Customer service lives and dies on how effectively you solve your customer’s problems. Why? Because in the digital age, customer complaints or praise are broadcasted across their social networks, resulting in mass amounts of people seeing their issues. Social media allows customers to create instant trust or distrust, helping or hindering your customer service procedures.
There’s a lot we can learn from chatbots – and it’s in their name! After all, a chatbot is just another way of communicating, which means there are some great customer service habits to be learned. In this post, we’ll take a look at some of the best customer service lessons you can learn from chatbots.
Have a Script Ready
When creating a chatbot, it’s important to have a script ready. This script is going to be used by your chatbot when it interacts with your customers, so it’s important that they know exactly what they should say. It should include all of the possible questions your customers might ask and how the bot should respond. Also, you make sure that the bot has enough information about your company so that it can answer questions correctly. This is also how a customer service representative should be; making sure that you have enough information on hand before assisting customers.
Section: Stick to the Script
The same goes for any other customer service agent. You want to make sure that they stick to their script so they do not deviate from what they are supposed to say or do. This is one of the reasons though why chatbots are not recommended for complex issues or when there are multiple people involved in resolving them.
Section: Don’t Get Personal
Chatbots may seem like an impersonal way for companies to interact with their customers, but that doesn’t mean they should be completely devoid of personality. In fact, research shows that more than half of the population would consider messaging an online chatbot if it had a friendly tone and personality.
Also, the last thing you want from a customer service agent is for them to get personal with you when trying to resolve your issue. They should be focused on helping you out, not trying to become friends with you or offer advice about your life outside of work hours. The same goes for chatbots – they don’t get personal with you.
Admit When You Don’t Know What To Say Next
If you’re providing customer service by email or phone, it’s easy to get stuck in awkward silence when someone asks a question you don’t know how to answer. But if you’re talking to them through a chatbot, there’s no reason for this kind of silence. If you don’t know what they’re talking about, just tell them that!
This is something chatbots do really well — they have no trouble admitting when they don’t know what your question means or where to find the information you need. It’s better to admit that you don’t know something than pretend you do and give bad information.
Section: Remember Their Name
It’s easy for humans to forget names, but it’s harder for machines. A simple trick is to store all of this information in a database so that all of your bots can access it easily. Use this advantage by remembering as much information about each user as possible so you can use it in future interactions with them.
Takeaway: Chatbots are great at customer service and we can learn from them. By applying these lessons to great customer service we can all improve our customer service skills and reduce the number of customer complaints.
