Automating your online customer service is the best way you can cut down on cost while still providing your online patrons great customer service. See for any given business, over time, around 80% of all incoming questions from customers will be the same, or similar. This is the reason why companies have long adopted the practice of posting their Frequently Asked Questions on their website, to help combat the constant bombardment of redundant inquiries.
Taking this a step further, even if we look at larger companies, we still see traces of the FAQ list in the scripts given to the front line, or the first tier customer service agents. In fact for the most part, the sole job of a traditional first tier customer service representative is to take all the calls, answer the frequently asked questions (based off of their script, or cheat-sheet) and route the more difficult unique questions onto a second tier – more highly trained qualified staff member.
While traditional multi tiered support center modules are effective, they are also typically very expensive to maintain and once you factor in the extremely high turnover rate of that first tier you soon realize this is not a solution for an online business.
Everyone is by now familiar with help desks and knowledgebase software and traditionally the software relies heavily on the customer actively searching for their own answer amongst a sea of help articles and procedures. But with the birth of web 2.0 things have changed. The online consumer expects more now. When they have a question they want to know the answer right away. They don’t have time to search for the proper help article and then take ten minutes to read through it and understand it. Companies are unknowingly losing customers to these traditional help desk systems.
So what is an automated help desk anyway? First of all with an automated help desk we get ride of lengthy articles. We reduce the database down to simple questions and answer records. Each question and answer is associated, or linked to a particular page of your website, or to a general category. When questions are received by the system the software first makes a check to see if a matching Q&A records already exists in the database and if it finds a match the answer is automatically returned to the customer. If no match is found the question is automatically routed to a customer service agent to answer. Every time a agent answers a question the Q&A record gets logged.
With the automated help desk the software continually get smarter. As you answer a question it learns. With the automated help desk you are never bothered by frequently asked questions, because once the system logs the answer it will automatically answer these questions on your behalf only routing the unique questions on to you. Sound familiar? Yes, the automated help desk essentially takes the place of a costly first tier, but it will never quit, show up late for work, or sleep through a training meeting. It only has to be trained once…
Automated help desk software is quickly emerging as the customer support solution for online business because it reduces costs while actually improving the experience of your end customer. The software that is leading the way in this smart customer service software revolution is www.ResponseQue.com. ResponseQue today is affordable, efficient customer service that empowers online business to grow without restriction.
