If you are wondering what is the one thing a customer Support bot needs to do, consider the following scenario.

It is the first day of Christmas. You and all your employees from your small eCommerce business are enjoying the holidays with your families and friends. In the afternoon, you decide to check your online store to see how things are going and discover that people are unable to make an online payment. None of you customer support representatives is available to answer to people’s questions about this issue. Until the technical department manages to fix it, people are left wondering why they cannot pay.

Your customers would have needed the following Message to understand the situation:

Hello! We are experiencing some technical issues in the payment process. We are current working on solving them and will get back to you when they become available. We are sorry for the inconvenience! Thank you for your patience! 

This message could have been sent by a Support Bot to all customers who were calling or writing messages asking what was going on. It would have showed them that not only are you always aware of what is happening in your online store, but that you also care about their experience on your website.

The main purpose of a customer support bot

If we were to look at the ‘job description’ of a customer support bot, it will most probably include the same elements as for a customer support representative:

• manage great amounts of incoming calls, messages and emails
• handle complaints from customers and provide answers and solutions to their problems
• identify, understand and assess the needs of customers in order to satisfy them
• build and maintain great relationships with customers
• keep records with information regarding the interactions with customers

After looking at these aspects, here is the one thing a customer support bot needs to do. It needs to provide one right answer to customers. You may ask yourself “why just one right answer?” Let’s go back to our previous example with the small eCommerce business.

Problem: The problem of the online store’s customers was that they were not able to make an online payment. Also, they did not had a customer support representative to contact.

Customers’ need: They need to know how they can pay online.

Solution: Inform them about the issue and notify them when they can make an online payment.

They did not need to know what caused the technical issue and what it needs to fix it. All they needed to know is when they could pay for the products they wanted. By focusing on delivering the one right answer, bots manage to be efficient and fast. These are 2 critical elements that can determine whether a customer has a pleasant experience when interacting with your support department. Being efficient means that they are available 24/7 to help customers by understanding their requests and offering them relevant answers in real-time.

Answering in real-time is important because people usually need information at that specific moment. If you do not manage to offer what they are looking for in a short period of time, not only can you create an unpleasant experience for them, but you can also lose them as clients. People who wanted to buy a product from the online store in the first Christmas day had no one to contact and thus, did not receive an answer to what was happening. One possible result was that they waited until the problem was solved. However, those who really wanted a particular item and lost their patience, switched to the competition.

Customer support bots are an essential tool in a support department. Providing the one right answer helps them satisfy the needs and meet the expectations of customers. They offer the information people are looking for, customers understand, overcome and manage to solve the issue. In this way, you can make your customer loyal to your company and grow your business.

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