How to Use Simple Automation to Streamline Customer Conversations

Customer expectations have grown surrounding the three most important aspects of customer experience: convenience, ease, and speed. Incorporating simple automation into customer conversations that exceed these expectations has proven to be the solution for Quiq’s clients. Quiq is focused on helping brands engage in conversations with their customers over messaging, the preferred channel by, well, everyone. Quiq’s messaging clients have taken advantage of features like “bots” and “snippets” to streamline customer conversations that are repetitive in nature to help save valuable employee time, making them more efficient.

The key to success for the companies deploying automation for employee-to-customer conversations is the calculated use of Quiq’s automation features that not only optimize productivity but subsequently improve the customer’s experience. Now, before you start thinking that automating customer conversations leads to soulless interactions and customer frustration (yes, we’ve sat in one too many phone queues), let’s focus on just one automation feature that is making the customer’s experience better – snippets.

What are “snippets” and how do I use them?

Snippets are pre-built responses to common questions that can be accessed by employees with a few keystrokes. Snippets eliminate the need to retype the same answer to the same questions. and can be fully customized for your unique workflow.

At Quiq, we developed our product with the experience in mind, not just that of your customers, but for agents and employees too. We developed snippets to make it easier for employees to share greetings, ask follow up questions, and address common questions like “What’s your return policy?”. With snippets, employees can create custom responses tied to common questions using shortcut keys, thus reducing the time it takes to look up information and share it with customers.

Snippets can be created at a company level as well, not just by agent. Company-level snippets ensure that information shared across the organization is consistent and accurate. If, for example, you have a promotion running Monday through Friday that you’d like reps to share, a snippet containing details or a link to the promotion will guarantee the same message is shared. Now, let’s say the promotion date is extended to Sunday, the snippet can be quickly updated and then everyone immediately has the same up-to-date information.

Another feature that allows employees to increase efficiency while improving customer service across all channels are Quiq Replies. Quiq Replies are the suggested responses that allow customers to answer common questions with a tap of a button. Quiq Replies are visual presentation of what the customer will see and are created as snippets to keep the conversation moving on both ends.

Share pre-built “rich messages” within snippets

Employees and customer service reps used to save answers to frequently asked questions on a digital notepad that they would pull up and then just copy and paste answers. Quiq has taken these plain text, flat responses and gives you the ability to easily create rich messages.

Rich messages take plain text and add captivating visual elements like images, buttons, and suggested replies to bring context and interaction to every conversation. Quiq allows you to build your own rich messages and to even share those as snippets.

Want to see for yourself? See Snippets in action.

Snippets have been very thoughtfully designed to be easy to use and manage:

• Employees can access snippets with keyboard shortcuts that are easy to customize and search for.
• Snippets can be created as plain text or as rich messages.
• Snippets can be shared across any messaging channel, defaulting to the most visually appealing format supported by the respective channel..
• Managers can easily see what snippets have been created and exactly how they will appear to customers.
• Snippets can be used at any point in the conversation to help the conversation progress more efficiently – beginning, middle, or end.

Ways to use snippets or automated responses to streamline customer conversations

Once implemented, automation features such as snippets can improve agent effectiveness, improve customer satisfaction, and differentiate your company. We’ve found this to be true across all industries and company sizes.

Greeting a customer at the start of a conversation and closing a conversation with a standard sign off are pretty obvious uses for snippets, but here are a few other ways snippets can be used by industry. Skim over these examples and you’ll probably find that many of these use cases are applicable to your company as well:

Retail

• Where is my order (WISMO):Customers checking on order status is a common occurrence that can comprise 70-80% of calls during peak times, like the winter holidays. These types of inquiries may have tighter service level agreements, so the ability to quickly respond quickly is critical. Create a snippet with an embedded link to share and allow customers to track their order.
• Return policy:Even if you have your return policy stated on your website, you may still get questions from customers who need clarification. Common questions include: “Do I need an RMA number?” or “What address should I ship my return to?.” Snippets ensure that answers to these standard questions have consistent answers. What’s more, employees can use snippets to build out questions to dig a little deeper into the customer’s issue such as “What’s the reason for the return?” or “Was there anything wrong with your shipment?”

Service & Subscription Companies

• Password reset:Customers who have to log in to an account will appreciate easy access to help if they ever need to reset their password. Create a snippet with a link to your process or to a page that customers can use to reset their password.
• Save/Cancel:If a customer is inquiring about canceling, you may want to create a snippet that helps the agent gather additional information from the customer to better understand the reasons they would like to cancel and to provide an offer to persuade the customer to stay. For example, if the employee determines price is the main reason for the cancellation, there may be another snippet with a special promotion for the agent to present.

Financial Services

• Payment guidance:Again, snippets can be used at any point in a conversation. Customers engaged in a conversation about say, a late payment, may want to know where they can pay online. Send a link to quickly guide the customer to the right place.
• Routing to the right department:Create rich snippets, such as the example shown below, to determine the nature of the customer inquiry. Quiq’s intelligent snippets aren’t just simple canned responses. Snippets with Quiq Replies can leverage the customer’s response and route the customer conversation to the appropriate agent or department.

Higher Education

• Segmentation:In the same vein as the example above, higher education can use snippets to segment inquiries based off of student status. For example, A Quiq Reply can be used to determine if the person is a parent, prospective student, current student, or alumni. It could also be used to understand the topic of their inquiry in order to route the conversation to the right department.
• Easy resource reference:Contact information and program details can be stored as a snippet and recalled with keyboard shortcuts. Faculty within Student Affairs, for example, can use snippets to keep a handy reference of the diverse range of programs and resources available to students. Whether students need help with tutoring or finding a support network, the information can be available with just a few keystrokes.

Travel and Hospitality

• Customer orientation:If you have obtained permission to message a customer, you can use Quiq’s outbound messaging to point out available amenities at your resort after they have booked their stay. Instead of a resort having to list out popular add-ons, like a trip to their spa, available guided tours, or restaurants on site for each guest, a rich snippet can be used to help the customer find and book services that add value to their experience.
• Follow-up survey:Employees can send follow up surveys to guests after their experience. Quiq allows agents to gather this information and take action immediately. If the guest in the above example had some issues during their dinner and gave their stay a 2-star rating, the conversation could be routed to the appropriate person to address the issue.

Conduct engaging and streamlined conversations with your customers

The simple automation examples presented above are a few easy ways to reduce friction for your customer. Quiq features like snippets and Quiq Replies help streamline the customer experience without losing the human connection that customers want.

Implementing automation doesn’t have to become an overwhelming task but it can have substantial results for your bottom line and customer satisfaction rates.  If you’re ready to improve productivity within your organization with a few simple automation within your customer experience, request a demo.