How you treat customers can make or break your success.

By offering timely and effective help, you can ensure customers have a great experience and keep coming back.

However, delivering top-notch customer support isn’t easy. Support staff are often slowed down with repetitive tasks, leading to longer wait times and frustrated customers.

That’s where automation can help.

By automating routine tasks, you can free up your support team to focus on solving complex issues and giving customers personalized attention.

In this guide, we’ll discuss ways we can improve and automate the most important parts of customer support.

We’ll also highlight how SureTriggers can deliver support automation for almost any use case.

6 Ways To Automate Customer Support

Let’s explore 6 powerful strategies to streamline workflows, empower customers, and free up your team to focus on what matters most.

Self-Service Options

Tired of answering the same questions all the time?

Give your customer service team a break and empower customers to find answers on their own.

Here are 2 easy ways to automate support:

1. Build a Solid Knowledge Base

A knowledge base is a central hub of info about your product or service.

Think articles, tutorials, FAQs, and videos that can help by providing everything customers need to solve their own issues.

Benefits:

• Reduces support requests by giving customers self-service options
• Boosts customer satisfaction when they can find answers on their own
• Lowers support costs by reducing calls and emails

Tips for a User-Friendly Knowledge Base:

• Organize the content logically with clear headings and categories
• Make it easy to search so customers can quickly find what they need
• Keep everything up-to-date as things change
• Offer content in different formats like text, video, and step-by-step guides to cater to different learning styles

Tools To Do the Job:

• Free: Google Sites – Easy-to-use website builder with collaborative editing and mobile responsiveness.
• Freemium: Zoho Wiki – Create a structured knowledge base with searchable categories, version control, and access control features. Free plan with limited features.
• Paid: Confluence by Atlassian – Robust platform for knowledge management and collaboration. Offers powerful features like drag and drop editing, integrations with popular apps, and advanced analytics.

2. Automate Your FAQs

FAQs (frequently asked questions) are a classic self-service option, but you can take them to the next level by automating them.

This means creating a list of common questions and answers, then using software to prominently display them on your website or in your app.

How Automated FAQs Help Support:

• Customers can instantly find answers themselves
• Frees up your agents to handle more complex customer issues
• Reduces response times for those frequently asked questions

Best Practices for Effective FAQs:

• Identify the most common questions by looking at your support tickets and interactions
• Write the answers in clear, simple language that avoids technical jargon
• Organize the FAQs logically, with the most common questions at the top
• Use AI tools to suggest relevant FAQ articles based on user queries

Tools To Do the Job:

• Free: Freshdesk Helpdesk – Offers a basic built-in FAQ section with search functionality.
• Freemium: Help Scout – Lots of customization options and the ability to trigger relevant FAQs based on customer support tickets. Free plan with limited features.
• Paid: Smartloop – AI platform that automatically generates FAQs from existing customer support data, including emails and tickets. Offers features like chatbot integration and automated content updates.

By implementing these self-service options, you can empower your customers and streamline your customer support process.

Chatbots and Virtual Assistants: Tag-Teaming for Support Success

Next up, let’s chat about chatbots and virtual assistants.

Here’s how the dynamic duo can elevate your customer support:

1. Chatbots: Your Always-On Customer Support Teammates

Imagine having a tireless teammate who can answer questions 24/7 – that’s a chatbot.

These AI-powered programs can talk to customers through text or voice, giving them instant answers to common questions, order updates, and help with troubleshooting. Additionally, consider utilizing a text to speech online tool to further enhance your options by offering more customization to the costumers.

Advantages of Chatbots:

• Reduced wait times – Customers get answers quickly, freeing up your human agents to handle more complex issues
• 24/7 availability – Chatbots are always on duty, providing support around the clock
• Improved customer satisfaction – Faster answers mean happier customers
• Reduced support costs – Chatbots can handle a lot of basic inquiries, lowering your overall support costs

Tools To Do the Job:

• Free: Website builders and eCommerce platforms (e.g., Wix, Shopify) offer built-in chatbot functionality for basic FAQs and order tracking.
• Freemium: Messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger and Telegram offer chatbot creation tools with drag and drop interfaces and integration options. (e.g., ManyChat, Flow XO)
• Paid: Botsquad – Offers a user-friendly platform for building sophisticated chatbots with features like conversation branching, natural language processing (NLP) capabilities, and advanced analytics.

2. Virtual AI Assistants: Supercharged Customer Support

Think of virtual AI assistants (AI VAs) as super-powered chatbots. They have advanced capabilities that let them do a lot more.

AI VAs can understand complex questions, access customer data, and even provide personalized recommendations.

They can handle tasks like scheduling appointments, processing returns, and even solving moderately technical problems.

Implementing an AI chatbot for banks can streamline customer service processes, enhance user experience, and provide robust support for various banking operations, offering specialized financial solutions and real-time assistance.

How VAs Handle Complexities:

• Natural Language Processing (NLP): AI VAs can understand the nuances of human language, so they can grasp complex questions.
• Context awareness: AI VAs can access customer data and past interactions, so they can provide a more personalized and relevant support experience.
• Machine learning: AI VAs keep learning and improving with each interaction, getting better at handling complex issues over time.

Tools To Do the Job:

• Freemium: Ada by ServiceNow – Utilizes AI and machine learning to handle complex customer inquiries, even integrating with existing CRM systems (Free plan with limited features).
• Paid: IBM Watson Assistant – Powerful AI platform for building virtual assistants that understand complex questions, analyze customer data, and personalize interactions.
• Paid: Kore.ai – Provides a comprehensive platform for building and deploying virtual assistants with advanced features like sentiment analysis, omnichannel support, and multilingual capabilities.

When chatbots and virtual assistants work together, they can create a smooth and efficient customer support experience.

This frees up your human team to focus on the high-touch situations that need that personal touch, as well as building strong relationships with your customers.

Workflow Wizards: Automation Tools Take Center Stage

Now let’s dive into the world of automation tools. These handy software programs can streamline your customer support workflows in several ways:

1. Automated Ticket Creation and Routing

Imagine a world where customer inquiries automatically turn into tickets that get routed to the best agent to resolve them faster.

That’s the magic of automation.

Here’s how it works:

• Customers submit inquiries through channels like email or your website
• Automation tools grab these inquiries and turn them into tickets, pre-filling in the relevant details like the customer’s name and the issue category
• Based on keywords, customer data, or pre-set rules, the ticket is automatically sent to the most suitable agent or team (like a billing specialist or the tech support team)

Benefits of Automatic Routing:

• Faster resolutions – Tickets get to the right agent quickly so customers get their issues solved faster
• Improved agent efficiency – Agents can focus on solving problems instead of creating and assigning tickets manually
• Fewer errors – Manual routing can lead to misdirected tickets, but automation ensures everything goes to the right place

Tools To Do the Job:

• Freemium: Zendesk Support – Offers basic automation features for ticket creation and routing based on predefined rules. Free plan with limited features.
• Paid: Freshservice – Provides advanced automation capabilities, including automatic ticket creation from various channels, intelligent routing based on AI and machine learning, and automatic assignment based on agent skills and workload.
• Paid: Help Scout – Offers a user-friendly platform for setting up automated workflows, including ticket creation rules, routing based on tags and labels, and automatic notifications for agents.

2. Canned Responses: Speedy and Consistent Support

Ever feel like you’re answering the same questions over and over? Canned responses can be a lifesaver.

Pre-written templates can address common issues, letting your agents respond quickly and keep things consistent.

Here’s how canned responses streamline support:

• Save time – Agents don’t have to retype the same answers, freeing them up to handle more complex inquiries
• Ensure consistency – All customers get the same accurate information, no matter which agent they talk to
• Personalize when possible – Canned responses can often be customized with the customer’s name for a more personal touch

Tools To Do the Job:

• Free: Many popular email clients (e.g., Gmail, Outlook) offer built-in features for creating and managing canned responses.
• Freemium: Zendesk Support – Includes a basic canned response functionality within the ticketing system. Free plan with limited features.
• Paid: Tidio Live Chat – Allows creating and managing canned responses specifically for live chat interactions, with features like response shortcuts and personalization options.

By using automation for ticket creation and routing, plus relying on canned responses, you can really improve the efficiency and consistency of your customer support.

Simplify Support With SureTriggers

While we outlined a selection of automation tools for everyday tasks, our very own SureTriggers can do all those things and more!

Stop juggling all those separate customer support tools – SureTriggers is your all-in-one solution that connects everything seamlessly.

• Easy drag and drop: No coding required, you just drag and drop to build automations.
• Connect your apps: SureTriggers talks to all your favorite tools, from email to live chat. It’s like a translator, making them work together smoothly.

SureTriggers Makes Customer Support a Breeze

• Less busywork: Automate repetitive tasks and free up your team to focus on what really matters
• Faster responses: Instantly answer common questions to keep customers happy

You can focus on building great relationships with customers, while SureTriggers handles all the behind-the-scenes work.

Real-World Rescue: SureTriggers and Order Tracking

Imagine “Activewear Plus,” an online fitness store that’s booming but struggling with a constant flood of “Where’s my order?” inquiries.

Their customer support team is totally overwhelmed, response times are lagging, and customer satisfaction is taking a hit.

Here’s how SureTriggers streamlines order tracking:

1. A customer submits an order status question by email or on the website.
2. SureTriggers retrieves the order details like the current status and delivery date.
3. It then personalizes a pre-written email response, putting in the customer’s name, order number, and all the order info.
4. Finally, the personalized email gets sent straight to the customer with the info they need.

The result? A win-win for everyone:

• Reduced workload for the support team: No more repetitive tasks, so they can focus on complex customer issues.
• Faster response times: Customers get instant order updates, so no more waiting for replies – that boosts satisfaction.
• Increased efficiency: SureTriggers automates the whole process, streamlining operations and letting the team focus on higher-value interactions.

SureTriggers shows that customer support automation isn’t just a buzzword – it’s a real-world solution that delivers serious benefits.

The Human Touch: Why Automation Isn’t a Replacement

Automation is a total game-changer for customer support, but it’s important to remember it’s a teammate, not a replacement for real human interaction. Here’s why:

• Complexities need a personal touch: For tricky issues that need in-depth troubleshooting or just a little empathy, human agents are irreplaceable. Their ability to understand the nuances of a situation and adapt to offer personalized solutions is crucial.
• Building rapport is key: Solid customer relationships are all about trust and mutual understanding. Human interaction allows agents to really connect with customers on a deeper level, which fosters loyalty and brand advocacy.

Automation excels at streamlining repetitive tasks and giving instant answers.

This frees up your agents to focus on the human side of customer support – handling complex situations, offering personalized solutions, and building strong relationships.

It’s the perfect combination to provide exceptional service and to keep customers happy.

Conclusion: Automate Smart, Keep the Human Touch

Customer support needs to be efficient, but things like repetitive tasks and limited resources can really hold you back.

That’s where automation comes in as a strategic solution.

The key is to integrate automation strategically, so you create a future-proof system that delivers amazing service, empowers your team, and keeps customers happy.

So if you’re ready to make a change, start exploring automation options and see the transformative power of a well-designed customer support strategy.

Automate what you can, but make sure to keep that personal human touch!

Improve Your Customer Support with SureTriggers – Start Free Trial Now!