How To Implement Service Automation for Seamless Customer Support
Let’s face it: today’s world is all about speed. Customers expect swift, efficient service that keeps up with their “need-it-now” mindset. This is where automation steps in to save the day. By streamlining repetitive support tasks, service automation eliminates frustrating wait times and delivers instant, yesterday-level support. The result? Your team can focus on solving complex issues while your customers enjoy a seamless experience. And when customers are happy, they’re not just satisfied—they’re loyal.
However, service automation differs greatly from sales or marketing automation. Suppose you’ve been following along in this third part of our series on automation. If you have, my previous two articles, From Chaos to Control: How Sales Automation Transforms Businesses and From Click to Customer: Create Automated Marketing Campaigns That Convert discussed the differences in automating sales and marketing efforts. They focus on engaging the right visitors and attracting new customers. Service automation centers on the latter part of the customer journey: providing a positive customer experience after the sale.
To keep customers coming back, or better yet, get them to spread the word, we have to enhance the customer experience. Providing instant answers through knowledge bases and chatbots reduces friction for those who prefer self-service is one way. Quickly routing support requests to the right team or agent is another. But it’s not only about improving your customers’ lives: employees benefit from automation, too. Reducing menial, manual tasks leads to enhanced employee experiences.
If you agree with Costco CEO Craig Jelinek and Co-founder Jim Sinegal’s motto, “Happy employees are your best ambassadors,” happy employees make happy customers.
Having said that, not all solutions are made equal! Successful service automation requires choosing the right tools. In this third part of my series on automation, we’re exploring automating a few essential tools like CRM platforms, chatbots, ticketing, knowledge bases, and even customer portals. We’ll also cover a few best practices for implementing service automation. We’ll review a few helpful strategies like preparing for implementing automation in an existing system, setting up automated ticketing and escalation workflows, tool integration, and what I think is one of the most important factors in successfully implementing automation: maintaining that human touch. Let’s go!
What Is Service Automation & Why Does It Matter?
In its most literal form, automation of a service or support department is simply using technology to automate repetitive, time-consuming tasks related to customer support and service. Think of it as a way to free up your service or support team. Because they’re not preoccupied with mundane, monotonous tasks, they can instead focus on resolving complex issues or providing personalized, one-on-one guidance. Ultimately, they focus on what only humans can do, building stronger relationships and elevating the customer’s experience. Once word gets out that your company offers world-class products and world-class support to go along with it, your brand reputation is sure to be elevated.
While various forms of automation exist within a business, you’ll need to understand service automation’s distinct role and focus. Don’t confuse service automation with sales or marketing automation. Service automation differs by centering around customer service, support and success. It’s about providing a seamless experience throughout the entire customer journey. While they all leverage technology to streamline processes and improve efficiency, their core objectives and impact areas differ significantly. Marketing and sales automation center on attracting the right visitors to your website, converting them into leads, nurturing those leads through personalized content, and guiding them toward a purchase. Think Top of the Funnel (TOFU), Middle of the Funnel (MOFU), and Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU) while in the attraction phase of the buyer journey. It’s all about automating marketing campaigns, managing leads, personalizing content and analyzing marketing performance.
On the other hand, service automation focuses on optimizing the support experience after a lead has made it through the proverbial funnel, made the decision to buy and has become a client. This technology streamlines the processes of resolving inquiries, providing support and ensuring post-sale client satisfaction. Service automation makes interactions more efficient, consistent, and scalable by reducing the manual effort required by support teams. It’s about providing a smooth and positive experience for existing clients, fostering loyalty to your brand and reducing turnover/churn.
Consider these scenarios to illustrate the distinction: a potential client visits your website and downloads an ebook. Your marketing automation platform adds the prospect to your email list, triggers a welcome email sequence and nurtures them with relevant content based on their interests and behavior—a typical journey for most digital marketing today. However, with service automation, a client would submit a support ticket about a problem with the product or service they’ve already purchased for your company. Service automation platforms automatically create tickets, categorize them based on the issue, route them to the appropriate support agent, team or department, and send automated emails acknowledging receipt of their request. It might even offer options for self-service, like links to relevant knowledge base articles or agentic chatbots to help the client resolve the issue on their own.
While marketing automation focuses on attracting and converting new clients, service automation seeks to retain existing business by providing exceptional support and resolving their issues efficiently. Both are vital for growth but address different customer lifecycle stages and require different tools and strategies.
Key Components of Service Automation
A few key components come to mind when we think about automating service motions. The first is automating intake requests for service or support. Imagine, if you will, you’re at your desk when you receive a ding. You just got a new customer inquiry via email or live chat. Now, instead of going into the system, manually creating a ticket, adding all the details, and assigning it to an agent, a service automation platform handles each step of the process and routes it appropriately.
Next is the ability to self-service. A substantial number of customers prefer to solve their issues independently. A simple knowledge base with articles, tutorials and FAQs provides 24/7 support without involving a human agent. Customers can search for problems and find solutions conveniently, not just during business hours. If they don’t find what they’re looking for, in most cases, the ability to connect with a chatbot to get predictive answers based on the questions they enter is a perfect solution. Research indicates that 76% of customers prefer using self-service options over speaking with an agent. (I am most certainly one of them!)
Finally, what if, instead of manually sending out emails, a service automation platform could trigger automated responses based on customer actions, pre-set schedules, or when clients reach a particular stage in the buyer’s journey? For instance, when a client submits a ticket, the system automatically sends an acknowledgment email confirming receipt and provides an estimated resolution time. Similarly, you can set up workflows to send staggered onboarding emails, reminders or surveys for feedback.
Service Automation Vs. Manual Support Processes
I’m not sure about you, but I haven’t had a receptionist answer the phone when I’ve called any company recently. The days of operators patching calls through on switchboards are long gone. The industry continues to shift from traditional manual processes performed by people to automated service workflows. Driven by the need for efficiency, scalability and enhanced customer experiences, companies must now cater to peoples’ demands for expedited service. But why? Let’s compare these two approaches and look at the challenges of manual processes and how automation offers solutions.
Manual processes are inherently slower. Tasks like ticket creation, categorization, routing and responses often involve multiple steps and human intervention. Manual processes also lead to significant delays in response time, especially during peak hours or when dealing with a large volume of inquiries. Lengthy wait times frustrate customers, as anyone who has ever been on hold with their TV or cell provider can verify. In your clients’ minds, service quality can often be impacted.
Automation allows for much faster processing of client inquiries and requests. Tasks like ticket creation, routing, and responses can be handled instantly, minimizing delays and promoting timely resolutions. Tools like chatbots provide immediate answers to common questions or even resolve simple issues without human intervention, improving efficiency.
To err is human, and manual tasks will always be subject to error. Human agents might misinterpret information, overlook crucial details, or make data entry mistakes. These fumbles can lead to incorrect responses, ticket misrouting or data loss. Such errors erode trust and require additional time and effort. Automation significantly reduces the risk of error caused by human capital. Automated systems follow predefined rules and workflows, ensuring consistent and accurate information processing, improving service quality and mitigating the need for rework and make-goods, freeing agents to focus on more complex issues.
As human agents, we can’t be available 24/7. Manual support often operates within limited business hours, leaving clients who need help outside those times without assistance. In our digitally connected world, people expect round-the-clock support, and an inability to provide this can lead to dissatisfaction and lost opportunities. Automation enables always-on support through tools like chatbots and knowledge bases. Clients can access help and find solutions to their problems anytime, regardless of business hours, leading to improved satisfaction and increased opportunities for engagement.
Inconsistent service delivery is the bane of any customer success manager. Agents with different tenures or training might handle inquiries differently, leading to variations in response quality, tone, and information provided. Lack of standardization creates confusion for customers and damages brand perception. Automated workflows ensure standardized service delivery.
As a business grows, manually handling these inquiries becomes increasingly challenging. Scaling a support team requires significant investment in hiring, training and infrastructure. With automation, companies can keep up with the growing volume of inquiries, leading to longer wait times and decreased customer satisfaction. Automation enables companies to scale without proportionally increasing staff while efficiently managing peak loads, ensuring consistent service quality even during busy periods.
Tools & Technologies for Implementing Service Automation
Businesses can employ various service automation tools to optimize support operations. Selecting the most effective tools requires careful consideration of specific business needs, anticipated volume, and overarching service goals. This tailored approach ensures that any chosen tools flawlessly integrate into existing workflows and maximize impact on client satisfaction.
Customer Service Automation Tools You Should Consider
Customer relationship management systems like HubSpot are foundational tools for service automation. They act as a central hub for managing interactions, storing valuable client data, tracking communication history, and providing insights into contacts’ behavior. Data can be stored for each step a contact, lead or client takes along their journey, enabling personalized and efficient touchpoints.
Chatbots provide instant responses to common questions, guiding users toward relevant information, and can even resolve simple issues without human intervention. Chatbots offer 24/7 availability, ensuring your clients can access help anytime, regardless of business hours. Integrating chatbots with knowledge bases lets users access relevant articles and resources using a web-style search screen on their site. Simple logic can easily be added to a chat flow to allow users to request a live agent if more than boilerplate responses are needed.
Automated ticketing platforms can also streamline capturing, categorizing and forwarding user inquiries. They can be connected to various channels like email, chat or web forms and automatically create tickets, ensuring no inquiry gets missed. Advanced ticketing systems even allow for automated escalation workflows, ensuring that the more complex or urgent issues get routed to the appropriate staff swiftly.
Finally, knowledge bases empower your clients to find answers to their questions independently. They provide a centralized repository for articles, tutorials, FAQs and other helpful resources related to your products or services. A well-maintained knowledge base does require work to keep it up to date, but it is worth the effort. A way to help this is to offer feedback on the articles. You’ll know when an article is confusing or outdated when the users can let you know.
Choosing the Right Tools
Careful consideration should be taken when selecting service automation tools. The best choice for your business depends on how your business specifically addresses your clients’ needs. Here are a few things to consider when deciding on a tool:
- Business Needs: Consider your unique service challenges. Do you need help with long wait times, inconsistent responses, or limited availability? Identify the pain points that automation can address effectively.
- Customer Volume: The volume of inquiries you receive is pivotal in tool selection. For high-volume businesses, solutions that prioritize automation and scalability, such as chatbots and robust ticketing systems, are essential.
- Service Goals: Define your desired customer experience. Do you aim for faster response times, increased self-service adoption or personalized support? Choose tools that most closely align with these objectives.
Service Hub: Features and Integration
HubSpot’s Service Hub provides a comprehensive suite of tools designed to automate and streamline customer service processes. Let’s look at some of the features of Service Hub that we see many of our clients putting to work in their organizations.
The first is such an obvious way to handle incoming requests as a form of triage. A unified inbox that HubSpot calls the Conversations Inbox combines communication from various channels, such as email, live chat and chatbots. It offers a way for multiple agents to quickly assign conversations, add internal comments about the request, and respond directly to a user from within the inbox.
It also has a robust ticketing system that automates ticket creation, categorization, routing and escalation. Not only can it create tickets, but it can report how quickly tickets are opened and closed. Setting up Service Level Agreements (SLAs) sets standards for providing service according to established metrics, such as time to first response or time to close. These metrics can identify when responses have slowed or stopped by offering customizable views for monitoring ticket management.
As we’ve discussed above, knowledge bases allow clients to help themselves to an extent by finding answers to their questions independently. Service Hub enables you to customize your knowledge base design to match your brand identity and allows you to categorize its articles. If you keep a record of your most common questions and issues, you can integrate chatbots as a tier-one level of support, a first line of defense. Integrating one with live chat also ensures your customer connects with a person for more personalized support when needed.
The customer portal provides a webpage that clients or customers can log into using single sign-on or custom access. It can be a centralized location for customers to view, open and reply to their support tickets, reducing the need for repetitive inquiries by offering self-service options, allowing your customers to track a ticket’s status or a way to quickly submit a new ticket.
Feedback is a gift; collecting customer feedback to improve service processes helps identify blind spots or gaps in service. Service Hub offers survey features for gathering feedback and analyzing customer sentiment. Create, send and manage customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys to monitor your customers’ overall satisfaction, net promoter score surveys to keep tabs on how likely they are to promote you to others, or customer experience surveys to track how easily the customer was able to resolve their issue.
Service Hub’s integration capabilities are crucial for seamless automation. It integrates with other HubSpot tools like the CRM and marketing automation platform, enabling a holistic view of the customer journey. Additionally, integrations with external tools and communication platforms enhance automation capabilities, allowing for streamlined data flow and a more connected customer experience.
By effectively leveraging Service Hub’s features and integrations, businesses can significantly enhance customer support operations, improve response times, empower customers through self-service and create more personalized and satisfying service experiences.
Integrating Service Automation Tools Into Your Current System
Integration will be essential if you want your tools to work together smoothly. Aim for a consistent end-user experience and unified data flow. Integrating service automation tools into an existing customer service infrastructure significantly enhances efficiency, improves customer satisfaction and reduces operational costs. However, these tools will need to be implemented in a way that doesn’t disrupt ongoing operations. What follows is a step-by-step guide on how to achieve this.
Seamless integration is central to maintaining consistency in customer experiences and ensuring smooth data flow across different systems. Integrating service automation tools effectively creates a unified and consistent customer experience across each touchpoint in your customer journey. Users can seamlessly move between channels like email, chat and self-service portals without encountering data discrepancies.
Remember, integrating a service automation tool aims to improve your customer service process, not disrupt it. So, take your time, plan carefully, and implement gradually. With the right approach, you can successfully integrate service automation tools into your existing infrastructure and reap the benefits of improved efficiency and client satisfaction.
Best Practices for Implementing Service Automation
Before starting any integration, start with planning it out thoroughly. The first order of business is always to identify key stakeholders, set clear goals and create a timeline. Often overlooked, this will help you manage the process effectively and ensure everyone is aligned.
Begin preparing for automation by cleaning up existing processes. Identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement. Define key workflows and document the steps involved in each support process. Align goals with automation capabilities to ensure your automation efforts support your overall objectives.
Mapping Out Automated Customer Journeys
The first step is understanding the areas in your customer service process that could benefit from automation. Identify areas where customers experience delays or frustration. This might be ticketing, client feedback or any other area for improvement. Analyzing your current processes and identifying bottlenecks or inefficiencies may help pinpoint where automation will be most beneficial.
Map out your current customer service infrastructure and pinpoint areas where automation can add value. Create a visual representation of the user’s interactions with the support arm of your business, from the initial point of contact to issue resolution. You can use diagramming software like Lucid or draw.io, or do it the way I prefer, with colored sticky notes on a whiteboard.
Whatever your weapon of choice for planning, identify points in your process that require a human to intervene and those that could be automated, like ticket routing, automated responses or handoff points where information might get lost or the customer experience becomes disjointed. Don’t forget to look for ways to personalize communication and support along the way. Focus on areas that could enhance the customer experience while reducing manual tasks and speeding up processes. Consider the user’s perspective throughout the reimagined automated service process. Ask yourself, “What are they trying to accomplish here?”
Setting Up Automated Ticketing and Escalation Workflows
To set up an automated ticketing system, you must first capture user inquiries effectively so they can be routed to appropriate departments. Service Hub offers a multi-channel approach, allowing you to receive inquiries through phone calls, emails, live chat and forms. Its new Help Desk feature, which acts as a shared inbox, enables managing all these channels in one place, simplifying client communication.
After capturing the inquiries, the next step is triage. This involves categorizing inquiries by topic or priority and routing them to the right person or team. To do this, you’ll need a way to organize them. Utilize filters to sort inquiries based on assigned agent, medium, date and status, such as open or closed. Then, you’ll want prioritization based on the severity of the issue, company size or revenue, and any existing SLAs. These can also be configured in Service Hub to automate ticket status changes and notifications based on predefined timeframes.
Escalation workflows ensure that human agents address complex issues quickly. These workflows define clear paths for escalating tickets beyond initial automated responses or first-line support, preventing delays and customer dissatisfaction. They enable routing tickets to agents with specialized knowledge or higher levels of authority to tackle specific issues. By configuring these features within Service Hub, you can create a seamless, automated customer support experience that ensures timely resolution, consistent communication and enhanced customer satisfaction. Remember to regularly review your workflows, reports and client feedback to identify areas for improvement and optimize your automated support processes.
Common Pitfalls in Service Automation and How To Avoid Them
Just like automating other areas of your business, there’s always a risk of over-automation. Yes, it’s true! There can be too much of a good thing. There should always be a balance between giving a user the info or help they need when they need it and creating a completely automated machine in which the user feels like they’re shouting into the void.
Over-Automation: The Risk of Losing the Human Touch
Over-automation can quickly lead to impersonal and frustrating customer experiences. Businesses risk alienating their client base when prioritizing automation and efficiency over real client needs. Relying solely on chatbots or automated responses without a clear path to human interaction can make customers feel like they are dealing with a faceless entity and, in turn, can lead to dissatisfaction.
Another way to lose the human touch is the inability to handle complex issues that require a human’s ability to show compassion or common sense. Automated systems sometimes struggle with nuanced or complex inquiries and will at times require human intervention. If customers can’t quickly escalate their issues to a live agent, they’ll likely become frustrated.
Poorly integrated service automation tools lead to a fragmented customer experience. So do data silos caused by unintegrated support tools, such as your CRM, help desk or live chat not being appropriately built into your support ecosystem, causing customer data to be spread across multiple systems. If reps have to look at multiple screens, getting a holistic view of the customer will be difficult.
Finally, broken processes disrupt support workflows. For example, suppose a ticket created through live chat doesn’t automatically sync with your CRM. In that case, it might get lost or mishandled, creating a disconnected experience that leads to delays and frustrated clients.
Going back to the beginning: Before implementing any automation, it’s crucial to analyze the customer journey and identify where automation enhances the experience without replacing the human element. This requires your understanding which interactions require empathy, complex problem-solving or a personal touch and reserving those for human agents.
Ensuring Data Accuracy and Cleanliness in Automation
Dirty or outdated data can severely hinder the effectiveness of automated processes, leading to a cascade of errors and inefficiencies that negatively impact the customer experience. Accurate and clean data must be used to achieve success with service automation. Inaccurate contact information, such as incorrect email addresses or phone numbers, can lead to automated messages being sent to the wrong recipients. This creates a negative experience for the unintended recipient and prevents the intended customer from receiving important information. In every failed touchpoint, your brand suffers.
Personalized messaging is an easy way to maintain a human touch when deploying automated workflows. However, personalization attempts can backfire if the underlying data is inaccurate or incomplete. Awkward or irrelevant messages based on bad data can easily damage client relationships. Many service automation tools rely on data to appropriately trigger specific actions or route inquiries. However, if the data is inaccurate, decisions could be flawed causing incorrect responses, improper escalation or misallocation of resources.
Automated workflows exist to streamline processes and improve efficiency. However, inaccurate data can and will disrupt these workflows, causing delays and errors or, require manual intervention to correct issues while in flight. When automated processes consistently fail due to insufficient data, clients lose trust in the company’s ability to serve them effectively. This can lead to increased churn, negative reviews and reputational damage.
If your data needs some freshening, here are a few steps you can take to audit and clean things up:
- Start by taking inventory and identifying all systems where customer data is stored, including CRM, help desk, marketing automation platforms and other relevant tools.
- Map the data across different systems, noting inconsistencies in field names, naming conventions, data types or formats.
- Develop a process to validate the accuracy of existing data by cross-referencing data from different sources, using data cleansing tools or manually verifying information.
- Identify and merge duplicate records to ensure data consistency and eliminate redundancy.
- Supplement or enrich existing data with additional information from reliable sources to create a more comprehensive client profile.
- Establish clear data entry standards and enforce consistent formatting, naming conventions and data types across all systems.
- Implement a data governance framework to define roles, responsibilities and processes for data management, ensuring ongoing data quality and integrity.
By taking proactive steps to identify, map, validate, enrich and govern your client data before implementing automation, businesses mitigate the risk of errors, maximize the effectiveness of their automated processes and create a more positive and efficient customer service experience. Implementing service automation is a journey, not a destination. Start by identifying your needs and selecting the right tools. Carefully plan your implementation process, and follow best practices for success.
Echoing the first two articles in this series, automation is not about replacing human interaction; it’s about augmenting human capabilities. Automating routine tasks frees service teams to focus on more complex issues, provide personalized guidance and build stronger relationships. This combination of efficiency and personalization creates exceptional and memorable client experiences.
The move towards automation in customer service is not a passing trend; it’s a necessary evolution. As expectations rise and businesses strive to deliver exceptional experiences, service automation offers the means and strategies to meet their customer base’s evolving needs. As with other business areas, the key is to find the right balance between service automation and human touch, ensuring that technology bolsters, rather than replaces, human interaction.
