The Value of Automation
As an MSP company, you’ve got top-tier tech tools at your fingertips. Automation has expanded in efficiency and sophistication to the point where AI bots can have a conversation with customers who never even realize they’re talking to a machine. While such automation isn’t possible in all areas of operation, in terms of communication through email, there’s a lot you can do.
Tactics to Facilitate Effective Automation
Don’t be afraid to experiment with automation or seek consultation from groups who make it their mission to help MSPs maximize customer service. Generally, when it comes to inquiries regarding operational functionality, or requesting assistance, the following automated tactics can make things easier for everyone:
Respond Immediately to Customer Inquiries Using Automated Replies
When a customer has a question about services, asks for help, or any other category automated systems can recognize and delineate, it’s good to have an automated response queued up. The sophistication of your automated system can be something hard to design. You might, for example, put different sorts of text boxes on a contact page; one for issues, one for sales inquiries, or whatever best fits your situation. From there, automated responses will be automatically tiered to match the subject matter of customer questions.
Utilize Surveys to Determine Customer Satisfaction
As you automate, your MSP company should also automate survey delivery to contact lists. You’re only going to get a certain percent of customers to reply, so you’ll need to tier responses in a way that extends the “weight” of reply ratios.
If you have 1,000 customers in your database, and 50 reply to your survey, you can appropriate associated percentages. So if 40 people were “positive” toward question “A”, and 10 were “negative”, then you’ve got 80% satisfaction with whatever was on the survey.
Fast Responses, and Saved Replies
Responses need to be fast, and whatever replies come from customers need to be saved for future reference. Certain responses don’t need you to address them beyond automated emails. However, you still want to keep the responses for future reference in the event a customer is dissatisfied with some sort of automated message.
Even inconsequential messages should be retained. Doing this properly may well require putting together an archive database new customers are entered into automatically. Respond fast, save customer messages.
Automated Operations Customers Appreciate
As an MSP company, it’s important to optimize how you handle things like email inquiries. Automated replies are a good way to do that; just be sure you respond quickly, save replies, and send out surveys at intervals to assure customers are pleased with what you’re doing. Often, automation that sends customers to resources that will help can overcome a majority of small issues. Altogether, such tactics should help reduce unnecessary communication, expand customer satisfaction, and preserve your budget overall.
