How Automation Can Protect You from an Avalanche of Customer Interactions

Estelle Verani of Inbenta discusses how to survive the potential upcoming avalanche of customer interactions with automation.

The digitization of shopping experiences in the past decade has seen the volume of interactions explode. The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown that resulted from it added to that natural shift and amplified the trend, forcing most businesses to interact with their users online rather than face to face.

In that context, it is of paramount importance for companies to find new or better ways to deal with the massive amount of online interactions they’re now facing.

So, how can a Customer Interactions Management Platform come to the rescue? And what are the benefits of automating the management of your customer interactions?

What Is Customer Interactions Management?

Customer Interactions Management (CIM) describes how a business engages with its customers at every stage of their journey. This can be the process an organization follows to handle all the interactions with its customers, but also the way a company addresses different customer needs.

A customer can interact with a business in several different ways, whether it be by asking questions, formulating a complaint, or, on the other side of the spectrum, praises and compliments.

Whatever the category in which those interactions fall, they can come via several channels:

• Emails
• Phone calls
• Messages on social media
• Contact forms
• Reviews on dedicated websites

The Impact of Customer Interactions on Your Business

Interactions with consumers should always be considered as an opportunity to gather customers’ feedback and improve customer experience. Indeed, every interaction with a customer is a chance to connect with them, delight them, and increase their retention and advocacy.

When managed properly, customer interactions can benefit your business in many different ways.

Boosting Brand Loyalty

Today’s consumers don’t have any reason to stay loyal to a business unless they provide a quality customer experience.

Ensuring that interactions with your brand are positive and personalized can make all the difference in making you more valuable than your competitors.

Discouraging Negative Reviews

Bad word-of-mouth travels fast as dissatisfied customers are eager to share their negative experiences with their social circle. Prioritizing great interactions can mean less bad press on social media and other channels.

Increasing Referrals

On the opposite end of this spectrum, successful interactions can be a great way to boost your chances of customers recommending your company to their friends and family. Referrals being much more powerful than any advertising campaign, you have the power to positively impact those by providing your users with interactions they’ll remember.

Saving Customer Relationships

Sometimes customers approach you with serious, justified complaints. How you handle these interactions decides whether you lose that customer or not. And since retaining existing customers is usually less expensive than attracting new ones, it is in your best interest to look after them and take great care of how you interact with them.

What Is a Customer Interaction Management Platform?

A Customer Interaction Management (CIM) platform refers to a type of enterprise software that helps with the handling of interactions between an organization and its customers.

More largely, it refers to all the technologies supporting the management and resolution of customer service requests as well as productivity aids for agents.

CIM platforms, like Inbenta’s, provide a single environment for managing customer interactions in an automated way and across multiple channels.

Their Messenger module inbox centralizes all communication channels and enables your customer service team to have full visibility of each contact and their history of touchpoints with your brand, making it easy to personalize how you support and delight them.

Also, you can reduce friction in the customer experience thanks to automation and self-service tools, like chatbots, website searches and knowledge modules.

3 Benefits of Automating Customer Interactions Management

1. Manage Support Costs

As mentioned earlier in this article, the number of interactions has increased exponentially with the COVID-19 pandemic, and companies can’t afford to recruit the number of staff needed to efficiently deal with those queries. Automation complements self-service to help businesses cope with the explosion of interaction volume, whilst managing costs.

2. Improve Customer Experience

An automated CIM platform such as Inbenta frees up call centre employees from routine tier-1 support requests so they can focus on more complex tasks. By doing so, automation improves resolution times (since self-service tools are available 24/7) and reduces the customer effort for getting things done, which is a critical driver of good customer experience (CX).

3. Increase Return on Investment (ROI)

Last but not least, automating back-end processes thanks to a case management and ticketing system enables companies to assist their agents in being more productive, thus increasing ROI.

Author: Guest Author