How to leverage automation for enhanced customer experience

Today, as many as 80% of companies that focus on improving the customer experience see an increase in revenue. The problem is that if you have 5000 customers, for example, manually personalizing every interaction with every customer is impossible.

Introducing: customer experience automation.

Customer experience automation is when companies use automation software to provide customers with a good experience. These applications do all the grunt work so you don’t have to. In this mini-guide, we’ll walk you through the benefits of automation and how you can use it to boost the customer experience.

Understanding customer experience automation

Also known as CX automation, customer experience automation refers to using software like chatbots, email newsletter applications, and ticket routing optimizers to personalize a customer’s experience with your brand.

A common example of customer experience automation is when you use email newsletter technology to automatically send emails to your subscribers. Or, you might be using a Customer Data Platform (CDP) to collect and analyze first-party data without doing much of the heavy lifting.

Benefits of customer experience automation

Interested in automating customer experience management? Great! Here are some benefits you’ll experience:

Improved customer engagement

Although humans can only work a certain number of hours per day, bots are available 24/7. They can provide support to customers in different time zones at any hour, improving omnichannel engagement.

Enhanced operational efficiency and cost savings

Leveraging workflow automation can also enhance operational efficiency by minimizing the friction between you and your customers. You won’t have to hire a team of data employees to collect and manage data. Simply download a CDP.

Increased customer retention and loyalty

Today, 71% of customers expect a personalized interaction with your brand. A few years ago, offering a personalized experience may be challenging. But with the power of automation, it’s simpler than ever.

For example, customer automation platforms allow you to:

• Build ads targeted to a specific customer segment
• Send product recommendations via email
• Create a personalized website experience

This ultimately increases customer retention and loyalty.

Accelerated sales and revenue growth

When you’re collecting customer feedback using chatbots, for example, and you know exactly what each segment of your audience wants, you ensure customer satisfaction. This results in accelerated sales and boosts your ROI of CX automation.

Strategies for implementing customer experience automation

Here are some strategies you can implement today to leverage the power of automation for enhanced digital customer experiences:

Setting clear goals

Do you want to use automation to gather customer feedback or answer customer support questions? Or, maybe you want to recommend products to customers that you think they’d like based on previous purchases.

Automation software can do many things, and this is why you want to set a clear business objective of what you want your automation software to do.

Mapping customer journeys and touchpoints

Once you have a clear goal, map out your customer journey and any key touchpoints. Customer journey mapping will help you understand where customers interact with your brand, and you can use all these interactions to reach your goal.

For example, let’s say you’re using chatbots for customer service automation. In that case, your key touchpoints might be your ecommerce website, Facebook, and Instagram store. You could integrate a chatbot with all these touchpoints and answer customer questions.

Selecting the right automation tools

We could probably write an entire post on choosing the right automation tools. However, here are a few quick-fire tips that’ll work regardless if you’re gathering feedback, sending emails, answering customer questions, or cleaning customer data:

• Request a demo before signing up to gain first-hand experience with the software
• Read customer reviews on Trustpilot
• Check if the application offers predictive analytics for CX and customer feedback automation
• Visit the pricing page to ensure the software fits your budget

Monitoring and measuring success

Good automation software should offer analytics tools to measure automation success. For example, if you implemented a chatbot to promote automation in customer service, it should tell you how many customers walked away from a conversation with their questions answered. 

Or, if you’re sending out surveys, your survey automation tool should say how many customers completed your survey and who started but didn’t finish.

Challenges and considerations in implementing customer experience automation

These are a few challenges you’ll likely face when introducing customer experience automation into your business:

Data privacy and security

Privacy and security are major concerns with automating the customer data collection and management process. The lack of human intervention can create weaknesses that cybercriminals would want to exploit. This is why storing customer data in a secure CDP is important.

Balancing automation with human touch

Regardless of how good it is, automation software won’t do everything for you, so you want to balance it with the human touch. Employees will still have to oversee everything, ensure processes run smoothly, and check you’re on track to reach your goals.

Integration with legacy systems

If you’re still using legacy systems inside your business, you want to see if your automation software is compatible with it. For example, if you have data stored inside an old Excel spreadsheet, your CDP should be able to extract these data points and build customer profiles with them.

Ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements

Nobody wants to face government data privacy penalties, which is why you should focus on meeting regulatory requirements like the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act). So when you’re automating the collection of terabytes worth of customer data, we recommend securing and organizing it inside a CDP.

Managing change and cultural shift

Introducing automation software into your business will always invite pushback from employees. This is commonly due to a lack of understanding of the role of AI in customer experience. So it’s a good idea to enroll them in training and reassure them that automation won’t completely replace their job.

Leverage customer experience automation with Lytics

Customers are connecting with your brand on so many touchpoints; website, email, social media, so leveraging automation is necessary for personalization in CX. If you’re looking to automate the data collection and management process, the Lytics CDP is for you. Lytics integrates with countless platforms like Shopify, Facebook Ads, and Google Ads, and uses your data to create customer-centric profiles that you can reference when making data-driven decisions.