Customer support has been one of the neglected parts of business for so many years. While Hilton's Connie and Softbanks 'Pepper have received praise for handling guest experience in the hospitality industry, most businesses lag in stellar customer service due to low budget or lack of automation. 

It's very clear from the current trends that service robots have the upper hand on human agents. The benefits are endless: 24/7 availability, fewer errors, handling thousands of queries in an hour, etc. 

But to reap these benefits, AI-powered customer support must be designed strategically. Otherwise, both customers and human agents will avoid dealing with it. Robot technology is not just a novelty; when used well and integrated to deliver, it can help maintain a balance between human interaction and automation. 

What is Customer Service Automation?

Customer Service Automation is a type of support automated by using artificial intelligence. The main aim is to reduce human intervention while handling customer inquiries.

There are different types of customer service automation. They are: 

 1. Chatbots - These are AI-powered customer support systems to engage with customers in real-time. They provide queries to your customers instantly and offer 24/7 support. ‍

 2. CRM Automation- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) automation helps your agent understand tasks related to managing customer interactions, data, etc. 

For example, Worknet Copilot guides your employees on why some metrics are falling and what they can do to improve them. ‍

  3. Self-Service Automation - It helps customers find answers to the problems themselves by going through product documentation and FAQ pages. 

 4. Message Automation- This includes sending automated emails and SMS to give updates to customers regarding their issues. 

For example, Worknet’s bulk messaging tool allows you to send bulk messages on Slack. 

 5. Help Desk & Ticketing Software - This software automates the process of logging, tracking, and resolving customer issues or inquiries and saves human agents time. Worknet GPT generates answers automatically for customer queries. 

Suggestion: Equip yourself with the knowledge you need to excel. Master 40+ Customer Service Terms and boost your customer service skills for greater impact.

How Does Customer Service Automation Work?

Suppose you are a B2B SaaS company. The customer has some issues; the productivity software is not running as expected. So, they need help. This is what the customer journey will look like with Worknet’s Customer Service Automation. 

Stage 1: Customer visits your site. 

Stage 2: They have questions. The Worknet GPT automatically generates the answer to the user query and also guides them to the self-help center if needed. 

Stage 3: Customer goes through the self-help guide and tries to solve the problem. And they get their query resolved. 

But, what if issues are more significant than this? Here, too, Customer Service Automation shines. 

Step 4: Now, self-help doesn't work. Customers can submit the ticket and an automated email will be sent to them assuring that their ticket is submitted, and a human agent will reach them soon. 

Step 6: When the query reaches a human agent, they resolve the ticket. Worknet automatically connects your AI with the ticketing system.

Also Read: The Complete Guide for Conversational AI for Customer Service

Automated Customer Service Examples

Help Desk & Ticketing Automation:

• Utilize Worknet to streamline and automate the ticketing system for customer inquiries.
• Implement intelligent routing using Worknet to direct tickets to the appropriate support teams based on predefined criteria.
• Integrate Worknet with knowledge base systems to provide instant solutions or suggestions to common customer issues.

Workflow Automation:

• Employ Worknet to automate end-to-end customer service workflows, reducing manual intervention.
• Create workflows that seamlessly connect different departments, ensuring a cohesive and efficient customer service process.
• Integrate Worknet with CRM systems to automate follow-ups and updates, enhancing overall customer experience.

Learn More about AI Workflow Automation

Team Inbox:

• Establish a unified customer support inbox powered by Worknet to consolidate messages from various channels.
• Enable automated sorting and tagging of incoming messages using Worknet, ensuring each team member gets relevant and prioritized tasks.
• Leverage Worknet's natural language processing to categorize and route messages to the right teams or individuals.

Bulk Messaging Automation:

• Employ Worknet to automate bulk messaging for announcements, updates, or promotions to a large customer base.
• Personalize messages using Worknet's language capabilities, creating a more engaging and tailored communication approach.
• Track and analyze customer responses to bulk messages through Worknet to gain insights for future campaigns.

Customer Support Analytics:

• Implement Worknet for real-time analytics on customer interactions, sentiment analysis, and issue resolution.
• Utilize Worknet's machine learning capabilities to predict potential service issues and proactively address them.
• Generate custom reports using Worknet to gain insights into customer trends, helping to improve overall service strategies.

Suggestion: Providing excellent customer service requires clear communication. Understanding common Customer Service Acronyms is a key first step.

Benefits of Automation in Customer Service

Worknet’s automation service is not designed to replace the human agent. It's designed to support the existing team so they can perform better and not get burnt out at the end of the day. Here are the top fix benefits of Customer Service Automation.

#1. Enhanced Efficiency and Productivity

Customer service agents can only help one customer at a time. Now, imagine you have hundreds of customer inquiries per day and only a small team of 10 agents. The results would be faster burnout, dissatisfied customers, poor work output, and lost revenue. 

That's where automation helps streamline the processes and reduce burnout. 

For example, with Worknet's bulk messaging tool, you can quickly broadcast your notices and product updates to hundreds of Slack Channels.

You can also bulk message through personal DMs, all with a single click. No repetitive copying and pasting is needed!

Suggested Readings: Enhance customer satisfaction with a responsive Customer Service Virtual Assistant. Boost efficiency and exceed expectations.

#2. All time support

Customers want everything fast, whether it's their product or a response from customer support. However, human work capacity is limited to less than eight productive hours daily. 

Responding fast at any time of the day is not often possible, 

AI doesn't have this problem. Automation customer support software stays awake 24/7, never sleeps, and doesn't need to eat! This means your customers can post their queries anytime from any corner of the world, and it will answer them with finesse. 

Historically, time zones have been issues, but not anymore. Worknet's AI supports your customers all around the clock. 

Also Read: Explore the evolution of customer interactions with our Customer Timeline guide. Visualize journeys effortlessly.

#3. Reduced costs

According to IBM, 265 billion customer support requests are made annually. Businesses pay a total of 1.3 trillion to service these queries. That's a tremendous amount of money for customer support service. That's why switching to automated customer support can help you reduce costs. 

AI customer support features like chat box and voice bots can resolve millions of general queries. This way, human agents only have to deal with complex issues that AI cannot resolve. It also helps you reduce your agent headcount, as they are not dealing with general queries, which are the most common. 

A real-life example is Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB), which resolved 80% of queries without human intervention. Thus enabling them to reduce the human workforce to 20% and save 2.7 million USD annually. 

#4. Best For Modern Customers

Zendesk reports that more customers prefer self-service to get on a call with an agent. Over 91% of people say they would use a knowledge base if it meets their needs. 

And isn’t it good? Customers prefer to solve the issues independently without you even being there. 

But one question is, “What if the knowledge base doesn't meet their needs?” That's where real automation work comes into the scene. 

With automated software like Copilot for the support team, you can deal with complex issues by training it. 

For example, if you have a request for an item refund, Copilot will automatically develop a prompt to send to the user and guide them through the refund process. All this with little to no human interaction. You just need to train the software prior to handle similar situation and help users stay on track using a list of prompts. 

#5. Better data analytics and reporting

If you have ever tried to manually analyze data from thousands of customer inquiries, you know how time-consuming and frustrating it is. With the fast passing of digital businesses, there's no time for going through each message manually to analyze sentiments, repetitive errors, etc. 

And this is also one of the most frustrating for Slack users. 

Image: Worknet’s Slack analytics with Bi Dashboard

If you are using Slack, it needs analytics features added. Worknet's Slack analytics with Bi Dashboard resolves these issues. This tool offers detailed engagement and productivity metrics like first response time, resolution time, and message volume in specific channels. Such metrics help you under your customer support team activities and where they can improve. The insights are essential to help your team focus on the right things, thus improving both productivity and customer experiences. 

#6. Centralization of data

Typically, a customer support representative has to go through several sources to find customer solutions when tickets are raised. However, these issues often lie on communication channels like Slack, etc. Other times, the representation must also see whether the customer has past tickets highlighting recurring issues. Referring to numerous sources and answering customers on time becomes a hectic task. 

Thankfully, automated customer service software, like Copilot, removes this. The AI helps the service team centralize all the data so that representatives can access these data with a single click. 

But, Worknet needs to centralize the data. It works differently. Rather than just focusing on the centralization of data sources like data lakes or warehouses, GenAI connects a multitude of data sources. The secret sauce to its working is its semantic understanding. Through this, it does not just retrieve the data but also understands it. This way, it helps you provide relevant answers to user queries.  

#7. Consistency in information 

You might have encountered a situation where a customer representative gave you different answers. This is not uncommon; with human interactions, there are inconsistencies. However, it can confuse consumers and make them lose trust. 

As per the study conducted by the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, human errors contribute largely to inaccuracies in customer service interactions.

This is where automated customer support solutions like Worknet AI come in handy. For example, Worknet's bulk message tool ensures that you send everyone the same messages or notices. 

Best Customer Service Automation Software

Automation is critical for any company looking to transform their customer experience. During unstable times, automation helps you reap cost savings and productivity benefits while helping employees stay happy. 

At Worknet.ai, we have designed Customer Service Automation that supports your employees without getting in their way. 

If you are constantly dealing with a high amount of customer queries, it’s high time to shift to customer service automation to keep customers happy and reduce employee stress! The right customer service automation software allows your agents to focus on important interactions while engaging general queries through automation.

Get started on your journey towards customer service automation. Book a demo now