Guide to Customer Service Automation in Manufacturing

Custom service automation is a strong way to improve sales. In this article, you’ll learn why it’s vital to invest in this type of manufacturing software development.

Customer interactions are among the most important activities for any company on the market. You may have outstanding production values but, in the end, the inability to communicate with customers will lead to an absolute waste of skill: an unsold ware can’t bring profit. What’s the problem with the field of customer service? In our opinion, its core challenge lies in the fact that the field requires tremendous expenditures of resources on maintenance (especially, for larger firms). Consequently, the need for automated customer experience in manufacturing is steadily rising these days. In this article, we’ll discuss the core ways to promote automated customer experience through the use of technologies such as artificial intelligence and CRM frameworks.

What Does Customer Service Automation Stand For?

Customer service automation stands for the use of modern computerized technologies to automate various services necessary for clients and offer them personalized customer experiences. What does it entail in practice? Let’s imagine that a customer needs to configure their on-board computer system within a car. An automated customer service system can offer configuration advice in an automatic mode. For example, an AI system can answer the questions of a customer regarding certain aspects of configuration.

This is a perfect way to receive loyal customers because such an approach reduces the reliance on often scarce human workforces. In instances where some update disrupts devices for multiple individuals, the use of customer service automation software is a perfect framework for queue-free maintenance. Considering all those factors, it’s not surprising that many companies are highly interested in the presented technology. Its goal, after all, is to remove the majority of the repetitive tasks that unnecessarily inflate various customer service organizations.

Key Benefits of Customer Service Automation

The discussed technology has multiple important benefits that enable it to solve the majority of common issues through automated customer experience in manufacturing:

Swiftness

The first reason to use automated systems of this kind is undoubtedly the swiftness of reaction to customer requests. For instance, AI-powered chatbots are available at any time. This information means that they can respond to customer requests without any major delay. If a user encounters a problem with their PC during a night shift, they can use a chatbot to get relevant customer feedback. Customer experience automation reduces the wait time for the majority of customers, allowing to resolve most problems without human interference. Since the majority of the support workforces are rather limited (especially if there are millions of customers), this technology is undoubtedly among the best ways to upgrade the customer journey.

Ease of use

Many people dislike traditional support teams for the fact that it’s sometimes too difficult to contact them. If there are many requests, it may take hours to reach the relevant office. In numerous instances, the lack of support is among the core reasons for the loss of customer loyalty. Manufacturing products are used in production or, for example, offices, meaning that any long-term difficulties with their support will undoubtedly lead to dissatisfaction during customer lifecycles. In this light, big companies can greatly benefit from technologies that provide customer experience automation. They allow them to provide high-quality services without involving numerous individuals in various support departments.

Autonomy

While customer service operations are greatly assisted by the presented technology, it can go beyond such usage. What do we mean by that? It’s not uncommon for companies to encounter crises at some point in their existence. A common situation is to also encounter situations in which products become outdated. In this light, it may be rational to reduce the support workforce for various wares. The problem is that many customers may find such a decision to be negative and anti-consumer. For instance, many people are still using 2012 MacBooks even though they’re 12 years old, due to the slowing pace of innovation in the computer manufacturing sector. 

Customer experience automation prevents those situations from manifesting. It provides tools that offer a place for customer communication without the use of a human workforce. While such customer service efficiency is likely to be lower than in the case of a full-scale customer support framework, it’s nonetheless more than sufficient to cover the majority of the customer’s needs long after a project is in the post-support phase.

Types of Customer Service Operation Software in Manufacturing

Let’s take a look at the technologies that are used to automate customer service delivery. Here’s their list:

1. Autonomous Rebate Management

The first technology that is likely to have a positive impact on the majority of firms as a customer experience tool is rebate automation. Rebates are a common marketing strategy used by various firms to attract customers: they repay a certain amount of funds to showcase their loyalty to the user base. The problem with rebates is that the conditions for their manifestation are often complex. This means that businesses must dedicate separate teams to controlling the presented process. Autonomous rebate management allows for reducing the reliance on the workforce in this regard. Companies using this technology can divert their workforce to more important tasks, letting automatic systems do the majority of the work with rebates. 

2. Integration of CRMs

CRM systems are one more technology that allows automating customer service. How exactly does it do this? For example, you can use those frameworks to send notifications about product updates or other important news to your most important customers. In short, the presented systems are highly notable for their capability to improve communication with customers by removing some tedious processes during it. Once again, the presented technology offers a major benefit: it upgrades communication by reducing the number of repetitive tasks during various customer queries. In our opinion, CRMs are among the must-have technologies for the majority of the manufacturing firms on the market.

3. Cloud frameworks for manufacturing

Cloud frameworks for manufacturing are a technology that is also essential for improving the customer experience. In itself, cloud technology doesn’t offer automation. However, it can serve as a vital step for installing automation-centric technologies. Firstly, one can use cloud platforms to host support websites that are connected to customer automation platforms. Secondly, clouds are also notable for their ability to host AI frameworks that are essential for high-quality automation processes. In short, if you’re using customer experience automation, then investments in all types of cloud platforms are essential. Otherwise, there’s a risk of simply lacking the relevant processing power for those systems to work well.

4. AI

Lastly, one of the newest technologies that can reduce reliance on customer service agents and large departments associated with them is AI. AI comes in many forms. The one that is relevant to the manufacturing sector service has to do with generative AI. For instance, platforms like ChatGPT are perfect when it comes to answering the majority of customer questions if they’re trained well. We expect that many companies will use the presented technology to boost customer expectations in the upcoming years. After all, one can use AI technology at any time of the day rather than during particular hours when customer service is available. This means that the overall quality of customer service is likely to grow significantly in the upcoming years.

Conclusion

To summarize, the presented customer experience automation technology is among the best ways to reduce your reliance on human involvement and improve the overall quality of customer experience. It allows you to deliver support faster and, more importantly, even in the absence of a large number of specialists from sales teams. The earlier you invest in customer experience automation, the fewer resources you’ll have to spend on supporting outdated products or, for example, performing routine activities such as rebate analysis.

Using customer service automation is a strong way to boost the quality of your customer relationship.

Keenethics can assist you with this task!

Daria Hlavcheva

Head of Partner Engagement

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