Customer experience has moved front and center with businesses in recent years. But never before has customer service been more important than today. The pandemic sent contact center call volumes through the roof amid a time of agent shortages. That has left some callers on hold for hours – creating frustration, hurting reputations and wasting valuable resources.
However, it doesn’t have to be this way. Organizations can use artificial intelligence (AI), knowledge management (KM), and insight engines to better manage all tiers of the customer service funnel – starting with self-service; continuing with support via email, live chat, phone service and ticketing; and concluding at the internal expert-supported customer service layer.
Using Mindbreeze, your organization can minimize customer service tickets and support costs. We enable that by analyzing inquiries, and challenging or providing answers to them using best practices. This delivers significant return on investment and boosts the customer experience.
Many customer service journeys today start with self-service. Most big organizations use chatbots, FAQs, forums and websites to enable customers to find answers themselves.
For example, if I have a problem with my iPhone, I might go to the Apple website. And the Apple support site might guide me through that portal. While I’m typing my concerns and problems, the support site is trying to provide me with immediate resolutions. The goal is to prevent me from creating a new support ticket. Apple and other organizations know that if I do not get helpful recommendations – and fast – I will contact customer support.
The Mindbreeze insight engine for customer service enables that fast resolution for any organization that delivers self-service options. It helps customers to find the information they are looking for to solve their problems, preventing the need for customer support tickets. Addressing more inquiries at the top of customer service funnel – during self-service – has significant financial implications and can drive major savings in the contact center arena.
I mentioned this return on investment example in my most recent blog, but it bears repeating.
- Say an organization receives 4,600 support inquiries per month via a self-service portal
- Of those, 2,802 inquiries reach the call center
- That organization can use an insight engine to resolve more inquiries during self-service
- An insight engine can then reduce the number of contact center calls by around 60%
- This can save the organization around $100,000 per month
But the value of Mindbreeze doesn’t stop with self-service. It also can increase efficiencies and lower costs for inquiries that escalate to the support stage of the customer service funnel.
When a customer contacts support, that generates a ticket. This ticket needs to be slotted into the right area. If I create the ticket for a broken display, for example, it might go to hardware support people. However, if my iPhone is not letting me install new apps, Apple’s software iOS unit might handle the ticket. These are two totally different teams with unique skill sets. Mindbreeze analyzes and pre-classifies tickets for accurate, efficient slotting. That way, organizations can forward tickets to the appropriate support team for efficient resolution.
We also address cases in which support teams are unable to answer tickets.
One of our customers assembles home appliances. This company’s customer service team has a certain degree of knowledge about how to maintain those home appliances and the components in those household products. But sometimes cases involve questions that are new and for which no maintenance manual is available. This requires assistance from an expert.
Mindbreeze enables these behind-the-scenes experts to surface answers to such very specific inquiries. As a result, organizations can increase their fixed first visit rates. That lowers costs and ensures that if a professional visits the customer’s home to repair a home appliance, the field maintenance team can fix the problem the first time rather than having to do multiple, costly truck rolls. Faster resolution also often translates into higher customer satisfaction.
Private and public organizations – and their customers and citizenry – have much to gain from AI, insight engines and KM. Our ROI calculation demonstrates just how valuable this can be.
Want to better understand how your organization can increase the cost savings, efficiency and satisfaction of its customer service game?
For more information please contact us or take a look at our case studies.
