Insurance giant, Aviva, asked all 16,000 employees early last year who expected that their job could eventually be replaced by a robot. Employees who indicated that they would be replaced by automation were offered retraining for a different role within the company. The study found that many customer service employees believed their work could be taken over by robots.
Online customer journey
The survey results weren't entirely surprising. With the gradual shift of the customer journey to various online environments, it's understandable to think about a new balance between technology and the human touch when it comes to customer service and contact.
But what strategy should you adopt as an organisation?
The customer service representative remains indispensable for handling complex questions and issues, but smart automation where possible can also take a lot of work off their hands, allowing the service team to focus more on issues that only a real person can resolve. Choices about automating customer service are complex and closely linked to the business you are in. Consider the following pros and cons of automating your customer service:
The advantages
One advantage of working with chatbots is the automatic data storage, which allows your marketing department to conduct various commercial analyses, enabling you to better tailor your offerings to your customers' needs.
A chatbot has the advantage of being able to conduct many conversations at once, as it is a robot, after all. For large organisations with less complex queries, this is a solution.
A chatbot is always available, 24/7. This means your customer can reach out at 03:00 in the morning with an urgent question.
The disadvantages
A chatbot can barely interpret. This means spelling and grammar can lead to misunderstandings. With misspelled words such as 'beok' or 'psychooligie', a bot can quickly become confused.
The human voice remains important, especially in situations where empathy is needed. A chatbot is mainly suitable for giving brief, concise answers to simple questions, but cannot respond with: ‘How unfortunate that you still haven't received your package’.
Many companies give their chatbots a name and a photo, causing visitors to think they are actually speaking with ‘Mark’. It can sometimes lead to irritation if during a chat session one discovers that ‘Mark’ is a chatbot.
What choice does your organisation make?
In the near future, it will be interesting to see to what extent companies will deploy chatbots and what influence this will have on their quality. Chatbots are still in their infancy now, but if big companies like Facebook and Google get involved and have stakes, innovation could progress rapidly. The question companies must often ask themselves when using chat services is: do we choose the quantity of the chatbot, or the quality of live chat/telephone customer service? This is why ContactCare uses well-trained customer service representatives and tools to meet the needs and demands that come with good customer service. Interested in the possibilities and tools we use to serve your customers professionally?
