Customer Service Automation... AI and Experience
Laura Farkas
Chief Funnel Architect and CMO @ LMNts Marketing | Author | #EB100 2023-24 | Best Marketing CMO 2022 | Clutch 2024 Lead Generation Award
There is a new pain created by artificial intelligence and service companies. It's called: being put in a workflow.
I am not saying that automation is not useful, but if your clients are paying you top money, you expect a conversation at least...
And remember what I always say:
Your clients want a relationship with you!
There are many of us who have been annoyed by the automated phone systems for decades. Now, automation has taken a new leap in development.
Many tasks are automated, and some marketing agencies even use AI to set up projects. It doesn't work for us here at LMNts Marketing.
The Right Balance Between Automation and Personal Interaction
Striking the right balance between personal interaction and automation is not easy. The less a client pays, the more you want to automate the process.
Interest stage:
As an example; when someone is interested in our services, they can take a quiz (zero input from us). Once they become more interested they can book a meeting (zero input from us), then we spend 15 minutes with them. The time is limited, as they are not clients yet.
After the meeting:
As the relationship progresses, we generally start spending more time with the prospect, making sure that we deliver the answers they need. We initially only give them an overview, and wait for them to ask for a proposal.
Follow-up:
Some of them do, some of them don't. If they don't they will either ask for the invoice or think about it. At this point, we don't spend more time with them; it goes back to automation. We tag them on our CRM and they get the automated follow-up sequences, unless they asked us to follow up.
Of course, if you are below 92 percent capacity, you might want to try harder. But for us, capacity planning is everything, given that we have a small multicultural team working across various time zones.
Understanding Client Expectations
It's crucial that you know how your clients want to be communicated with, and you are on the same page from the beginning. In fact, we have fired clients for initially agreeing to work "on the cloud" then refusing to, so we ended up with huge threads of emails.
When we start an intense project and we need to reach clients urgently (i.e. login verifications), we create a Whatsapp group for the project. But this is only necessary while we are doing the intense work.
Clients also have boundaries. They know that we leave the business phone linked to the Whatsapp group at the office.
Once we have worked with the client and created results for them, we go back to automation; review collection, feedback, even free stuff that will help them.
People Will Always Pay More for Services that are Tailored to Their Needs
Over the years, we have learnt that people who already have a marketing budget are willing to pay more if they feel like their needs are considered. The first step of closing a deal in our business is asking the right questions.
Unfortunately, many marketing agencies don't do that. They make an offer whether or not it suits the goals of a client.
And that takes me to the message of the entire article:
领英推荐
Nobody wants to be put in a workflow.
Just imagine if your psychologist did that; sent out generic tips every week, without talking to you first.... And you paid them a monthly retainer...
I would definitely be angry!
The Pain of Being Put in Workflow
Our mission at LMNts Marketing is to make sure no client wakes up in the middle of the night thinking: "I wonder what I am paying that marketing agency for". And that's what we live and breathe. And that limits the automation of client interactions. That's a good thing in our books. Sometimes clients want a clear plan, sometimes they are confused. And sometimes we need them to collaborate with us to get them the best results.
I personally hate being put in the workflow. It means that you are not important.
When you get the answer: "our project manager will get in touch" and they never do, you feel disheartened.
Just imagine that you make a claim on a car insurance, and all you can do is press buttons and wait for automated emails. Or worse: not being able to get in touch with anyone but a chatbot!
Oh, sorry, I forgot that this happens often.
Even if you don't have the capacity to get in touch personally, you will have to point the client to the right place. We recently realised that we were running out of available appointment times for free consultation and client work. So we decided to implement a simple system where people can get answers without us being there. We built a great AI tool based on all the information and resources on our website. It is great, as it is more custom than ChatGTP answers, and it deals with our capacity shortage. But we would never use it with existing clients.
Striking the balance between customer service automation and personalised service is challenging, but if you find it you will reap the rewards.
My Best Advice for Customer Service:
I recently contacted an email provider because of the bot unsubscribes affecting our email marketing. We got a reply after about a week, and the issue was resolved. When I contacted them about the issue and replied to the support ticket, I got this answer via email:
While it is telling you that you can still contact them, the entire email is geared towards not doing so. For example, no mention of the customer support team's contact details or link to the page where you can reach them. It really could have been better, given that this is a company with a market share of 65.49 percent in the hosting industry...
Based on the above example, I would like to give you three pieces of advice regarding customer service and AI that will potentially help you strike the balance.
I hope this overview has given you all food for thought and will help you improve your customer service.
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