Automation plays an important role across many functions and industries, from automating quality assurance (QA) in contact centresto the electronic organisation of health records that improve patient experience and healthcare outcomes. Customer experience (CX) is also a common area for automation. Businesses often rely on customer experience automation to help customers quickly and conveniently at different points in the customer journey.
In this article, we’ll explore how customer experience automation works and how it can transform the customer experience, including:
- Summarising customer experience automation and how it works
- How customer experience automation assists businesses and customers
- Improving customer experience through automation
Customer experience automation allows tools and processes to handle parts of the customer journey. Chatbots, personalised landing pages, and automated phone systems are examples of customer experience automation implementation.
Four key components allow customer experience automation to happen:
- Orchestration, or the planning part of CX automation, draws upon existing data on your customers’ journeys to identify areas in which you can use automated processes or tools.
- Segmentation separates your customers into categories based on demographic characteristics like age or income level or behaviours such as shopping habits. Segmentation makes it possible for your company to target specific needs through personalised offers and automated processes.
- Personalisation is when those personalised offers and processes step in. Segmentation helps you fit your customers into the right boxes, and personalisation uncovers the best forms of assistance to deliver at the right time for each segment of customers.
- Automation completes the process by placing tools, self-service features, and other automated processes at necessary customer touchpoints using the data you’ve gathered about your customers and their needs.
Customer experience automation typically works best when used in conjunction with human agents. As helpful as automation can be at certain customer touchpoints, it shouldn’t replace all human interactions. Some customer issues, like fraud inquiries or product complaints, are best handled by live agents.
How customer experience automation assists businesses and customers
Customer experience automation can smooth a customer’s journey and help companies foster and maintain good customer relationships. Here are a few specific benefits of CX automation.
Customers get help when they need it
The primary purpose of customer experience automation is to give customers the help they need at any point in the customer journey. Say a customer arrives on your website at 8:00 PM after your support team has signed off for the day. Having an after-hours chatbot available to answer common questions can help that customer through the buying process.
Consistency from CX automation can help improve brand experience
CX automation maintains consistency across your brand. Automation can prevent customers from falling through the cracks during their buying journey. As your automation process learns more about your brand and customers, it can eventually create experiences that customers rely on and expect from your brand.
CX automation drives personalisation
Personalised offers help businesses sell because they’re tailored to customers. A segmented customer base allows you to offer automated and customised services to different types of customers, like tailored landing pages or emailed discounts for a specific product or service relevant to a customer segment. In turn, you have the potential to increase sales while building a happy customer base.
Customer service can become more efficient
With automated processes in place to assist customers, businesses can focus on other key areas of customer support. Removing time-consuming manual tasks, like sending offer emails to customers or answering every chat request, can free up time for your agents to target efficiency and precision when interacting with customers is necessary.
Improving customer experience through automation
Customer experience automation starts with technology that reveals patterns in the customer journey and gives insight into areas for improvement. Consider implementing data-driven customer experience software into your contact centre to gather data that will help you increase customer loyalty, improve brand experience, and understand customer sentiment.