Customer care and automation to improve customer service performance

Automating intake, that is, the first steps of identifying a customer's request and profiling it, is becoming an increasingly common practice among companies wishing to improve their customer service performance.

Automating Intake

One of the main features of intake automation is the ability to efficiently and quickly handle incoming requests. Using technologies such as conditional logic or AI-based chatbots, it is possible to guide the user through the early stages of a service request without the need for a human operator.

This first phase of contact with the bot can resolve in two ways:

• through dialogue with the chatbot, the customer is able to solve their problem independently, without the need for contact with an employee.
• the chatbot collects information about the customer’s biographical information and the issues they are experiencing and passes it to the human operator. This in turn can use the aggregated information to provide accurate and timely assistance that resolves critical issues encountered quickly and with a high level of satisfaction.

The benefits of automation in customer care

The benefits of this hybrid system, which sees automation as a tool to serve customer care operators and not as a substitute, unfold in both economic and operational terms.

The implementation of an automated system for receiving and sorting service requests allows a higher volume of tickets to be handled quickly and efficiently, without resulting in a proportional increase in costs.

Human-machine collaboration increases the operational efficiency of the entire customer care department and reduces the time spent handling individual customer inquiries, allowing human operators to focus on more complex and strategic tasks.

A hybrid system, which automates the most mechanical and repetitive tasks, frees up valuable resources that can be allocated more efficiently within the team.

Entrusting automated systems with the intake phase of service requests opens up the possibility of verticalizing the skills of human operators: the chatbot can collect information regarding the critical issue encountered by the customer and entrust its resolution to an expert, who specializes in that specific issue.

This leads to better management of internal resources, a reduction in waiting times, and greater customer satisfaction, as customers see their inquiries handled by real specialists, without having to wait for the call or chat to be passed from the first employee who answers to a colleague more knowledgeable about the specific critical issue.

The great unknown in automation: customer response

All these benefits are true and verified but are often overshadowed by customers’ distrust of the automated system.

The roots of this phenomenon lie in direct experience with the early models of service bots, both with written chatbot model and the voice model of automated responders, which were not sophisticated enough to understand and respond correctly to customer requests.

Adding to the uneasy situation the user found himself in because of the criticality that led him in the first instance to request assistance from customer service, was the frustration of an automated system that was unable to accommodate his requests.

The answer is a customized solution

A solution tailored to the specific needs of the company and its customer base can play a key role in overcoming this obstacle and promoting greater acceptance of automated tools.

Automating the intake phase, by implementing artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies, allows the machine to be educated on the specific needs of the customer base, so that it becomes more focused and able to respond to customer demands.

Machine learning also allows the system to self-instruct itself from the customer base’s own requests, refining over time its ability to handle the requests and forward the service ticket to specialized operators, reducing the margin of error and consequently the customer’s waiting time.

Unlike an out-of-the box service, a customized solution does not start from standard templates but is always born with the peculiarities of the business at its core and adapts to the internal flows of data management and service requests.

Thus, it is not the company that has to adapt to implement the automation system but rather it is the customized solution that smoothly integrates into the workflows already in place, improving performance.

Discover INGO’s persnalized customer care and automation solutions

Our custom solutions, powered by automation and AI, integrate seamlessly with our platforms to ensure continuity in information flows and security in data processing.