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AUTOMATED CUSTOMER SATISFACTION: Where do we go from here?

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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As we have been exploring, gauging customer satisfaction is crucial for improving service quality and fostering loyalty. Automated customer satisfaction (ACS) solutions have become a mainstay, but their potential is far from tapped. Here’s how we can expect ACS solutions to evolve in the coming years…

From Tick-Box Surveys to Real-Time Sentiment Analysis

Current ACS solutions, like post-call surveys, often rely on basic metrics like star ratings. The future holds a more nuanced approach:

  • AI-Powered Sentiment Analysis: Advanced AI will analyse customer speech patterns, tone of voice, and even text-based interactions to identify underlying emotions and gauge true sentiment beyond basic satisfaction scores.
  • Multi-Channel Feedback: ACS solutions will go beyond phone calls, capturing customer sentiment through website chatbots, social media interactions, and email exchanges, offering a holistic view of customer satisfaction across all touchpoints.
  • Real-Time Feedback and Intervention: AI-powered solutions will analyse customer interactions in real-time, identifying highly dissatisfied customers and triggering immediate interventions, like escalation to a live agent or targeted apologies.
  • Predictive Analytics and Proactive Outreach: Advanced analytics will predict potential customer dissatisfaction based on past interactions or specific customer profiles. This allows proactive outreach to address concerns before they escalate, enhancing customer retention.

The Rise of Emotionally Intelligent Automation

The future of ACS solutions lies in mimicking human emotional intelligence:

  • Empathetic Chatbots: Chatbots will become more sophisticated, using natural language processing (NLP) to understand the emotional context of customer inquiries and respond with empathy and understanding.
  • De-escalation Techniques: AI-powered chatbots will be trained in de-escalation techniques, allowing them to calm down frustrated customers and direct them towards appropriate solutions.
  • The Human Touch When Needed: ACS solutions will seamlessly integrate with live agent support. When complex issues arise or emotions run high, the system can intelligently transfer the customer to a human agent for a more personalised touch.

Focus on Customer Journey and Effort Score

Future ACS solutions will move beyond individual interactions, considering the entire customer journey:

  • Customer Journey Mapping: ACS will integrate with customer journey mapping tools, allowing businesses to identify pain points throughout the customer experience and tailor solutions that minimise customer effort.
  • Effort Score Measurement: Solutions will measure customer effort, assessing how easy it is for customers to get their issues resolved. This data can then be used to streamline processes and reduce customer frustration.
  • Focus on Customer Lifetime Value: ACS solutions will consider the customer’s lifetime value, identifying high-value customers who require more personalised attention and proactive satisfaction initiatives.

A Future of Continuous Improvement

The evolution of automated customer satisfaction solutions promises a future of deeper customer insights, real-time feedback, and a more human-like approach to customer service. By leveraging AI, advanced analytics, and a focus on customer effort, UK contact centres can elevate their service quality, build stronger customer relationships, and drive long-term business success. Remember, in today’s competitive landscape, customer satisfaction is paramount. Automated customer satisfaction solutions are no longer just about collecting data; they are evolving into powerful tools for understanding customer sentiment, predicting potential issues, and creating a more positive customer experience from the first interaction to the last.

Are you searching for Automated Customer Satisfaction solutions for your organisation? The Contact Centre Summit can help!

Photo by Windows on Unsplash

Half of businesses yet to deploy AI to improve customer engagement

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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Data analysed by the customer experience specialist CX Network has found that over half (56%) of businesses have not implemented AI optimisation strategies to improve customer engagement.

This is despite the fact that 42% of respondents agreed that automation was critical for delivering CX at scale, with 66% of customers expecting companies to understand their unique needs and expectations

Respondents note that proving ROI is the largest barrier to implementing AI in customer engagement, with 32% of businesses citing it as a key challenge.

Out of those businesses that have deployed AI to address customer engagement challenges, just 25% of AI usage within this area is spent on Customer Data Platforms (CDP). In line with this, Twilio’s recent 2024 State Of Customer Engagement Report found that 6 in 10 customers said protecting their data was the top way to build trust, yet 40% of brands said balancing security and customer experience is one of the most pressing challenges in 2024.

With 65% of customers saying they would switch brands if unsatisfied, it’s vital that businesses capitalise on AI to improve customer engagement, if they are to meet customer demands in an era of waning customer loyalty.

Dan O’Connell, Chief AI and Strategy Officer at Dialpad, said: “Generative AI will become the focal point of most business operations and continue to be a key driver in improving customer experience in the near term. By utilising AI to gain deeper insights into consumer needs and personalise interactions, businesses can foster customer loyalty and drive revenue growth.

“Companies will need to understand how AI can drive the most engaging online experiences for their customers or risk losing them as technology continues to advance – making impactful features that really work for them. Customers now demand a personalised digital experience with tailored recommendations and self-service options, making it mandatory for businesses to comprehend how AI can empower them to enhance their services.”

CASE STUDY: One Nexus’ pledge to elevate customer service excellence – A year in review

 560 374 Stuart O'Brien
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In the dynamic world of the automotive industry, prioritising good customer service remains paramount for businesses. Recognising this, One Nexus embarked on a journey to elevate its customer experiences by implementing a strategic combination of partnerships and innovative solutions to streamline its business operations. Alan Glazier, the Commercial Director at One Nexus, explains the transformative initiatives undertaken by the company in its pursuit of customer service excellence over the past year…

Implementing Humley’s AI-Driven Solution

One Nexus began working with Humley, a company specialising in AI chatbot technology, in February 2023 to help deliver a world-class customer experience. Humley provides One Nexus with AI capabilities that enhance the Driver qualification process in the delivery of courtesy vehicle provision to customers of Vehicle Manufacturers. This includes an intuitive AI virtual assistant that allows the customer to ask any question throughout the qualification process. Additionally, Humley’s AI streamlines the qualification process by enabling customers to engage with and complete the insurance questionnaire via smartphone, conveniently in their own time, before submitting it to One Nexus. Once the customer finishes the process, the AI automatically informs the One Nexus Team of completion whilst attaching the results to the customer booking for onward processing.

Implementing this AI-driven solution has proven highly successful, resulting in significant time savings and increased efficiency within One Nexus’s Call Centres. One Nexus’ data shows that bookings can now be made 80% faster than before, significantly improving the overall customer experience and enabling One Nexus’ customers to complete the qualification quickly and conveniently.

Making the Move to Cloud Servers

One Nexus recently migrated to Cloud Servers in a bid to host client websites and provide data to the websites for our Asia Pacific customers. Following a successful testing phase, which spanned six weeks, both Nexus IT and Nexus Aftermarket completed the migration of Ford Australia and Ford New Zealand to a cloud-based server infrastructure.

The main benefit of moving to a Cloud server lies in the fact that response times from local servers have been significantly improved. Clients also gain a much faster user experience when using the Trade Club web applications and the ability to easily scale the environment to support new clients and the increased growth of existing clients. Because of the migration to the cloud, One Nexus has not only achieved heightened stability and increased security but also enabled the ability to be more responsive to customers around the world.

Coming Face to Face With App Technology 

Here at One Nexus, we pride ourselves on being ‘enablers of systems’. This is why we are committed to pioneering solutions that not only elevate industry standards but also address the pressing challenges posed by evolving technology trends in the automotive landscape. For example, we recently developed​​ facial recognition technology that supports a range of leading UK manufacturers in identifying customers in the onboarding process when looking to rent a car.

So, as well as booking online or by calling or visiting a dealership, customers can use the dedicated apps – available for Apple and Android mobile phones. These apps allow customers to view, book and manage rentals, as well as sign digital rental agreements – all with the reassurance that they’ll hire the exact vehicle they choose to drive. One Nexus’s new technology helps to create a frictionless journey, allowing customers to register within minutes using state-of-the-art secure in-app software.

First time setup includes a real-time DVLA driver licence and identity check that uses One Nexus’ facial recognition algorithms, the phone’s camera and a secure and encrypted connection to help prevent fraud. Customers simply need to turn up, pay for their booking and be handed the keys by dedicated Hire Car staff, saving precious time and allowing them to be on the way as quickly as possible. Returning the car is as easy as parking it where it was collected from. Upon return, customers can even use the app to take photos of the car and note fuel and mileage before handing the keys back.

Conclusion

A year on, it’s clear that One Nexus has made solid progress in its bid to enhance its customer service. Combining collaborative ventures, technological advancements, and forward-thinking solutions, One Nexus is poised to set new benchmarks in customer service excellence within the automotive industry. And, with 2024 now in full swing, the team will continue to strive and evolve, leading the way in successful customer service.

Photo by Vladislav Klapin on Unsplash

AUTOMATED CUSTOMER SATISFACTION: Keeping it Automated, while keeping it human – Here’s how to choose the best solutions

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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Contact centres are turning to automation to capture valuable customer feedback and improve satisfaction scores. But with a plethora of Automated Customer Satisfaction (ACS) providers on offer, choosing the right partner can be daunting. Here are some top tips for senior contact centre and customer service management professionals to navigate the options and find a trusted solution, based on input from attendees at the Contact Centre & Customer Services Summit…

Understanding Your Needs:

  1. Identify Pain Points: Start by analysing your current customer satisfaction (CSAT) processes. What are the pain points? Are you struggling with low response rates, slow feedback loops, or a lack of actionable insights?
  2. Tailor the Automation: Not all ACS platforms are created equal. Consider what type of automation best suits your needs. Do you need automated surveys via multiple channels (email, SMS, in-app)? Is sentiment analysis or real-time alerts important?
  3. Omnichannel Approach: Today’s customers interact across various channels. Choose a solution that integrates seamlessly with your existing systems and allows for multi-channel feedback collection, like email, SMS, and in-app surveys.

Research and Compare Providers:

  1. Industry Expertise: Look for ACS providers with experience in your specific industry. They’ll understand your unique customer journey and can tailor solutions to address your sector’s specific challenges.
  2. Security and Data Privacy: Customer data is paramount. Choose a provider with robust security measures and a commitment to data privacy compliance with regulations like GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).
  3. Reporting and Analytics: Data-driven insights are crucial for improving CSAT. Ensure the provider offers powerful reporting tools that provide actionable insights on customer sentiment, trends, and areas for improvement.

Beyond the Basics:

  1. AI-Powered Sentiment Analysis: Advanced ACS platforms use AI-powered sentiment analysis to go beyond basic star ratings. This allows you to understand the emotional tone of customer feedback and identify potential dissatisfaction.
  2. Real-Time Alerts and Escalation: Choose a solution with real-time alerts for highly negative feedback. This allows for immediate action and intervention by your team to address critical customer issues before they escalate.
  3. Customization Options: Brand consistency is key. Look for providers offering customizable surveys that align with your brand’s voice and messaging. Additionally, consider question branching based on initial responses for a more personalized experience.
  4. Integrations with CRM Systems: Seamless integration with your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system allows for automatic customer data population in surveys, creating a holistic view of the customer journey and fostering personalized communication.

Making the Final Decision:

  1. Free Trials and Demos: Many providers offer free trials or demos. Take advantage of these opportunities to test-drive the platform, assess its ease of use, and ensure it aligns with your needs.
  2. Customer Success Stories: Read case studies and customer success stories from other UK contact centres using the ACS solution. This can offer valuable insights into the platform’s effectiveness and its impact on real-world customer service scenarios.
  3. Implementation and Support: Evaluate the provider’s implementation process and ongoing customer support. Choose a partner offering a smooth implementation process and readily available support to ensure your team can leverage the platform effectively.

Finding the right ACS provider can significantly enhance your contact centre’s customer satisfaction strategy. By following these top tips, senior management professionals can navigate the options with confidence and find a trusted partner that delivers powerful automation tools alongside a commitment to maintaining a human touch in customer service. Remember, effective automation complements your team’s efforts, allowing them to focus on resolving complex issues while leveraging insights to continuously improve the customer experience.

Are you searching for Automated Customer Satisfaction solutions for your organisation? The Contact Centre Summit can help!

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Contact centre solutions: 2024 buying trends revealed

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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Artificial Intelligence, Call Centre Technology and Agent Coaching & Monitoring and top the list of solutions the UK’s leading industry professionals are sourcing in  2204, according to our exclusive research.

The findings have been revealed ahead of the Contact Centre & Customer Services Summit, which takes place on April 29th & 30th in London.

Delegates registering to attend the event are asked which areas they needed to invest in during 2024 and beyond.

The rankings represent a slight change in requirements from 6 months ago, when the top 3 were Agent Coaching & Monitoring, Training & Development and Artificial Intelligence.

Contact Centre & Customer Services Summit: Most in-demand products & solutions 2024 (Top 10):

  1. Artificial Intelligence
  2. Call Centre Tech
  3. Agent Coaching/Monitoring
  4. Automated Customer Satisfaction Surveys
  5. Knowledge Management
  6. Customer Experience Surveys
  7. Self Service & Webchat
  8. Customer Insights Collection & Analysis
  9. Training & Development
  10. Workforce Management

To find out more about the Contact Centre & Customer Services Summit, visit https://contactcentresummit.co.uk.

GUEST BLOG: Top tips for deploying AI in your contact centre

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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Jonathan Sharp, Director, Britannic Technologies

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around for years but has recently started to gain traction in the contact centre industry. Gartner forecasts that by 2022, 30% of customer service experiences will be handled by conversational agents. AI is a disruptive technology causing a stir in the market, and with high customer expectations, companies should harness the power of AI to digitally transform and automate core services. Follow our top ten tips to assist you in deploying AI in your contact centre:

  • Call in the Experts

A Solution Provider who is experienced in real-time applications and systems integration will be able to work closely with you to discover your needs and requirements. Helping you put together a technology road map and strategy to solve business problems, transforming processes and improving customer service.

  • Strategy is Key

When deploying AI-powered digital assistants into the contact centre, it is advisable to have a comprehensive CRM and multi-media contact centre strategy as part of your overall digital transformation process. A Solutions Provider will ascertain what objectives you want your digital assistant to achieve, whether it’s to generate a sales lead or answer and process a customer service enquiry. They will then look at how a digital assistant will interact with your contact centre agents and the wider organisation if required.

  • To Fit with Your Business

Once you have covered the commercial objectives that you want to achieve and the processes required to set up, you can decide on the look and feel, conversational tone and content that you want to show with your digital assistant.

  • Your Star Employee

A conversational AI assistant has endless ability to self-learn whether that’s to learn the content from your website and or from customer conversations that take place in webchat. They can also recognise and pre-empt the needs of customers during similar interactions in the future.

The conversational AI will reliably answer customer questions using natural language understanding and processing and even resolve issues by completing web forms on behalf of the customer during the conversation. When the customer wants to speak to a human they can be transferred to a customer service agent when necessary.

  • Refocus Your Agents

It is advisable to make the digital assistant the first point of contact for website users because often the initial stage is customers gathering information or requesting answers to basic questions. This enables contact centre agents to focus on complex enquiries, handing over information sourcing to the digital assistant. This improves customer service as website users receive the information they require faster. Also, it helps eliminate high form abandonment on busy websites and brings added value to those who are looking to deploy an extremely efficient web chat in response to rising demand for self-service and one-touch communication channels.

  • Hand over the Basics to AI

Industries such as retail and travel have started to embrace the technology and reap the benefits. Britannic Technologies provides a conversational artificial intelligence solution called Ami that has already helped companies like Cruise 1st to boost profit by 47%. A self-learning digital assistant, Ami reads the Cruise 1st website in real time and independently decides how to use the knowledge to respond to enquiries and achieve predefined business goals. These can include generating sales leads or providing customer support by interacting with website visitors.

The company found that their sales agents were taking general, information seeking enquiries although they needed to be focused on sales calls. Now, Ami handles the customer research that previously would have blocked the telephone lines. She is delivering revenue to the business and the conversion rate in the call centre has increased from 20% to 22%.

  • Integration is Key

System integration is vital when deploying AI for it to be truly effective. You will require a Solutions Provider who is experienced in integration. They will assess what technology you currently have in place, what technology you require and whether you would benefit most from an on-premise or cloud-based solution. You can then identify where and how a digital assistant can be integrated into your existing systems in the back office and the front office.

  • A Single View

A Forrester survey revealed that 64% of the survey respondents said their greatest obstacle is creating a single view of customer data and information when improving CRM capabilities. And more than half acknowledged they struggle with creating customer insight to drive decision-making.

When a customer service agent deals with a customer’s enquiry they are often faced with several screens, which is cumbersome and difficult to manage. A Solution Provider will integrate a digital assistant into the contact centre so customers and agents are presented with a single user interface where all interactions can be completed on a single screen. This helps to make the customer journey seamless, and makes the agent’s job easier at the same time, enabling them to deliver a better experience. Agents can also view the screen of the digital assistant so they have visibility of all chats and can access both real-time and historical interactions.

  • Augmenting the Agent’s Role

AI helps contact centre agents to get rid of the mundane everyday tasks. This could include anything from call routing to answering basic questions that an auto-attendant or Web Real Time application could deal with. The more advancement in technology in the call centre, the more contact centre agents’ roles will be refocused on soft skills to deliver empathetic, personal service and advice. Together, these developments will help to improve customer experiences overall.

A digital assistant can also reduce the workload for the customer service team enabling them to deal with more complex enquiries resulting in a richer customer experience and adding the personal touch. Their ability to prioritise enquiries in terms of importance and urgency can even help to ensure that human agents are involved exactly where they need to be at any given time.

  • AI – the Opportunity

Artificial intelligence is the opportunity that busy customer services teams have been waiting for. If you get it right from the start and work with a Solution Provider experienced in real-time applications, contact centre technology, and system integration then the benefits of increased revenue, improved communications and better customer service will be worth it.

Businesses that consider introducing AI into their contact centres can already learn about Conversational AI and see these applications up close at business transformation events such as Convergence Summit where digital and customer experience experts share the strategies and frameworks necessary to safely introduce emerging technologies.

Learn more about Ami on https://www.btlnet.co.uk/solutions/contact-centre/contextual-apps-and-ai

GUEST BLOG: Chatbots – should we believe the hype?

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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By James Rein, Senior Account Manager, Adexchange

Probably, yes. If you’re responsible for a contact centre and find your advisors listlessly answering the same, simple, non-specific questions every day then read on – a chat bot is likely to have a big impact on the efficiency of your operation.

‘In 2015, Swedbank achieved a 78% first contact resolution rate using a text based assistant which resulted in a 60% deflection from live assistance’ (issuu.com)

Impressive!

Let’s flip the perspective for a moment and think about things from the customer’s point of view. How many times have you sifted through pages and pages of FAQs, got bored, and thought ‘Nope, I’ll just call them’? How would it be if you could just type your question and get the answer straight away? Pretty nice, huh?

Chatbots aren’t infallible but it’s not the technology that could trip up your bot – that side of things is straightforward – it’s the effectiveness of the content.

Let’s dig a bit deeper.

What is a chatbot?

Think of a chatbot as the guardian of your FAQs and knowledgebase. It has access to all non-specific information any customer could possibly want and can deliver it to that customer instantly.

No need for any agent interaction, no need for customers to wait on hold for twenty minutes to get an answer and no lost business. That’s right – aside from improved efficiency generally, 53% of people are actually more likely to shop with a business they can message online. (Sproutsocial.com).

Just like advisors, chatbots evolve too. They might start life on your website and be set up to deal with your 30 most frequently asked questions. Within the first month of use a couple of trickier questions get asked and, at the same time, you get 5000 new ‘likes’ on Facebook.

You decide to add new questions and answers to your bot’s database and launch it in Facebook Messenger too. Then WhatsApp. Then you launch a new product and add FAQs about that as well. It’s easy to get all kinds of data relating to your bot’s performance and every reincarnation reduces the number of calls to your contact centre. This frees up your agents to deal with specific, more complex questions from customers.

So should I get one?

If your advisors are mostly occupied with intricate, customer specific questions then a chatbot probably isn’t going to be for you. However, if you’re inundated with calls from people asking questions they could easily have found the answer to online then yes, it’s definitely worth exploring the option of a chatbot.

The technology is only one part of the set up and, isn’t difficult or necessarily time consuming to get in place. The crucial element is making sure you get the content right.

In such a distracted world it’s time to ditch the corporate waffle and formal tone and really engage your customers by writing in a clear, informal and friendly way that they’ll find effective and refreshing.

Forget paragraphs of text – use white space, bullets, short sentences – and make your communication to the point and succinct.

A chatbot is only as good as the content powering it.

If you want to get more out of your Chatbot get in touch to see how we can help.