Hello, and Happy Tuesday!
Not too long ago, brands responded to holiday sale service volume primarily with manpower. Today that strategy is more likely to include efficiencies through AI and automation. Not only can the right execution provide a positive experience for customers, it can help keep your operational costs in check.
Here’s a few things you can teach your AI to help reduce the number of tickets hitting your agents’ desks this season.
Issue a Price Match
The moment the sale announcement is made, the emails come flooding in! This will be especially true if your holiday sale is on the later side because your customers are more likely to have already bought.
Manually verifying customers are within the appropriate time window, and then issuing the refund can take a dedicated agent hours. By setting up a few rules, many AI solutions can do this for you, and your account representative should be happy to help!
Make a Product Recommendation
AI is available when support teams aren’t. Rather than delay or lose a sale over a customer service question, many brands are leveraging pre-purchase flows that help customers select a product, compare products, and make a purchase directly from a chat instance.
These flow types may already be included in your current AI solution, but if not, you can build your own quiz or train your AI instance on more product and comparison documentation.
Check Order Status
Your AI solution is probably already solving for this. But given the volume of this inquiry type during Q4, and the customer’s stress associated with package delivery at this time of year, look for opportunities to make the experience as smooth as possible.
If you’re sending customers outside a chat window or email to view the status of their order, see if you can provide a response natively. If you’re only providing the tracking number, see if you can proactively offer the next most likely solution to solving the problem.
Proactively Contact Customers
Some AI solutions can “read” hiccups in the customer journey, such as delays in refund processing, delays in order delivery, and more, and will automatically send the customer an email before they reach out to you.
If you don’t currently have an AI solution with this feature, you may be able to set up rules and automations in Zendesk, Gorgias, or another ticketing system that’s integrated with your ecommerce platform.
If you’re shopping for an AI tool with these capabilities and more, I have a boatload of recos and am happy to share!
Enjoy your day!
Kristen Szustakowski (she/her)
The CX Coach
kristen@tcxcoach.com