We should keep investing in customer service technologies and lift the level of automated customer experience as close to humans as possible

Lifting the level of automated customer experience

Executive Insight 05/2022, 5 min read

As customer requirements become more diverse and challenging, the role of customer service evolves accordingly. Sophisticated technologies are required to support the change, always respecting the traditional virtues of good customer service, says Susana D’Elia Lago, Director Technical Support Services, Elisa Videra.

Susana D'Elia Lago

Director Technical Support Services, Elisa Videra

Susana has 20 years’ experience in Customer Services related jobs, starting her professional career as a multilingual customer services agent, developing her career in different roles all related to services operations. Her professional career has given her the opportunity to work and live in different countries as well as manage teams of different cultural backgrounds to create and develop customer services globally. She has now been working for Elisa Videra for 6 years, leading different teams, all customer facing, looking for the best solutions and service delivery.

Customer service is one of the areas where the achievements of technological development are being used to the greatest extent. Companies automate, digitalise, virtualise, and add artificial intelligence to both improve and expand ways customers can contact them – should there be a need for troubleshooting, advice, support, rumour verification or any other of the numerous tasks to which any self-respecting customer service exposes itself.

The more we invest in technologies, the better our customer service becomes. At least, technically speaking. However, experience shows that the more technical it becomes, the more resistance it tends to generate among those who are expected to eagerly jump into new, advanced ways to solve problems and find answers.

While machine learning, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and other modern, technologically advanced customer service tools are developing, they are still at a very early stage on the curve to realise even a fraction of their full potential. I bet that anyone who has had an encounter with a chatbot has discovered that it is still work in progress when it comes to the ability to provide proper answers to the questions that go even a fraction outside the core. Human knowledge is still required to dig deeper into customer's problems and needs.

Often, those questions can be extremely diverse and, accordingly, challenging. The poor chatbot is honestly trying to do its best to find the best possible solution, but for a customer that has run into trouble and out of patience, good effort is simply not enough.

Customer requirements evolve, so customer service must follow

As organisations look for ways to improve their operational efficiency, they turn to technology. Digitalisation holds the key to improved profitability and meaningful ways to organise tasks.

At the same time, customer requirements become more diverse and challenging. The role of customer service evolves accordingly – it must be able to answer a wider variety of questions, solve a wider variety of problems, and provide support in a wider variety of ways.

Customer service is the display window of the organisation, reflecting everything that is going on. That is why customer service must be aware of everything that is happening and able to interpret everything to the customers, also paying attention to what kind of a target group representative they are addressing at any given moment.

All that must happen on a shorter notice than ever before, as both customer patience and loyalty are virtues that are well on their way to becoming extinct. Things can be learned, even by machines, but empathy and the right kind of attitude are a lot more difficult to come by, even when it comes to people.

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The best customer service technology is the kind that resembles a human

Human encounters are still appreciated – and required – in customer service. Does that lead to a conclusion that we should stop investing in technology and switch back to investing in human resources?

Quite the opposite. We should keep investing in technology as much as it takes to lift the level of automated customer experience as close to humans as possible.

As both the workload and relevance of customer service increases, it is evident that sophisticated technologies are required to take care of all the matters that need attention. However, this must be done in a way that respects the traditional virtues of good customer service.

Things like proper answers to the problems at hand. Relevant support to make the most of available services. Troubleshooting to correct any unexpected breakdown or interruption as soon as possible. Supplementary information to the facts that were mentioned in the morning newspaper. All that and a lot more, added with the ability to make the customer feel appreciated and important.

Companies should concentrate on picking the best of both worlds and utilise modern technology all the way to the level where it is able to provide all the answers and completely resemble a human encounter. As the overall need for customer service grows, machines are required because of their sheer processing capabilities, but to deliver the ultimate customer experience, we must add human touch to the package.

While it may feel at times that nothing is enough when it comes to investing in customer service, the flipside of this is that everything that is invested, comes back with plenty of interest.

Key points:

Customer service is one of the areas where the achievements of technological development are being used to the greatest extent. As customer requirements become more diverse and challenging, the role of customer service evolves accordingly.
Customer service is the display window of the organisation, reflecting everything that is going on. That is why customer service must be aware of everything that is happening and able to interpret everything to the customers.
Customer patience and loyalty are virtues that are well on their way to becoming extinct. Human encounters, empathy and the right kind of attitude are still appreciated – and required – in customer service, but we should keep investing in technology and lift the level of automated customer experience as close to humans as possible.
Sophisticated technologies are required to take care of all the matters that need attention, but this must be done in a way that respects the traditional virtues of good customer service. Companies should concentrate on picking the best of both worlds.

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