on OneContact Flows, which is our tool to design the path of the interaction between the customer and the contact center. The flows are called IVR (interactive voice response), for voice interactions. For web or visual interactions (such as live chat) flows are called Web IVR.
CUSTOMER STORY 1: Pandair Travel
Met Pandair Travel Web IVR
Our virtual travel agency, PandAir Travel, implemented a Collab Web IVR in their website. Customers open any website that contains Collab Web IVR technology and can immediately start navigation in beautiful and self-explaining visual menus. After navigating through the different options and flows, customers can also choose to start a live interaction or be contacted later. See it in action in the video below!
When the interaction is queued for a human agent, Collab Web IVR shows the position in the queue and the expected waiting time.
Customers can at any time drop out of the queue and request a later callback.
The customer’s path is tracked at the website or apps, so each touchpoint contributes to provide context to the agents and / or to route the interaction correctly (intelligent routing). When the agent receives the interaction, all the information is synced: the agent sees the customer journey at the website and gets to know which are his preferred destinations and dates. Agents can now provide more personalized and faster support!
CUSTOMER STORY 2: Home Banking
Taking home–banking to another level with a Vocal Bot
Bots can be used to fasten the process of opening new bank accounts and to enable home banking directly from the customer’s phone. A bot will guide the call through a menu of options; thanks to speech recognition, the bot is able to understand the voice of the customer, proceed to authentication and perform banking operations.
CUSTOMER STORY 3: Telco
Enhancing CX in Telecommunications with a Chat Bot
Collab works closely with telco companies. One example of the value of bots in this area is the implementation of a bot connected to all the info of the devices available for sale. The bot is present on every product page, so when a client is browsing for a new smartphone the bot can reply to any question about the device’s technical characteristics.
How Collab implements bots for self-service support
To implement self-service customer support Collab uses OneContact Flows. With an intuitive and graphic interface, One Contact Flows is easy to use and doesn’t require coding skills. The user only needs to place the boxes and define the path of the conversation flow. Each box represents a step of the interaction. Regarding deploy options, you can deploy your bots on any channel! Here are the options:
Widgets to power up your website
- Customers can interact with the Contact Center, with no costs, through our Click to Interact Widgets available at OneContact CC! They can be deployed on any website or application so the customers can reach out to the company in their preferred channel.
- ClickToVideo & ClickToCall – Uses the WebRTC technology for calls and video calls, through a browser.
- ClickToChat – Uses Collab’s WebMessenger with a responsive interface available on all platforms, including mobile.
WhatsApp & Facebook
- We integrate with social networks, therefore you can provide customer support on any channel.
Apps
- Our web-based deployment suits the platform of your choice. This means that you can deploy it within your own applications.
As technology continues to advance, self-service customer support and bots have become integral to modern businesses. Embracing these tools empowers customers, reduces costs, and enhances overall customer satisfaction. By combining the benefits of self-service options and the efficiency of bots, companies can create a seamless and efficient support system, setting the stage for success in the digital age.