Chatbots for Help Desk Automation

One of the primary complaints that consumers tend to voice about the companies they buy from is poor customer service. Even the most loyal consumers have trouble sticking with a brand if they feel that the help desk team is not efficient. This is true for all companies, regardless of their size and quality of products and services. A single bad customer service experience can put a customer at risk.

Some of the most common complaints that customers express in dealing with a company help desk include:

• Lack of help desk availability (assistance not available after hours)

• Long wait times

• Inefficient or inexperienced agents

• Lack of issue resolution

For many companies looking to distinguish themselves through excellent customer service, the answer they have found is in help desk automation in the form of chatbots.

What are Chatbots?

Chatbots are software programs developed to mimic human-like chat with customers. A well-designed chatbot will greet an online visitor, gather the necessary information to understand their issue or request, and guide them to a streamlined resolution.

Chatbots are quickly and increasingly becoming the first line of support in both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) help desk interactions. They are expected to play the same role for internal IT support.

One of the primary drivers of this help desk revolution is the increasing customer expectation for speed and accuracy in problem resolution. Customers today are looking for a fast (immediate, if possible) and personalized experience in their customer service interactions. Help desk automation through the use of chatbots provides a powerful, yet affordable solution for these consumer demands.

How Chatbots are used for Help Desk Automation

When considering the use of chatbots for help desk automation, the current best practice is to leverage your chatbot to enhance the quality of your customer support by offloading the vast majority of frequently-asked-questions and requests to your chatbot, which is programmed to guide these customers to expedient resolution of these issues. By utilizing chatbots as your first level of support, you can free up your valuable human agents for more complex questions and requests.

A well-designed help desk chatbot should give the customer the opportunity to communicate with a human agent, when and if the chatbot cannot resolve their issue by itself.

Some of the benefits you can expect when you deploy chatbots for help desk automation include:

Persistent Availability

With chatbots, you can make your help desk services available on a 24/7 basis. This addresses one of the most common consumer frustrations in not being able to access support after-hours.

Instant Access

Chatbots also eliminate help desk wait times and queues. A single chatbot can manage multiple chats simultaneously and can often handle customer support requests without any need for human agent involvement.

Streamlined Resolution

Unlike some human agents who can wander off track during a support call, a well-designed chatbot will not deviate from the task at hand- resolving the customer issue. Chatbots have the ability to cut through massive volumes of information and incorporate supporting technologies (when necessary) in order to bring the fastest possible resolution.

Efficient Data Collection

One of the greatest benefits in leveraging chatbots for help desk automation is in their ability to automatically collect and save all of the pertinent information for each support interaction. The ongoing aggregation of this data will enable you to further develop and refine your chatbot to handle larger support workloads with increasingly greater efficiency.

Contact us to learn more about chatbots for help desk automation.