60 per cent of consumers would rather use self-service than interact with a live customer service agent, according to Macro 4's research. However as organizations rely more on automation and self-service to manage costs, it's essential to retain the ability to personalize customer experiences at scale.
Even when a company is handling many thousands or even millions of customer interactions, its automation and self-service technology needs to be flexible enough to respond to each customer's individual circumstances. Research by McKinsey & Co suggests that 71 per cent of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions (67 per cent are frustrated when this doesn't happen).
Our video below showcases how the latest features in Macro 4's digital process orchestration platform, Columbus Central, make it easier to do just that, taking the example of a fictional utility company whose customers are using self-service to submit their meter readings on the company website.
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Powered by Columbus, the utility company has set up an automated process to guide customers step by step on how to enter their meter reading - as well as how to upload an image of that reading. That's all fine if everything goes smoothly. However, the video demonstrates how new Columbus features enable the automated system to respond if things don't go as expected: when a fictional customer, James, enters an incorrect meter reading.
Behind the scenes, the company has configured Columbus to trigger an internal check that uses AI to compare the image of the meter reading with the reading entered by the customer. If they don't match, it automatically sends a personalized follow-up message to the customer to re-enter the reading. And if they're still struggling, the system escalates to a human agent to help resolve the issue.
In this case, when Columbus picks up on James' meter reading error, it adds an action to the support dashboard requesting the customer service team to manually verify the reading. The customer service agent sees the action notification of the dashboard and enters the correct reading which automatically sets off an email to James confirming that his meter entry has been updated.
The problem has been sorted quickly and smoothly with minimal additional effort required from James or the customer service team.
Dynamically adapting automating interactions 'in the moment'
This is just one example of the power of Columbus Central's latest functionality. The important takeaway is it gives organizations the ability to adapt all manner of automated processes 'in the moment' to deliver personalized interactions - and this can be achieved very quickly without making costly system changes.
Columbus Central helps organizations manage automated interactions at scale between diverse systems, people and channels, whether processing customer requests or delivering targeted, personalized communications. It can help automate and personalize high-volume processes; adapt dynamically to customer and employee responses; and increase efficiency and customer satisfaction.
For more information about Columbus Central or how to get the most from its latest new features, click here.