4 Ways Chatbots Drive Customer Support Efficiency 

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Chatbots are a key driver of customer support efficiency.

What if you could provide faster, more consistent customer support without hiring a team of new employees or investing in expensive software? A chatbot can do just that.  

When it comes to interacting with customers, most businesses struggle with consistency and efficiency. This is a problem because customers are the ones who keep your business afloat. They’ll churn if you don’t make their experience exceptional every time. With a chatbot, however, you can remove various inefficiencies from your customer support process—and that’s good news for your bottom line.  

Read on to learn more about how bots can streamline your customer support operations and save you money in the long run. 

Chatbots handle basic questions and requests 

The vast majority of customer queries are basic questions. Chatbots are the ideal solution for handling these types of requests because they don’t require a sophisticated understanding of your product or service. You can program a chatbot to take care of the most frequent questions and provide customers with pre-generated responses. This will free up your other agents to handle more complex inquiries. 

For example, let’s say your bot is programmed to respond to “Where’s my package?” or “What is your return policy?” In these instances, the bot knows to provide the customer with the correct information. You can include links to relevant resources, FAQ pages, and other helpful content. This will make it easier for your customers to get the help they need and reduce the time your human agents need to spend on simple inquiries — saving you time, money, and resources. 

Chatbots help with deflection and can direct customers to the correct agent 

One of the biggest inefficiencies in customer support is that agents often need to solve customers’ problems themselves. This is especially challenging if you have a large team where each agent specializes in a specific category, such as technical support or product assistance. You can’t expect your team members to also be experts in other key areas of your business, such as finance or marketing. That’s why it’s important to build a system of deflection into your support operations. 

If a customer’s issue or question isn’t within an agent’s area of expertise, your team members should still be able to quickly and seamlessly pass the customer off to someone who can help. A chatbot can help with this process by sending the customer to the appropriate agent. To do this, you’ll need to program your chatbot to ask certain qualifying questions. These questions will allow the bot to determine the best agent to handle each customer’s request. Once the bot has determined the correct agent, it can prompt the customer with a message that directs him or her to the new support team member. This will help you avoid long wait times and reduce the amount of time your human agents need to spend on customer deflection. 
 

Chatbots enrich the data in your CRM or CX software 

Customer support software and CRM software, like Sugar Serve should be your one-stop shop for managing your customer relationships. These programs allow you to track issues, record customer feedback and data, and follow up with customers who have placed orders or have upcoming renewals.  

You support team gathers a ton of data about your customers while they are resolving tickets and answering questions. Unfortunately, without chatbot software, a lot of this data gets lost or never makes it back to the CRM platform for future use. 

Chatbots on the other hand will automatically collect data about client interactions—no matter which channel those interactions happen on. Chatbots are one of the best ways to enrich the data you have on your current customers which will help you gain a better understanding of what’s working and what isn’t within your support operations. It will also make it easier for you to follow up with customers—reducing churn rates and even leading to cross-sell and upsell opportunities. 

 
Chatbots save you money because they’re efficient  

According to Salary.com, the average annual salary for a customer service representative is nearly $33,000. That number doesn’t account for the costs of training new employees, increasing your payroll and benefits expenses. Unlike human agents, chatbots don’t need vacations, sick days, or holidays off. And since you don’t have to pay for their health insurance, retirement plans, or other benefits, the savings add up.  

Plus, chatbots help reduce the number of agents that you will need to keep on staff because of their ability to answer questions, resolve tickets, and deflect for faster resolution.  

Chatbots can help your team provide faster, more personalized support without increasing headcount. 

The Bottom line about Chatbots 

Chatbots can help you improve customer support across the board. They help your support team answer more questions, deflect low-value inquiries, and gather more valuable feedback. Through all of this, they free up your team members to solve more complex issues.  

Are you interested in seeing how a chatbot could improve your customer success processes and enhance your CRM/customer support tool? Check out our bot webpage and book time with our team today!