In a business environment where competition is stiff, a lot of focus is to create an excellent and consistent customer experience. This is because a good customer experience will help you retain and gain new customers. In contrast, buyers are likely to stop using a company’s services after experiencing bad customer service. Therefore, businesses cannot underestimate the importance of aligning their operations to meet customer needs.

Being consistent in delivering customer experience helps set expectations and build stronger relationships. It also gives new customers an idea of what to expect in your business––if it’s good, they’ll engage with your business, and if it’s not, they’ll look elsewhere.

One way to create a unique customer experience is through task automation. This is where most of the operations in the company require minimum human intervention, which makes it run more seamlessly. Task automation can be achieved by adopting smart new technology into your daily operations. Management software like this one from Jobber, which has been developed specifically for businesses in the landscaping industry, cleverly lets you deliver task automation in the areas where this can be applied, allowing you to integrate a personalized customer service framework around it.

Here’s how automation helps deliver a consistent customer experience:

1. Field service automation

Your field team is essential to your business if you are engaged in dispatching specialists or technicians to on-site locations or homes. They interact with your customers in real-time and effectively act as the front of your business. As such, they are the customer experience you are delivering. When everything is done manually such as customer information saved on printouts and the latest information such as job quotes not updated – the interaction can be a very frustrating one for all parties involved.

Field service task automation avoids duplicate entries and misplaced information. It significantly reduces errors by capturing all changes and updates within a system and making it accessible at the fingertips of each field service agent. Moreover, an automated system will remove any hurdles that a customer may face before receiving your service. For example, if a customer experiences technical errors, smart scheduling will dispatch the nearest field agent to work. This leads to more satisfied customers that you can follow up with afterwards as part of your larger marketing strategy. (1)

2. Customer service automation

Customer service automation intends to provide customer support through an automation system, such as chatbots and AI (Artificial Intelligence). This type of automation also helps minimize wait time since customers don’t have to wait for human support before they’re attended to. Also, the use of AI in automation works as a tool to increase the efficiency of service delivery by performing repetitive tasks. (2)

Here are some of the ways customer service automation improves customer experience:

• Faster resolution: Automating repetitive tasks enables your team to focus on complex customer issues. This enables agents to solve the issues much faster whenever the customer needs them.
• Consistency and reliability: Using AI in customer service eliminates errors caused by human bias, emotions, and fatigue. The system can also work consistently, increasing reliability for your customers.
• Promote self-service: Using chatbots can help customers fix issues on their own without requiring any agent interaction. The ability to solve some of their problems reduces delays, increasing satisfaction. (2)

3. Real-time updates on purchases

Real-time updates on your product availability and inventory management will notify your customers of the available products and whatever information they want. Moreover, real-time updates on product availability will ensure that you don’t miss replenishing your inventory at the right time, so there is less chance of products going out of stock.

If customers desire a particular product but can’t purchase it in your store as it is currently unavailable, they get frustrated and may well turn to your competitors to get what they want. Therefore, you must automate your business to have real-time updates on finished products so you can replenish them. When buyers find desired products, their customer experience is enhanced. (3)

4. Through data-driven decision making

The idea of big data has taken center stage in businesses as it drives decision-making. However, compiling, cleaning, and analyzing this kind of data is complex. Thus, automation is used to solve this challenge.

First, automation of customer touchpoints and interactions can help collect valuable customer information. Second, workflow analysis can help facilitate decision-making in the business since insights are shared in real-time with everybody in the company. With enough customer data automatically imported to visualization tools, decision-makers can understand customer behaviors better. So, a better decision about the company’s future is made since decision-makers are already aware of the things that need improvement. (4)

Conclusion

Customer experience remains a priority as it determines how customers will perceive your business. Delivering an excellent customer experience depends on many factors, but one of the common ways is through task automation. This article explores the different ways this can be achieved so that you can deliver a better customer experience to your customers.