In today’s age of constant connectivity, consumers are interacting with brands on multiple channels around the clock, all over the world. Whether a customer walks into your retail store or interacts with your brand on your website, mobile app, social media channels, or even over the phone with a call agent, you want them to leave that experience with a smile on their face. But providing consistent, expedient and overall excellent customer service across each of these channels can be a challenge.
How then can companies improve their customer service to keep up with the on demand needs of today’s consumer? Happy customers are the result of happy customer service representatives. To arm your customer service team with the resources they need for success in the digital age, companies can harness the power of a new enterprise software category called Knowledge Automation. Knowledge Automation is the process of a machine organizing all of your company’s content so that people in your company can easily access what knowledge is relevant to them, right when they need it.
Solving an information overload in the Age of Information
Call agents spend on average 11 percent of their work day looking for information needed to manage customer interactions, according to Aberdeen Group. Compounded with an astounding statistic from IBM – 90 percent of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone – leaves you wondering why call agents don’t spend the whole day looking for what they need.
Knowledge Automation enables companies to leverage all of their content, often scattered across multiple repositories and in diverse formats into one cleanly formatted dashboard. Using this new system of Knowledge Automation, customer service representatives don’t have to sift through their company’s CRM system, Google Docs or variety of data systems for the answers they need, right at the moment they want to access it. A successful Knowledge Automation system recognizes that knowledge is not only alive and constantly updating, but also comes from a wide variety of sources and data types.
Providing Excellent Customer Service, Every Time
Providing consistent customer service across multiple channels is challenging. It is so challenging that even after searching, an estimated, 42% of service agents are still unable to efficiently resolve customer issues due to disconnected systems, archaic user interfaces, and multiple applications according to Forrester. Inconsistent customer service occurs when call agents lack the proper resources that they need offline and in real-time, leaving the customer frustrated; the agent discouraged.
Knowledge Automation is instrumental in transforming how customer service representatives interact with their customers because with Knowledge Automation, only the most relevant data – such as documents, videos, or support tickets that are well-rated or frequently utilized by each user or their teams – are curated directly to each of your customer service representatives. This helps your ordinary, everyday customer service representative operate just as your best and most connected representative would, consuming and sharing the right information, right when your customer needs it. This lends itself to shorter onboard durations for new employees and ensures that all agents, regardless of skill set, are up to speed with the latest and most relevant information so that every agent operates in the same capacity as your most seasoned agent.
Consumers Care About Customer Service More Than Ever Before
Knowledge Automation can specifically reduce customer call length times, increase first call resolution, and even improve training processes with customer service agents. These benefits can move the overall needle in your company’s customer service experience as customer service is a significant factor that discerning customers focus in purchasing a new product. According to Deloitte’s 2013 Global Contact Center Survey Report, 82 percent view the customer experience as a competitive differentiator, and view accuracy and quality of information provided (82%), as well as ease of interaction (73%), as the most important attributes of a quality customer experience.
Now more than ever, companies need ways to improve and streamline their customer service experience to stay attractive to consumers and viable in the market. This is a trend that will only continue as consumers increasingly expect companies to provide customer service via social media sites, mobile sites, and in even other ways as new technologies emerge.
