Organizations are now keen on amplifying customer satisfaction, without compromising on operational efficiency. With the increasing use of intelligent automation, the most important question to answer is: When do businesses opt for a customer service agent vs. a chatbot?
There is no denying that both customer service agents, and chatbots have their advantages. Understanding when to ideally use each resource is imperative in creating an effective CX strategy to improve agent productivity.
Let’s dive deeper into both!
Customer Service Agents: Key Roles & Skills:
For the longest time, customer service agents did the heavy lifting of customer support. They are trained to build a connection with customers while answering queries, and are excellent with interpreting nuanced emotions. Sympathy and empathy in customer service is a crucial element that makes human agents a must-have resource, when it comes to reassuring customers while dealing with sensitive queries, or to just provide a more personalized experience.
For instance, if a customer has a pressing, recurring issue, a human customer service agent can problem-solve, as well as, empathize. They can reassure customers, and provide instant, customised solutions based on the issue at hand. The strategic importance of sympathy and empathy in customer service results in surpassing expectations, and brand loyalty.
Nonetheless, customer service agents do have drawbacks!
These agents can only handle certain queries at a time. This leads to hiring more agents, which is more expensive, and time-consuming to train. This becomes challenging to increase agent productivity.
Now, what’s the solution? This is where AI-powered chatbots come into the equation.
AI-Powered Chatbots: Key Roles & Skills:
Taking the challenges of human agents into consideration, chatbots have become a key strategy in improving customer service. Chatbots leverage NLP (Natural Language Processing) to understand customer queries and offer solutions. Most often, chatbots are used to answer repetitive queries, provide order details, and tracking updates.
Just like how empathy is the unique selling point of customer service agents, availability is what makes chatbots advantageous.
Chatbots can function round-the-clock, making sure that customers are supported whenever required. This is essential for answering frequently asked questions, which frees up bandwidth of customer service agents. As a result, this works to improve agent productivity. A key industry example is how Chennai Metro Rail automated their ticket booking process via WhatsApp Automation. Since inception, 28 Million+ tickets have been issued via WhatsApp, generating over $700,000 in revenue through WhatsApp bookings only. This is a strong example of how chatbots help automate repetitive queries.
An added benefit of using chatbots is the reporting and analytics feature. Most chatbots are built to collect customer data for businesses to analyze their audience across various channels, such as WhatsApp for Business, RCS Business Messaging, Instagram Direct Messenger, Facebook Messenger, Google Business Messages, Web Bot, and more. Chatbots continually analyze queries, and optimize their algorithm. In doing so, they become self-sufficient.
Chatbots have their drawbacks too.
They are not perfectly equipped to handle complex customer queries, or to deeply understand context and human emotions. This can be frustrating for customers when a chatbot fails to meet their expectations.
Striking the Right Chord: When to Use Chatbots and Customer Service Agents
- Leverage AI-Powered Chatbots for Frequently Asked Questions: Repetitive questions can be easily answered by Chatbots. Order updates, appointment bookings, transaction updates, and contextual FAQs can be automated using chatbots. In an organizational scenario, enterprise chatbots are leveraged to answer queries from employees. This reduces Average Wait Time (AWT), and ensures customers’ requests do not get hindered.
- Escalate Complex Queries to Customer Service Agents: Chatbots can be trained to identify which queries need to be handed off to customer service agents. Customers can enjoy the benefit of instant solutions from a chatbot, as well as, guided support for complex queries whenever required. Moreover, this also ensures that customers do not feel restrained with automated replies.
- Combine Personalization + Effectiveness: As mentioned earlier, chatbots can collect data on customer conversations. This includes past purchases, previous interactions, and more. Remote customer service agents can refer to this when they connect with users on complex queries. This helps provide a hyper-personalized experience.
- Regular Optimization via Key Success Metrics: Regularly monitoring chatbots and customer service agents is efficient. Some metrics include CSAT (customer satisfaction) scores, Average Handling Time (AHT), Messages Per Enquiry, and Resolution Times. Conversation data can help with refining chatbot and agent responses; thus, making sure to improve agent productivity.
The Power of a Hybrid Approach
The debate between customer service agents and chatbots doesn’t have a one-size-fits-all answer. Instead, the most successful companies are those that understand the strengths and limitations of both and leverage them accordingly. A hybrid approach, where chatbots handle the initial contact and routine queries, while human agents manage more complex issues, can lead to an enhanced customer experience.
By combining the efficiency of chatbots with the empathy in customer service provided by human agents, businesses can create a customer service strategy that not only meets but exceeds customer expectations. Ultimately, striking the right balance is key to driving customer satisfaction, loyalty, and long-term success.
