Brands can’t be everywhere all the time. There are a lot of ways for your customers to reach out to you, and a message can easily fall through the cracks. Unfortunately, customers don’t always stick with you if you make a simple mistake and forget to get back to them. One report found 47% of customers fail to return to a store after a bad customer experience (CX). We get it, but Heyday by Hootsuite has also got you covered with these five expert tips on how to automate your customer care to make sure that doesn’t happen.
In other words, launch a virtual assistant. It’s got your back to make sure every customer trying to connect with you can (and that they’ll get a response, too!). But how exactly does conversational AI lead to better CX? Let’s break it down.
PwC asked customers what they valued most in great CX: efficiency, convenience, knowledgeable help, and friendly service are the four elements that ranked highest, higher even than human interaction. Conversational AI meanwhile delivers all four in spades. Knowing what’s important to your customers is the first step to delivering first-class CX. Ready for the next five?
Tip: Use WhatsApp marketing, Facebook Messenger, and other social channels
For your customer care to be effective, you’ve got to be on the same channels as your customers. That means social media. The average person on social spends over two hours per day on their favorite chat platforms.
A social media presence lets you see where people are already talking about your brand. But it’s also an opportunity to connect with customers. Research from Consumer Reports found people are most likely to reach out to brands on the platforms where they are most active, with 84% of consumers doing so on Facebook Messenger (one of Heyday’s many possible integrations). WhatsApp is another. It’s also the most popular mobile messenger app in the world, with half a billion daily active users. Think of them as half a billion potential customers.
Integrating conversational AI with your profiles on top social channels makes you available around the clock where your customers are most comfortable. Plus, in an eMarketer survey, respondents said always-on support was the top benefit of AI-powered chatbots. Brands need to be there for customers, even outside business hours when your teammates are off work. Conversational AI helps make that happen with quick responses and personalized experiences.
Tip: Support each step of the customer journey with conversational AI
The customer journey spans different channels and devices. The first leg of the journey? Product research and discovery. Then comes purchase and delivery. Customer care is a critical part of this process at every step. No matter where customers are in the journey, conversational AI is there to help you give them what they need to move forward and have a great experience, even if they’re just asking an easily handled frequently asked question (FAQ).
If your AI chatbot is synced up with your e-commerce platform, it guides customers through the research and discovery phases, with product search and recommendation features. It lets customers add products to their cart and then check out. But it’s also there to answer FAQs, like “where is my order?” On top of that, consumers also have the option to seamlessly get transferred to a human teammate if that’s what they prefer. It’s their journey.
CX does more than impact how your brand is perceived—it is your brand. A seamless and positive customer journey drives powerful word of mouth. But to get there you need an adaptable, integrated way of bringing together multiple touchpoints across different channels, automating key steps to deliver personalized content and messages without missing a beat.
Social media customer service (or customer support via messaging) opens up a wide variety of options to deliver personalized CX and use conversational AI to handle FAQs. As a result, your teammates get more time to focus on delivering more value. By connecting with customers over the entire journey, from discovery to checkout to support, you give them more than they expect, making them fans for life and not just over the one customer lifecycle. It’s a win-win.
Tip: Deliver personalized CX, especially at scale
Customers don’t just care about products and prices. Sure, they’re each incredibly important, but more than anything else customers want to connect with and feel connected to a brand. Retailers should want that too.
According to the Harvard Business Review, customers who are emotionally engaged with a brand are more likely to recommend them, more likely to buy again, and much less price-sensitive than those who aren’t. Conversational AI personalizes CX, making each interaction unique. Customers also get what they need—fast, which is also a good thing.
Gone are automated menus over the phone, where customers have to listen for each and every option before pressing a number. Instead, they just ask a question. The right AI-powered chatbot automatically and instantly responds—in your brand’s voice—guaranteeing a quick reply and an experience unique to that customer, leading to a higher chance of a satisfied customer too.
Tip: Include CSAT surveys right in the chat
One other way automated social media customer service helps you win over customers? It gives them control over the situation, letting them connect with you on their terms, even outside business hours. Done right, it’s the perfect opportunity to empower them to rate their experience.
It’s simple to add customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys to the chat with conversational AI. From there, you can track how happy people are with your brand (and customer care).
In-chat CSAT surveys also let brands set targets to improve, making it an incredibly definitive customer care stat. There’s no need to stop there though, with other customer service metrics right at your fingertips.
Tip: Use customer service metrics to create value across your organization
Automated customer service creates potential for each conversation, topic, and length of time spent with a customer to become a source of valuable information. They’re cues to help brands refine content and revamp processes to deliver even better customer care in the future.
Plus insights gathered on your customer support’s front lines by conversational AI are a source of information for other initiatives: strategic planning, product development, marketing, and even sales. All of a sudden, your team isn’t just at the helm of its own success, but a driver of strategic value for the entire brand.
Besides CSAT, there are other key customer service metrics. For example:
Average response time:
(time it takes to respond to a question – time when the customer first asked it) / total number of queries
First contact resolution:
total resolved cases / total number of cases
When you understand your customers, you engage with them more efficiently for more efficient customer care. It also lets you deliver quick responses to positive or negative messages, which is important to maintaining brand reputation—especially as a brand that responds right away and always has your customers top of mind.
Set your team up for success with automated customer care
High-quality customer care is at the top of every brand’s list of must-haves, whether your objective is building loyalty, managing communications, or simply trying to make sure every customer’s needs are met. Conversational AI guarantees you have all your digital bases covered to set your team up for success.
Today consumers expect customer care to be fast, convenient, and also personalized. Conversational AI checks all three boxes. You can also add agility to rapidly changing customer behaviors to the list, as messaging’s increasing popularity opens the door for streamlined conversational experiences. Keeping it open is easy with the right solution.
If you’ve got questions about Heyday, let us know. Book a demo today. We’ll show you exactly how our conversational AI is the missing ingredient to your five-star customer care.