Using Automation to Create a Consistent Customer Experience

As we march toward an increasingly digital world, the drumbeat of automation grows louder and louder. However, one of the biggest challenges with automation is that it feels automated. It means businesses must find a way to automate the customer experience—and fast-track—relationships while still creating a highly personal experience.

People want to feel like you value them. And, more importantly, when you tap into their needs and make them feel special, they reward you with brand loyalty. So how can you automate customer experiences while demonstrating that you care about their needs?

According to SuperOffice, “Investing in CX initiatives has the power to double your revenue within 36 months.” They go on to say that based on a recent study, “86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience.”

Your customers expect a higher degree of service than ever before, with nearly 70% of them expecting you to understand their needs, according to a recent Hubspot survey.

In this article, we’re diving into how automated customer experiences can improve the way your company engages with your users, as well as sharing benefits and examples.

How to use automation in CX

Automation enhances your customer’s journey and facilitates relationship-building in a way that’s simply impossible without your entire team emailing and calling them around the clock. Automation allows you to optimize every step of the customer experience, from their first interaction with your brand to the time they become superfans.

So how can you leverage automated customer experience in your business? We’re breaking it down into four essential tips.

Tip 1: Enable clear communication tactics

One of the foundational truths of automation for CX is that it makes communication readily accessible and understandable. Your primary goal should be clarity and simplicity regardless of the tool or platform you choose. In terms of implementation, this might include:

• Creating easy-to-understand email sequences and autoresponders that can be deployed based on specific customer actions or queries
• Adding a live chat feature and chatbots that can deliver self-service resources that solve customer problems
• Delivering insights into common questions and problems so you can develop FAQs and resources

Tip 2: Use intelligent integrations

Smart, even AI-powered features can help boost the success of any automated customer experience initiative. This removes the lift from the internal side and reduces many of the “human” mistakes or waits for your consumers. While chatbots are not the only example of this, they illustrate the possibilities of AI for customer experience. By integrating features like chatbots, you can:

• Empower your users to quickly find the information they need to solve their problems
• Deliver content that allows users to troubleshoot
• Shorten wait times by recognizing specific patterns or types of queries
• Escalate certain problems to a real human who can deliver resolution

Tip 3: Get started with collective buy-in

Automation must be a collective goal for your organization. Since automation leads to significant changes in process, key players across your enterprise must be informed and prepared to change the way they work. While this includes providing the right tools, resources, and training to make transitions seamless, it also requires an effective change management strategy.

Tip 4: Always personalize it

Since one of the disadvantages of automation can be how “distant” it feels, it’s imperative to find ways to combat this through personalization. Some examples include:

• Noting special anniversaries or birthdays
• Getting personalization right, so no one gets emails to: %FIRSTNAME%
• Offering products that similar customers have purchased
• Mimic an actual conversation with listening cues and your brand personality

In fact, automating your customer experience is an excellent opportunity to update your brand messaging guide. As a result, the personalizations and voice you use with your automation will match the tone of your human engagements. Integrating personalization into your overall brand strategy and purpose improves the overall quality of your customer communications.

Benefits of Automation for Customer Experience

As New Media Services says, “The use of technology removes human error.” To that end, automation allows you to streamline repetitive communications and tasks.

In turn, automation delivers a consistent customer experience, a benefit 75% of customers want, according to Salesforce.

There are plenty of significant advantages when implementing automation that lead to higher customer retention rates while also:

• freeing your team to focus on more strategic priorities
• allowing you to scale your digital offerings as demand increases without overly taxing your team

However, as Canon cautions us, “Automation is never a blanket solution, nor is it a set-and-forget function. As tempting as it is to believe, no business can automate everything and magically create a great customer experience.”

3Pillar Global uses a Product Mindset across all aspects of digital product development, no matter what the product is. Ultimately, this means that your customer experience initiative is never completely done. As the market and your customers’ needs change, there are always opportunities to improve the customer experience, solve for their problems, and minimize time to value.

As a result, we place significant importance on choosing the right system architecture for your automated customer experience and ensuring that the technology is secure and up-to-date with current standards.

Automated Customer Experience Examples

Applying automation to customer service based on specific needs and industries can take many forms. Tech may be different from retail, which, in turn, is different from manufacturing. The list goes on. However, across virtually every industry, automation can improve and simplify customer experiences, including the following common strategies.

Chatbots are popular for many retail and B2B websites, including Amazon. By solving simpler customer problems, chatbots can also escalate more complex problems to human representatives–it ultimately improves customer experience.

Companies like Slack are using self-service portals, making it easier for customers to solve their problems without speaking to a representative. Something as simple as a knowledge base can solve the first line of customer challenges.

Abandoned cart sequences trigger emails to customers to ensure that they don’t miss out on those awesome products left in their cart. Companies like Whiskey Loot and Winc are nailing this, and you find this strategy in just about every industry.

As technology grows, the number of potential applications will only increase. Realistically, if you can imagine a solution, you can probably create it.

Improve Your Automation Today

While choosing a better CX requires time and team buy-in, investing in it is a no-brainer.

Using automation to create a consistent customer experience can pay off in terms of decreased customer churn, increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, and a more scalable solution. According to Hubspot, “​​Customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than companies that aren’t.”

And that’s where 3Pillar Global’s team of experts comes in. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help automate your customer experience and enhance brand loyalty.