The internet is growing and evolving quickly - and so are customer expectations. Today, over 40% of the world’s population is online, and these users are spending over $2.2 trillion dollars in the online retail space. On top of that, with new technologies and capabilities popping up every day, these customers have come to expect flawless online experiences where they can find the answers, products, or services that they are looking for quickly, efficiently and independently.
SEE ALSO: CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS ARE AT AN ALL-TIME HIGH, SALESFORCE REPORT FINDS
That’s a lot of people, a lot of money and a lot of collective power and influence, which means that, if you want your online business to thrive, you’d better listen up so you can give these customers exactly what they’re looking for.
The Changing Face of Customer Service
With this evolution of the internet and customer expectations comes a huge change in the world of online customer service: today, more companies than ever are using the new technologies that are available to them to provide more proactive customer service solutions. That way, they can solve their customers’ problems quickly, effectively and at their point of need.
So what exactly is Proactive Customer Service?
In broad terms, proactive customer service means being predictive about customer support so that you can not only answer questions but also anticipate them, thereby meeting your customers’ needs before they even realize that they have an inquiry or a problem. This can be done today by tracking your customers’ online behavior, analyzing it and using it to better understand and serve them. By tracking specific questions that they ask, for example, you can get a strong idea of what interests them most about your product, what they find most confusing and where it occurs on your site.
Once you begin focusing on this information, you can utilize tools like predictive Q&A, chatbots and streamlined ticketing system to capture and leverage it and provide the strongest, most proactive customer support possible. And this isn’t just a luxury - the fact is that today’s customers simply don’t accept anything less.
The Effectiveness of Proactive Customer Service
The good news is that this kind of proactive customer service isn’t just the new norm - it’s working and bringing results to both customers and businesses. PipelineDeals, an online sales productivity platform, actually reduced their support tickets by 51% and their live chats by 87% when they incorporated self-service Q&A software into their website. Similarly, MOO - an online business card retailer - experienced an 18% deflection in support tickets and a 2% increase in order conversions and order value using the same software. And that’s just with one software program.
How did it work? Well, first, the predictive self-service provider AnswerDash accessed the data in each company’s knowledge base and, using clustering algorithms, organized the content to make it instantly accessible and relevant to each page on their site via pop-out tab.
Then, it used this information to overlay predictive, intelligent Q&A across the website. This Q&A is completely dynamic and contextual, which means that the information that appears on each page of the site is relevant to that page and what the audience is searching for.
Next, these questions were popularized, which means that, over time, their order on the page changes based on how often the questions are asked. That way, the most relevant, frequently clicked questions always appear at the top – and the customer finds information that is relevant to the page and personalized to them. And, clearly, it works.
Overall, this kind of proactive customer service is bringing results, decreasing support costs by reducing support tickets and increasing the productivity of live, high-cost customer service agents. The support staff no longer needs to grow at the same pace as the business grows, which means that the company gets more profit and ROI.
SEE ALSO: 6 TECH ADVANCES THAT WILL ENHANCE THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Why Does Proactive Customer Support Work?
So why is this kind of technology so effective? Well, the self-service aspect works because not only do customers want answers right away, but they also want to be able to solve many of their online problems themselves. In fact, according to Capterra, 75% of consumers want the ability to solve product and service issues on their own. On top of that, up to 90% of consumers expect a brand or organization to offer a dynamic self-service customer support portal. And if they do need to speak to a customer service representative, they want that interaction to be completely seamless, smooth and fast. These predictive, smart solutions, then, give the consumers exactly what they’re looking for so that they don’t bounce or go to the competitor’s site.
How Freshdesk Fits In
Freshdesk and AnswerDash both work to meet this need and provide the predictive support that today’s customers are demanding. Freshdesk makes customer service representatives more efficient by providing them with a complete customer support software, ticketing system, knowledge base and live chat. The end goal, here, of course, is to make it easy for brands to support their customers and make it easy for users to get answers when they need them, whether it be through self-service or assisted service. That said, while this often tackles the representatives’ side of things, it doesn’t quite empower the user to help themselves.
That’s why Freshdesk has teamed up with AnswerDash to announce the AnswerDash for Freshdesk Integration. By overlaying smart, predictive Q&A on businesses’ websites, AnswerDash improves the customer experience, reduces the number of incoming support tickets by 30-50% – thereby reducing support costs – and increases sales conversions by up to 30%.
So how does it work? The AnswerDash pop-out Q&A tab makes the information and resources that are found in the Freshdesk knowledge base more accessible to end users, allowing them to use the smart self-service software to find the contextualized information that they’re looking for right at their point of need - without having to leave the page, or type to search. This, in turn, frontends the ticket submission process, meaning that more end users can find most of the answers that they’re looking for without having to submit a Freshdesk ticket, start a chat, or contact a representative. Then, any tickets that do need to go to Freshdesk are passed off seamlessly and efficiently so that the company’s representatives can handle the inquiry.
Overall, this integration fully optimizes the online self-service experience by leveraging the Freshdesk knowledge base (KB) content and integrating with the Freshdesk ticketing system – so, no matter what, customers get the customer service experience that they’re looking for. This partnership creates the best proactive customer experience out there, making Freshdesk’s services more powerful and allowing an online business to deliver the most efficient customer support to companies, agents and end users. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.
Check out the AnswerDash for Freshdesk integration for more info.
About AnswerDash:
AnswerDash’s Predictive Q&A Engine empowers companies to give their website, mobile App and Facebook Messenger users the right information in the right place at the right time. With AnswerDash, businesses can transform their digital user experience while cutting support costs by 30 to 50%, improving sales conversions by 10 to 30% and increasing customer satisfaction. AnswerDash integrates with the most popular CRMs and ticketing systems - including Freshdesk - to “contextualize” knowledge base content, bringing it directly to the point of need. AnswerDash also integrates with leading live chat providers.
About Freshdesk:
Freshdesk allows companies to deliver exceptional customer service by making customer service representatives more effective. By providing representatives with a complete customer support CRM, a ticketing system and a knowledge base, Freshdesk makes it easier for brands to support their customers and for end users to get the type of support they need when they need it. With Freshdesk, the world of customer support is streamlined, leaving both agents and customers engaged and delighted.