In the age of digital transformation, technology is nearly impossible to keep up with. While bringing new technology solutions into every facet of your business can be enticing, budgets and resources rarely allow for it. In addition to this, customer support is considered to be a cost function instead of a growth function. After the pandemic, companies are now recognizing that customer support experience and customer support employee experience are imperative to the success of the organization. While this awareness is just starting up, leaders are bound by many different kinds of technologies. How can you be sure that you are investing in the right technology and investing your budget in ways that make a difference? Oracle Research shares the best use of technology as surveyed by several companies.
Are you ready to improve service processes?
It is always a prudent exercise to consider the time and resources it takes for your organization to deliver a new product or service, manage everyday tasks, or issue reports. It is not always obvious to the team that too much time is being spent in one particular area, especially when they’ve been managing that task for some time. If you can easily identify areas within your service business that serve as a ‘black hole’ of time or resources, now is the perfect time to consider where investment in new technology can deliver valuable improvement. Here are some areas to look at:
Time to Resolution Metrics
The time of Resolution metric is essential for customer service that helps to measure your team's ability, to solve customer problems. In the world of customer services, it is important to be able to solve customer problems instantly. When customer service tickets and issues are resolved quickly, you increase customer experience and retention. When the customer gets a quick resolution, they feel
you really value their time and trust, and with this customer loyalty is more likely to increase. On the other hand, a long resolution time can hinder your customer support system, whatever the reason may be. But to retain a customer, the business needs to focus on the Time of Resolution metrics. With Artificial Intelligence when you give the different support channel options to your customer, it enhances customer experience a level up while managing interactions across all channels with high quality and consistency.
Self-service approach
The self-service approach is a magic bullet for a customer service system. There are many benefits to adopting the self-service approach in customer support as it increases self-sufficiency and helps to avoid common human errors made by the team. This approach also helps non-technical users with an easy understanding of the products or services. With innovative tools, a support team can serve the best solutions to their customers. Challenges are always there in different processes, whether it is about support or development or anything else but when you choose a self-service approach, the quality and consistency of results go up. It is imperative that self-service focuses on resolution rather than deflection. With deflection, the issue is just pushed aside. With AI power you can always be available for your customers to self-serve without any human assistance. By focusing on resolution, even if an agent needs to be involved the transition is seamless.
Knowledge Base in Customer Support
Implementation of a Knowledge base in customer support gives a drastic change in the way your customers get customer service. When you harness information from day-to-day conversations that agents have internally and also from previous resolutions into a Knowledge base, you develop quality. Ascendo AI even goes a level up to a state of which pieces of knowledge you need to improve. You can easily connect to multiple CRMs and other data sources using the knowledge base and observe the solutions ranked all together, in one place. When a customer service team adopts a knowledge base, they become more strengthened to find accurate updates about the customers and provide responsive and high-quality customer service.
Do you need a competitive advantage?
Every organization wants to be a step ahead of the competition, but there can come a point in time where it becomes critical to invest in new technology in order to outpace those around you. As the old adage goes, “you need to spend money to make money,”. But with AI tools like Ascendo, ROI is built into the tool and 10X returns are a norm. This is never more true than when working to deliver a solution or service above and beyond what anyone else in the market is doing. Take an honest account of how you are doing against other players in your space, and talk internally with your team to determine what tools and resources are available that can help you compete more effectively. If you identify gaps in areas that could help you excel within a critical niche, now may be the perfect time to make that investment. Focus on poor customer service statistics that need improvement.
Do you need to improve communication?
Has your company grown while processes have stayed the same? Do you find that teams are siloed from each other to the point that innovation and creativity are stymied?
One of the most critical issues we see when companies come to us to help optimize their strategic planning and activity is holes in their communications process. This is where technology can play an important role in improving the status quo. Tools like Ascendo AI provides standardization along with improving quality across agents. By knowing the expert on a particular type of problem, sentiment analysis, and escalation prediction, teams know who can be their help without letting a ticket go to escalation. This level of transparency helps improve communication across teams, as well as communication above and below the leadership levels.
Do you need better insights into data?
With more and more devices, more and more processes, and more avenues to support customers – collecting and delivering data to your organization, have you found a way to effectively analyze all that information and create actionable insights? If the answer is no – and don’t worry, you’re not alone – this is the ideal time to invest in technology that can help give your data meaning and purpose. At Ascendo, we’ve found that our clients are able to increase ROI across the organization in numerous ways simply by making their data work for them. This is one of the most compelling reasons for an organization to find a budget for new technology.
Driving home the value of the investment
Once you know it’s time to make improvements, and you’ve found the right tools to address your needs, how do you convince management it’s worth the cost? The last few years have proven turbulent for all businesses, and most companies started the pandemic by taking a conservative mindset toward new investment. Now, however, the focus is on agility, accelerating the digital footprint, and enabling teams to do more with greater efficiency. To convince your leadership team that a new investment is warranted, draw a clear line to the value it offers. Three areas that are key for businesses in the coming year include:
Improving customer experience:
Make a direct correlation to how new technology, even back-end, internal solutions, can ultimately improve the customer experience. Once the value to the end-user is clear, the investment becomes much more worthwhile.
Increase speed and effectiveness:
Make a demonstrable case for improved ROI by clearly delineating the benefits of the technology and what current company expenses might be reduced or even eliminated. Consider how much you can save, or how long you can use the technology before it might need to be replaced or renewed. Be clear in the expectations and share data that proves your point to the team.
Attract and retain top talent:
Any advantage that entices new or current talent is time and money well spent. It’s hard to attract the smartest people in the field if your competition is giving them more to work with than you are. Consider what areas of the organization are holding you back from finding the best talent for your company and work to improve those, making it a recruitment selling point. Do make sure the tool can with employee experience as well as Customer Service Experience.
Continuous feedback loop from customers:
Are you able to harness feedback and sentiment from every customer interaction? In general, companies focus on feedback from:
Large customers
Customers who are in touch
Customers who fill in the survey
With AI sentiment analysis, you can now focus not only on a section of customers but on all customers and all interactions.
The business case for Customer Service technology
Spending a precious budget on new technology solutions can feel like a gamble, especially if you’ve rolled the dice before and lost with a solution that didn’t deliver on its promises or was too complex to be of value. Carefully considering what your company needs, and drawing a clear line for how new technology can address challenges while paving the way for opportunities, are the most effective ways to make sure the budget is well spent.
Resources: