Firstly I think it’s important to note that simply digitising a crap business process won’t improve it.
You really need to think like your customers and be in their shoes if you want to make any progress in this area. Having worked in both private and government agencies that have attempted to digitise their business processes I can tell you now that it doesn’t matter how much money or people you throw at the project it doesn’t guarantee success. You also need to understand that when digitising business processes it doesn’t make sense to simply automate the manual process. You need to think about making the process as intuitive and simple as possible. I understand everyone says this but it really matters. For example, if a customer is already logged in and you have their details don’t make them type them again, rather try prefilling and having a simple tick box to confirm they are happy submitting those details whether it’s for a sale or anything else. It may sound simple enough yet most businesses fail to get it right.
Chatbots – If your ‘chatbot’ basically tells me that for any question I have I should email or call your office, please remove it as it’s about as useful as having someone pick up the phone and not know which company they work for. Although bots have been around for a while many companies fail to properly execute them and hence automatically create a sense of frustration between a potential customer and your company. Your chatbot should be able to steer a visitor down a general conversation and provide at least all the information on your website as well as being able to submit a call back request should I ask for it. More sophisticated models can also utilise machine learning that adapts to each user and possibly finds conversational patterns allowing it to suggest helpful pieces of information if it feels I may be struggling.
Machine learning – A lot of the algorithms have been around for a while now but thanks to faster computers and mobile devices we can now experiment with machine learning programs without requiring supercomputers. When it comes to predictive analytics, sentiment analysis, clustering and behavioural modelling machine learning or AI can do wonders for improving digitised business processes.
Social media – It may not be the first thought but many social media tools allow you to sell your products or services, communicate and interact with your customers
So, with those examples in mind how can brands utilise process digitisation to improve customer service? Well for starters brands could now monitor their engagement with customers through the entire online process whether they are making a purchase, enquiry or other. By utilising sentiment analysis within a chatbot we can see how a customer either becomes agitated or stays calm through a conversation and prompt the staff member that they need to either alternate their language to calm the customer down or speed things along, etc. Further digitisation examples include managing a business process and having real-time issue notifications that either trigger automatic problem resolutions tasks or signal a staff member to take immediate action to resolve the issue. This prevents the customer from having a bad experience and then having to spend further time reporting and dealing with the issue they have experienced, which could be days or even weeks later.
What are some other digital business processes you can think of to help brands provide better customer service?
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