The experience that your customers have with you is crucial to your success as a business. If someone has a bad experience, they will not only likely never be a customer again, but may also tell others about their negative experience.
On the other hand, a good experience can help make customers loyal and tell their friends and family about how great your business is.
Loyal customers equal repeat business and all companies should be striving to create as many loyal customers as possible.
There are many things you can do to improve the customer experience your business offers, but certainly one of the best and most exciting is automation. Everything from email marketing to project management can be automated and more and more businesses are jumping on board.
But why (and how) does automation improve customer experience? Well, if that is something you have been wondering about, you’re in luck.
This guide is going to take you through some of the many reasons why automation within your business can provide a boost to the overall customer experience.
Greatly Improve Customer Service
One of the major ways that automation can improve the customer experience is by improving customer service itself.
Communication between company and customer is very important, especially when someone has an issue or problem.
People want a quick resolution to their issues, and to be able to speak to an agent as quickly and efficiently as possible. If your company takes forever to respond or offers unsatisfactory responses, you can be sure customers will not be happy about it.
Automation can help by making conversations with customers much more direct, fast, and effective.
For example, using a chatbot can allow you to instantly respond to common questions and concerns without an agent having to take on the work.
If the customer requires more detailed assistance, they can be transferred right to a live chat with an agent in seconds.
This has the potential to save your team a ton of time, and allow them to focus on pressing and detailed matters while letting your chatbot handle the basic responses and answers.
Also, providing a digital customer experience solution that features AI and automation can make a huge difference in the service quality you can provide to customers.
While automation is great in this business area, you also need to make sure to balance your customer service.
Many people still want the option to speak to an actual person, so you still want to preserve the human aspect of your customer service, while still making things as efficient as possible.
Better Consistency
Another benefit that automation offers that can aid in a better customer experience is a better consistency.
Most customer service teams are full of agents with different backgrounds, upbringings, and life experiences.
Because of this, the experience with one agent may differ slightly from another. They will have a different tone, use different words, and simply do things in a different way.
This is fine at times, but you generally want the experience your company offers to be consistent with each customer and from each agent.
While training can help, people are still going to be different than one another.
Automation allows for the customization of canned responses that agents can choose from when offering responses to questions and issues.
Instead of each person coming up with their own way to respond to a common question or concern, they can simply choose one from the automated suggestion list that has been created.
This ensures that each interaction with a customer is consistent and the experience is predictable and customers can always know what to expect.
Make it Easier to Provide Feedback
Automation can also make it simpler and more streamlined for customers to provide feedback to a business.
You can set it up so feedback forms or questionnaires are automatically sent to customers after they complete a certain action. It can be sent via email, or a survey popup can appear on the screen.
This makes it very simple for customers to offer feedback and provides them the option to do it when their experience with your company is still fresh in their minds.
The yes/no forms and feedback questionnaires you ask for can generally be customized to learn whatever you want about the quality of your customer experience.
However, we recommend keeping them simple and short to encourage people to fill them out, and not simply ignore them.
Not only is feedback great as it lets customers ensure their voices can be heard, but it can also be incredibly valuable for your business. It can help you learn the strong and weak points of your operation, and the wealth of data you receive can help with making business decisions down the road.
Offer a Smoother Onboarding Experience
One area where the benefits of automation on customer experience can be very noticeable is during onboarding.
While there are many ways to improve your client onboarding, automation can help simplify things greatly and ensure customers can get registered or signed up with as little resistance as possible.
You can send automated welcome emails with tips and steps for getting the most out of your product and service, or provide interactive walkthroughs to help them out.
Even highlighting features and drawing attention to things that are important can aid greatly in the process.
All of this can drastically reduce the time it takes to onboard, while also making the entire process as stress-free as possible for all who are involved.
Provide Better Personalization and Customization
Personalization is a very important part of a successful company in the modern business landscape. This ranges from personalized marketing to a personalized experience, and so much more.
Customers want to feel like you are speaking to them directly, and not simply treating them like another random customer. If they don’t feel like they are truly valued as a customer, they will often go elsewhere.
Automation can help to provide a personalized experience to customers in a couple of ways.
First, it can personalize messages or emails using information from their profile like their name or birthday. This is subtle but can go a long way in helping customers feel special and contribute to a better relationship over time.
Next, things like automated tools or email analytics dashboards will often collect, store, and manage customer history, including their past interactions or messages.
With agents having access to this information automatically, they can offer more personalized support and assistance during future interactions.
Also, if you are able to personalize your offerings or deals, it can often help you upsell or cross-sell, as well. The more relevant a product or service is to a person, the more likely they will be to buy it.
Better Relationship Management
Automation can also play a role in helping to manage your relationship with customers.
Many CRM (customer relationship management) tools use automation to do everything from record customer interactions, to storing their personal information. Then it is readily available to be searched at any time, by any employee with ease.
This means that each and every employee that interacts with this customer will have a good idea of how long they have been a customer, past issues they have had, and so much more.
This can help them provide a better experience and service, and be aware of the struggles a customer has had before they even have to bring it up themselves.
Of course, take time to choose the right CRM that features the functionality you need. There are many options and not all are created equally, so be sure to do your research.
If used correctly, these tools can drastically improve the relationship between company and customer, to help you retain customers and improve their satisfaction.
Improved Availability and the Existence of Self-Service
When a customer has a problem or needs assistance, they don’t want to wait.
Using automation means that you can offer customers assistance 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
If people need to wait until the next business day to get a response from you, they aren’t likely to be too pleased about it.
Automation lets you provide instant assistance around the clock whether through a chatbot, or something like a helpful FAQ page.
In addition to improved availability, automation also allows for the existence of self-service. If you provide things like a detailed knowledge base full of the answers to common questions or concerns, it can go a long way.
If you pair these self-service knowledge centers with the chatbots we mentioned earlier in the guide, many customers will be able to deal with their own questions and concerns on their own without even having to speak to one of your agents.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we hope that this blog post has helped you learn a little more about how and why automation can improve the experience of your customers.
We are also only scratching the surface of what automation can do for businesses, so expect many more applications in the future.
If you want to know more about automations, we have helpful resources for you:
- Automation of Email Marketing: Tips a Marketer Should Know
- Website Form Builders for Smart Form Automation
- 9 Ultimate Sales Funnel Examples That Convert Like Crazy
