A Complete Introduction to Conversational Process AutomationHow automating action leads to increased customer satisfaction at scale

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Guide

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Every interaction with a customer is an opportunity for either chaos or connection. When the customer service department is well prepared, they can deliver a smooth customer experience that makes customers think “oh, that was easy!”. If even one piece is out of place (a poorly staffed contact centre, a malfunctioning integration, or an agent having a bad day), the resulting mess can damage your brand for life. Multiply that risk by hundreds or thousands of conversations each day and you can understand how high the pressure is to keep quality consistent, even as your customer base grows.

This pressure to deliver on customer expectations has only intensified as global brands have invested more time and energy into getting customer service right. And it’s worth it to deliver a great customer experience: 93% of customers are likely to make a repeat purchase after receiving goodcustomer service. This leads to brands who offer a superior experience bringing in 5.7 times more revenue than their competitors.

Customers have increased expectations of receiving quick, easy and accessible customer service - because they’ve received it from other businesses. Innovation has created a marketplace wherecustomers can connect with global businesses instantly and receive a personalized response with allthe information they need.

In this sense, larger, older companies are most at risk of being left behind. Structures put into place even 10 years ago have quickly become outdated and insufficient to meet the needs of today’s customers. Moving from the traditional bureaucratically heavy back-office processes to lightning-fast responses requires a new shift in thinking.

Secondly, companies are always looking for ways to reduce expenses. Cutting corners on customer service can often feel like an obvious way to save money. Unfortunately, balancing quality with cost can feel like a game with no winners.

Thankfully, as customer expectations continue to rise and budgets continue to tighten, the technology available to businesses continues to improve. Rather than relying on manual processes and human memory, companies can lean on artificial intelligence and process automation to deliver a smooth experience over every customer interaction.

Using a tool that helps automate customer interactions can keep quality high, even as the number of customer conversations grow exponentially. Most importantly, companies using automation can achieve two specific goals: remove unnecessary costs from their customer support, while improving overall customer satisfaction.

Introduction

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Every customer service interaction consists of two main factors: conversations and processes. Without taking the necessary action, a customer’s issue is almost never resolved. A specific type of customer service technology called “Conversational Process Automation” uses AI and integrations to help automate both conversations and processes - a big advantage over traditional chatbots. You also may have heard of Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) technology but we think the conversation part of the flow is critically important to success.

Conversational process automation is unique because it integrates both conversational and action capabilities so queries can be processed without needing a human.

As customer service traffic grows over time, a well-implemented CPA system provides end-to-end resolutions on a growing number of queries. A significant percentage of a customer service team’s repetitive and expensive support tickets can be resolved quickly and efficiently, and in a manner that greatly increases customer satisfaction.

The Demands of Customer Service Automation

ConversationsTroubleshootingHow-to’sAdviceEmpathy and understanding

ProcessesRefundsShipping updatesCancellationsAccount changes

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To better illustrate the process behind process automation, let’s look at an example of a customer who wants to request a refund for a recent purchase.

In traditional customer service departments, the interaction likely involves these steps:

• The customer sends a message to the business through one of their support channels, requestinga refund.

• A ticket is created in the CRM or Help Desk, which is then picked up by an available agent, andtriaged based on intent, sentiment and level of urgency. Depending on the company, customerscan wait anywhere from a few minutes to a few days for a first response.

• A human agent logs into a backend system to locate the order and the customer information.

• The agent returns to the ticket, types up the reply and responds to the customer.

• Finally, the agent manually tags and closes the ticket, executes the refund and confirms that thecustomer has everything they need.

What is Conversational Process Automation?

Breaking Down the Process

Customer ServiceCRM System

Hi! Do I have lounge access? My booking reference is GA12345.

Thanks!

Customer

CUSTOMER INTENT

SENTIMENT

LEVEL OF URGENCY

Customer ServiceCRM System

Sorry that took so long - I had to look up your account and your booking information first. Since you're flying First Class at 12:05 from Heathrow, arriving at Amsterdam for 12:30 you are eligible to access the lounge.

Thank you for your patience.

Flight BookingSystem

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When the process is automated, it looks like this:

• The customer sends a message to the business through one of their support channels, asking fora refund.

• The automation automatically identifies the intent of the customer query and initiates a workflowto resolve it.

• The integrated automation accesses the backend system, retrieves the necessary information,confirms that the customer is eligible for a refund and processes the request.

• The automation then responds to the customer, and logs and tags the query in the CRM or helpdesk.

This process, which can happen several hundred times a day, is completed nearly instantaneously. It’s entirely seamless and invisible to the customer, who only knows that her query was resolved quickly and effectively. Meanwhile, no human agent in the contact centre was involved in the transaction, which was completed entirely by AI-driven process automation from one end of the transaction to the other, then back again to rapidly inform the customer that she was indeed eligible.

CPA retrieves theSubject and the Description from

the Email/Case to send to theDG AI Platform

Hi! Do I have lounge access? My booking reference is GA12345.

Thanks!

Hello,Booking Reference: GA12345

Since you’re flying First Class at 12:05 from Heathrow, arriving at Amsterdam for 12:30 you are eligible to access the lounge. The lounge is open to you three hours prior to your flight, and located next to Terminal 2, Gate 31, so please relax and enjoy the facilities.

We wish you a pleasant flight and ongoing journey. Fell free to click for your specific Flight Status information.

Best Regards

This is an automated response.

Field Updated: Class = First Class

Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning engine identifies

the intent of the customer

Extract: Surname & Booking Reference

DG Extracts Surname & BookingReference from Email

Get: Booking Information

API Call

Review: Class

Class = First

Update: Salesforce

Update Class Field in Salesforcewith First Class

Email: Personalized Response

Email Customer

Back Office Systems

Customer

Booking Information

Flight Status

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With traditional chatbot technology, the automation of full case resolution will always have a limited ceiling. Most systems are limited to recognizing keywords, and responding with a canned answer or link to an FAQ. When tickets require data from an outside system to answer a question, or when multiple steps are required, full case resolution isn’t possible with a chatbot. Unfortunately, that means that the majority of queries can’t be resolved with automation... no wonder customers are so frustrated with unhelpful chatbots.

Instead of completing the process, workflows often need to default to agent guided automation.In this case, the highest-confidence answer is suggested to an agent by an AI model, and the agent can complete any necessary processes for resolution.

The DigitalGenius business process automation engine extends the possibilities of what can be handled without human intervention. The flexible workflow builder brings together multiple systems through integration. Whether the customer needs an account balance checked, a package rerouted or a hand setting up their new mobile phone, business process automation can connect the dots and deliver a resolution. The most repetitive processes can be built into a customised workflow with no agent involvement required.

As a result, consumers are now connected to their resolutions quickly, without needing to wait for human intervention.

More Flexible, Effective Automation

Agent guided automation - a type of AI technology that improves agents’ efficiency and consistency by suggesting the most likely answer. The agent can then confirm and personalise the response before sending it to the customer. At DigitalGenius, this is called agent guided automation: machine learning technology and human intelligence working together in harmony.

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Bring multiple sources of information togetherAnother problem that adds costs to customer support is that tickets often require information and actions from multiple systems to resolve them. This usually includes a minimum of their CRM and at least one back-end system to do things such as process refunds, enable cancellations or validate accounts. Agents, therefore, are forced to “swivel chair” from their ticket management system to another back-end system to resolve the case. This adds time and cost to resolving each ticket. Agent guided automation puts the agent in the driving seat instead of scrambling around to find all the pieces. This automation engine delivers agents the recommended resolution, which can then be personalized and sent to the customers. However, instead of only offering up a template, agent guided automation retrieves all the relevant information from the backend system. Agents become the last step in the workflow.

Enhance your CRMCPA is a natural step in the evolution of any CRM across different enterprises. It’s now quite simple to connect your CRM to your backend systems to fulfil common business processes, in order to significantly raise the automation ceiling for common support tasks. For instance, when a customer asks “what time is my order coming?” or says “please cancel my subscription; I no longer need your service”, AI platforms for customer service have been smart enough to understand the question and then extract entities. Now it can also trigger and execute the appropriate business process to solve the case.

Creating your automation workflowActions are written using popular programming languages, such as Java, Python and Node. js, and are deployed as Lambda functions on AWS. These are stored and can be reused further down the line. If, for instance, we have an action to gather & collect customer information, then when your CPA system becomes smart enough to automate “Do I have access to the lounge?”, it can then reuse this “Customer Info Lookup” action, thus reducing integration time and costs for that particular action.

Each action is displayed in an online dashboard with details of what the action does - creating a marketplace of actions to build flows of action faster, when new automations are turned on.

Actions can be written by a customer’s internal development team, a third-party partner, or the CPA provider. Because actions are similar across companies, we also have a library of pre-trained intent models and pre-designed workflows for specific industries which can reduce the time to deploy.

Once all required actions are built out, customers can describe the journey by simply using the provider’s Web IDE or creating a journey.json document with the proper syntax. Either way, a dashboard such as the Control Center provided by DigitalGenius to its customers will have a friendly web UI for viewing/managing each journey.

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DigitalGenius has already deployed customer service automation in a variety of industries with a great deal of success. Course Hero, an online learning company from which users can access over 20 million course-specific study resources contributed by a community of students and educators.

The company’s most repetitive inquiry was related to refund requests. Using CPA from DigitalGenius, the company found that the DigitalGenius platform was able to handle over 33% of all inbound customer service tickets, with over half of those fully resolved with zero agent involvement. The savings from the shift to CPA has allowed Course Hero’s agents to shift to a more proactive orientation, in which more complex questions are now being addressed more rapidly, using the reasoning, empathy and logic reserved for human brains. “We chose DigitalGenius because we were excited about their ability to fully automate our most repetitive customer enquiry”, says Maria Muniz, Course Hero’s Head of Customer Support. “We love these results”.

Customer Service Resolution in Action

Briana CahnStudent Help Manager

“In our first full week live with DigitalGenius’ AutoPilot, it was already auto-resolving close to 10% of my team’s ticket volume.We’re now putting additional tickets on autopilot, and we expect to auto-resolve between 15-20% of my team’s volume soon.”

Maria MunizHead of Customer Support

“DigitalGenius is already handling 33% of all inbound customer service tickets, and over half of those are now fully resolved with zero agent involvement. We love these results.”

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• Broad Spectrum of Use - the system can be deployed to help with queries over a

wide scope of different functions.

• Seamless Integration - provides the business with an easy way to combine the

aspects of customer service irrespective of the industry.

• Scalability - the system is able to deal with any amount of traffic, and in fact

improves its function the greater the number of incoming queries it can learn

from.

• Measurability - the return on investment of an automated customer service tool

can be easily measured (in financial terms) to your company.

• Greater Use of Resources - not only is process automation more efficient by

itself, it also means your employees are dealing with more unique, and hence

more interesting cases, boosting both employee satisfaction and efficiency.

In order to adequately meet the needs of a business, an effective automation system must provide a range of necessary functions, as well as some added benefits, such as:

The Benefits of Process Automation

Measuring SuccessCustomer service-specific ways to measure the success of process automation include:

• Reduced Average Handling Time meaning your team can handle more conversations in less time.

• Reduced First Reply Time meaning your customers get answers faster.

• Increased First Contact Resolution meaning issues are resolved more efficiently for you and yourcustomers.

• Increased Customer Satisfaction meaning happier, more loyal customers.

• Decreased Hiring Costs due to increased efficiency as you scale.

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Most industries have a large number of conversations that are low hanging fruit, primed to be resolved through automation. DigitalGenius has found that there are three key characteristics that make a company a strong fit for CPA:

• They have common, repetitive and expensive customer service interactions that take up a largepercentage of agents’ time. These interactions can be refunds, cancellations, user validation,order status checks, etc.

• These interactions require customer service agents to take actions in different backend systems(Billing, ERP, Account Management, eCommerce, etc)

• These systems have existing APIs to connect with an AI platform or new APIs that can easily bedeveloped.

To best judge your enterprise’s abilities to take advantage of business process automation, consider getting in touch with a DigitalGenius representative, who can work with you to understand how flexible customer service automation can contribute to your broader business goals.

Learn more at www.digitalgenius.com.

Would Your Business Benefit from Conversational Process Automation?

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www.digitalgenius.com

About DigitalGeniusDigitalGenius is an AI-powered, customer service automation platform thattransforms your customer support with instant resolutions, delighting yourcustomers and guiding your agents to achieve higher performance metrics.DigitalGenius uses cutting-edge AI technology to automate resolutions for yoursupport tickets. The platform allows for customisable integration into your existingsystems and control over your workflows, while tangibly improving key performance metrics, like CSAT and FRT.

The DigitalGenius AI platform is used by KLM, On-Running, Air France and other forward-looking businesses to drive conversational process automation through the use of deep learning. Learn more about how it works at digitalgenius.com.