It’s essential to offer the best customer service possible, but it’s nearly impossible to do this if you run a small business and you’re trying to grow.
It’s essential to offer the best customer service possible, but it’s nearly impossible to do this if you run a small business and you’re trying to grow.
As you gain more customers, you’ll need to broaden your customer service capabilities.
Automation offers a way to do this while you scale.
It’s not just labour-saving for you, but it also ensures that every customer gets their needs met.
Hire a Chatbot
One option is to add a 24/7 chatbot to your website.
You might have seen this before.
You visit a website and an avatar appears, asking, “Can I help you with anything?”
Your chatbot is available 24/7 to reply to your customers in real time.
It’s loaded with data about your company, so it can offer reliable and accurate information related to most customer inquiries.
And if someone wants to talk to a human being, they can contact you through the regular channels.
Site Help with Widgets
Another automation option is to install widgets on your website that personalize the experience for each visitor.
These programs can analyse visitor behaviour and offer customised content suggestions.
This is especially useful for an ecommerce site, where customers can receive helpful product suggestions based on their preferences and shopping history.
Cut Down Reply Time with Templates
One way to save time and improve consistency is to use templates for common communications and replies.
For example, if you have a follow-up email you send to customers post-purchase, you can automate this so you don’t have to send manually each time.
Personalization options help make the recipient feel special, even though you’re using a template and email software program to communicate.
Manage Your Customer Relations
A customer relationship management (CRM) program can help you manage customer data through automation.
It can also help with things like autocompleting webforms.
It saves information about your customers, such as address and email.
This saves users the trouble of entering this information manually each time it’s required.
Automate Ticket Assignment
Automated ticket assignment is a program that directs customer inquiries by topic area.
Rather than contacting you and then having to be routed to the appropriate representative, ticket assignment uses keywords and other triggers to send customers to the right person or department.
This cuts down on response time and improves customer service by eliminating one step.
Best Practices for Customer Service Automation
Automation can vastly improve your customer service, but you don’t want to lose the personal touch.
To do it well, here are some best practices to follow:
1. Augment, Don’t Replace.
Keep your focus on improving customer service, not solely on reducing your workload.
2. Test Everything.
Make sure you have tested all the processes you’re considering using before you implement. Make sure it’s a seamless experience and an improvement.
3. Keep it Simple
Choose simple solutions first so that it’s easier for you and your customers.
Don’t Lose the Personal Touch
In conclusion, automating customer service can be very beneficial to solopreneurs.
Automation can help you save time and money.
Automating customer service can also improve customer satisfaction.
However, it is important to make sure that the automation is done correctly.
Your customers should still feel as if they are being treated as individuals.
