Exercise better customer support with help desk automation

Nowadays, many businesses try to do more tasks with fewer resources, regardless of the field the business operates in. The e-commerce segment is the one that demonstrates this steady tendency — the customers tend to purchase online in larger volumes. Maximal volumes require additional human and financial capital, but the businesses do not grow that fast. Therefore, businesses are required to do more work with the same amount of resources.

The need for optimisation is present, and this is where desk automation strikes the deal. Use of help desk automation can significantly reduce stress for the employees and provide better service to the customers when introduced correctly. Making employees shift from the service work of manually handling responses, sending notifications, and internal tracking to creativity and customer engagement will improve the quality of the services they provide.

This guide will help you overview help desk automation in more detail. Some examples on how to introduce and enforce it will be provided in order to boost the support processes in your business.

Defining help desk automation
What are the benefits of help desk automation?
How to automate clients service with Usedesk
8 ideas to boost the productivity of the services you provide
AI in Usedesk to help you automate smartly
How to work in a clever fashion with Usedesk

Defining help desk automation

The method of delegating customer service work to artificial intelligence is called usedesk automation. Most (if not all) help desks out there have a way to automate tasks that don’t need human intervention. If a client has sent you an email, the program will automatically process it and redirect to the customer support manager, simultaneously highlighting key words and the subject line.

Automation does it quicker, relieving the stress from a human employee.

What are the benefits of help desk automation?

The majority of the inquiries handled by the customer support service are urgent issues. With loads of tasks that the employees have to handle simultaneously, more important inquiries can get lost in this hectic, falling down in the inbox. Service tasks handled by the employees meddle with their time, thus restraining their ability to handle all the requests equally well.

When you automate these tasks, your employees will no longer have the effect of the "bottleneck" when dealing with rows of customers waiting for the response.

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The number of mistakes is reduced. Automatic algorithm provides checks for the response and eliminates all the imperfections in the response.
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Boost of productivity. When the emails are handled by the algorithm, employees may switch to other tasks and do not lack behind in terms of productivity.
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Cost cutting. One automated algorithm can deliver an equally good product compared to another customer support worker you will need to hire. As your business grows and customer queues extend, automation helps alleviate the time pressure.
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Getting faster responses. Team members can handle customer service in a better way since the time of the response gets shorter and customers have a better experience.
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Moral aspect. Workers feel less stressed and therefore are more productive. The use of an automated desk alleviates time pressure and relieves stress.

How to automate clients service with Usedesk

Usedesk tends to name automation with the term "workflow", and these tools can be utilized in a variety of ways to increase your team’s efficiency and increase the quality of customer service.

Workflows in Usedesk work like filters in Gmail and other similar products. These filters consist of:

Conditions: the components you search for;
Actions: the things you want to happen;

These workflows can be understood as if/then algorithms. When an if action is present, then will be automatically executed without the need of a human being to assist the process.

Usedesk combines the workflows with other tools to help you automate your business — workflows create a synergy with both tags and custom fields. It is better to organise workflows together with reporting, making the latter an understandable experience for the customer. Honestly, it is one of the most important things one can do.

Use these eight ideas to boost the productivity of the services you provide

Have patience dealing with automation and optimisation of the workflows; it can be exhausting. A good starting point will be the processes with which your team and you struggle the most. Ask these questions:

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Would you like to tag some emails right after they appear in the inbox so they could be more visible?
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Do you have some emails in the flow that you tend to ignore?
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How helpful would it be if you could do the customers follow-up without checking in?

Use workflow automation to simplify email navigation

When you receive emails, you can automate their re-routing to the necessary team. If your SMM manager has received an email about product specifications, you can redirect it to another team worry-free.

Tip 01
Try using the auto-reply function

When you have keywords, try to set up auto respond in order to create automatic answers to the clients based on the given keywords. Customers having a moral breakdown or a negative experience will have similar reactions and use similar phrases; take advantage of that and introduce automation.

Tip 02
Do not let the inquiries get lost in the flow

Once your business has regular customers, inquiry queues will be a typical thing. Try to handle the conversations in a way that no inquiry is aging in the process. An automated process will help your employees handle upcoming deadlines and resolve client issues faster.

Tip 03
Organise the queues

Arranging a queue to be managed automatically with keywords is a way out of the additional service workload. If the client wants to make a return of the product, you can mention the keyword "return," and the email will be automatically redirected to the right place.

Tip 04
Automation to improve customer management

Imagine you have customer support managers responsible for different companies. When you get an email in this situation, you need to transfer it to the right specialist. Automating the process will free you from service tasks by tracking down the domain of the request, parsing key points, and referring to the correct person. Your employees, in this case, do not need to handle email redirection manually.

Tip 05
Do competitive research with the workflows

Your customers will from time to time refer to the competitor in their emails. It is necessary to understand how often your clients practice this. Just apply automation to tag the emails, parse the data to form the reports, and revise your strategy based on the data you receive.

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Get the feedback loop going

CSAT or NPS mechanisms are commonly used by the software online businesses or similar companies, as these tools help to get feedback on the team performance. Dealing with negative reviews is part of the story—you can automate the process of sending a message, asking for more detailed feedback. Once you get it going, the customers will feel better because of the sense of personalisation and special treatment, and therefore, you will improve the customer relationship.

Tip 07
Let the automation do the trick with follow-ups

Customer support managers have to deal with clients forgetting to respond to appointment reminders, certain personal data updates, and updates on the client’s issue. Even internal tasks like system fixes need to be communicated. As long as these interactions in the absolute majority of cases tend to be typical in nature, one does not need a human being to handle them. Therefore, automating follow-ups is a good thing to get your business operating in a more productive way.

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AI in Usedesk to help you automate smartly

Usedesk offers a variety of AI tools to deal with automation with comfort. Here are three AI features to help you automate your business processes in a better way:

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Adjust the tone of voice or manage the length of the response before sending it with AI assistance. When you need to make small corrections in the text, you will soon send it to a client. This AI tool is your best helper.
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Deliver bullet points straight to your clients and employees with the help of an AI summary. The Usedesk summarise tool will offer you a helping hand when your employee needs an update on the task or the plan. When your client needs important information in a concise manner, summarising will also come in handy.
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Automate drafting emails by applying AI drafts to use a language learning model to review the email conversations from the database and develop a style to answer future emails automatically. The AI will take information from your knowledge base using the Docs site to create automated responses on the emails in the queue. This will boost the pace of answering and writing emails, as your employees will not have to review the data manually.

Once you automate service tasks, the workload will no longer be that intense. The employees will have the time to breathe and introduce creative practices of customer service. Let automation deal with simple tasks and live individuals with complexities.

How to work in a clever fashion with Usedesk

Your business can go in multiple directions, seeking new ways of development. Automation will remain a consistent helper on your way to success. You get amazing background support when you let the program handle cyclical tasks. You no longer have to apply additional workload or hire more people — the machine will do service work for you.

Use the free trial of Usedesk to give a try to a wonderful process of automation—make the future of your business bright!

Karen Davies

Educational writer

I help businesses create impactful online courses that inspire learning and growth.

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