3 Ways RPA Can Improve eCommerce Customer Service

For today’s online retailers, great customer service can be a make-or-break asset. If you’re looking to enjoy the increased sales that kind of excellence can bring your eCommerce business, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can help – especially if you use the right software robots in the right ways.

While it can be easy to forget about the value of customer service in eCommerce – a field known less for its human side than for its competitive prices, easy payment options, quick delivery, and free returns – the numbers show that it can really affect a company’s bottom line. Consider that 91 percent of consumers will leave for good following a poor customer service experience, and 89 percent of consumers have switched to a competitor for this reason.

But as important as customer service is today, it seems that there are companies out there that haven’t gotten the memo. In fact, only one percent of shoppers say they feel their expectations are always met. That’s unfortunate, because innovative solutions like Kryon’s RPA software robots have begun making it significantly easier for companies to offer great customer service.

Here are three ways that RPA can step-up your customer service and boost your eCommerce sales numbers:

1. Resolve the customer’s problem before hanging up 

As much as eCommerce companies are defined by their online presence, that presence is only part of the customer experience. For many customers having difficulties with your website or app – people who may be frustrated and upset, but who could still be transformed into happy shoppers – your call center is the face of your company. And few aspects of your call center are as important as the speed with which you resolve your customers’ problems.

Just how big of a difference does the fast resolution of customers’ problems make? Among call center managers, it’s common knowledge that the KPI with the greatest impact on customer satisfaction is first call resolution (FCR). And a study of more than 150 call centers by the found that for every one percent improvement in the FCR, there is a corresponding one percent improvement in customer satisfaction. This report also found that call centers that achieved “world class” customer satisfaction ratings had an FCR average of 86%, while centers that were not among the elite in customer satisfaction had an FCR average of only 67%.

Where does RPA fit in?

Rekeying data. Updating fields. Navigating complex applications. Retrieving customer-specific information. In many cases, a call center’s customer service agents are responsible for all of these tasks – and in some situations, these are the easy parts of a job that also involves dealing with frustrated customers. The key to improved FCR is providing these agents with the relevant information immediately.

That’s exactly where RPA can help. With Kryon’s RPA solutions, an attended robot can display tooltips on top of any program on an agent’s computer, making critical information easily accessible in real time. Or using hybrid automation, the agent can send a task to an unattended robot and get the results back within minutes.

Freed from the need to search for answers while on a call, the agent can then deliver the information to your customer quickly – while also making a point of creating a lasting impression that opens the door to future purchases by this customer.

2. Increase productivity of your customer service agents

The challenges facing call centers have grown since the days when customer service representatives were handed a phone and a script. These days, training is an increasingly challenging responsibility that requires teaching agents to use numerous complicated systems, comply with various policies and procedures, and navigate through mountains of consumer information and data – all while carrying on a friendly and engaging conversation. It’s no wonder that call centers around the world experience exceptionally high employee turnover.

Most training programs consist of a combination of classroom training and online learning. What these programs overlook is that once employees leave the training environment, they have to put all their newly gained knowledge to work right away, often with an impatient and unsympathetic customer on the line.

Where does RPA fit in?

With a software robot, a customer service agent can get quick access to important information in order to complete tasks more efficiently. The desktop automation that the robot offers the agent can significantly reduce the need for both classroom and online training. Using visual recognition technologies, it “sees” the screen just as an employee would, constantly monitoring the agent’s activities within the application in real time. Additionally, advanced robots like Kryon’s can automate entire front-end processes, allowing your team members to run these processes at the touch of a button.

As a result, there may be certain topics that you can remove from the initial training that all of your customer service agents go through. With less of a need to cover a huge amount of information, you can focus more on knowledge that’s essential for each agent to have – information that will actually help them (and you) offer more effective, faster, friendlier customer service.

3. Boost your Net Promoter Score

In order to offer the best possible customer service, you’ll need to get the right information – starting with getting a clear picture of where you stand and how you can improve each customer’s experience.  While there are various methods to go about measuring customer satisfaction – ranging from old-school feedback surveys to complex data capturing – the Net Promoter Score (NPS) has been proven as a simple and very effective way of evaluating customer satisfaction and loyalty. It’s calculated from the answers to a simple question: “How likely are you to recommend us?” The number of people who would, minus the ones who wouldn’t, gives you the Net Promoter Score.  This question is also important because when you ask it, the question itself becomes part of the customer experience – showing the shopper that you care about their needs.

Where does RPA fit in?

Obviously, your customer service agents don’t need the help of a robot to ask for customer feedback. But more generally, when you make it easier for an employee to get the information they need in real time, you enable them to devote more attention to the customer on the line. The key is getting the entire call center team to make the most of this opportunity, giving each customer a high enough level of care that hopefully they’ll want to continue with their purchase.

Consumers want to be appreciated, and they can tell when they have your full attention and when they don’t. The more engaged your customer service agent is with a shopper, the more you show them that you truly appreciate their business and understand their concerns.

At the end of the day, that’s the real value of RPA within a call center in any industry: its ability to let employees spend more of their time focused on the customer and less time dealing with repetitive tasks. By empowering your team to resolve shoppers’ problems quickly and communicate with them effectively, you can offer a better customer experience – one that will hopefully lead to more online sales for your company.

Ready to discover how Kryon’s software robots can help you to efficiently improve your company’s customer service? Schedule a live demo today!