Chatbots in Customer Service: 8 Reasons for High Standards

Chatbots in customer service are a growing trend since 2020, as companies contend with the challenges of keeping customer satisfaction high with tighter teams. Despite some chatbot benefits to customers, many customers find chatbot customer service to be lacking. If you’ve ever spent time interacting with a virtual assistant like Alexa or Siri, you can probably relate:

“Hey Siri, call John.”

“Sure thing! Playing John Denver.”

While artificial intelligence and machine learning have made incredible strides over the past few years, they’re still not quite human. They can work well for simple queries that are plainly stated, but—as anyone who has ever worked in customer service knows—customers often have complex problems and struggle to communicate with them.

That human touch can make or break your business, and in this uncertain economic climate, customer expectations are higher than ever.

Customers want clear communication from chatbots

Let’s start with some good news: excellent customer service can solidify brand loyalty and ensure repeat business. In a 2022 survey of 2,000 shoppers by Verint, 88% of respondents said that excellent customer service would encourage them to make a repeat purchase and 82% said that excellent customer service would make them likely to recommend your brand to friends and family.

The flip side: 62% said they would be unlikely to make a repeat purchase if their customer service issues weren’t resolved in a single attempt. 

80% of consumers are frustrated with chatbot customer service, according to 2022 research by UJET. Other findings from UJET’s research:

• Chatbots failed for 78% of consumers, who were forced to then connect with a human.
• 63% of respondents said that their interaction with a chatbot did not solve their issue.
• 72% felt that chatbot customer service was a waste of time.
• 73% said that brands could significantly improve their customer experience by ensuring problems are resolved on the first contact.

At TextExpander, we know that chatbot customer service can bring many benefits, so we want to help you understand how to use them to their full potential—and how to make your human reps more effective while still applying the personal touch.

Many businesses deploy chatbots in customer service to save costs on personnel but are they really saving your business money if the majority of your customers’ needs go unresolved?

When should a chatbot hand off to a human agent?

A chatbot should hand off to a human agent as soon as it stops making progress: when the customer asks for a person, when the bot misreads the request twice, or when the issue is emotional, sensitive, or high stakes. The handoff should carry the whole conversation, so the customer never has to start over.

Handoff triggers to build into your bot

• The customer asks for a person. Words like “agent,” “human,” or “representative” should route the chat right away, without one more menu.
• The bot fails twice. Two “I didn’t understand that” replies in a row are a signal to stop guessing.
• The topic is sensitive. Billing disputes, cancellations, complaints, security concerns, and anything involving health or money deserve a person from the start.
• The customer is upset. Repeated messages, all caps, or words like “frustrated” or “ridiculous” call for empathy a script can’t fake.

How to hand off without making the customer start over

1. Pass the full transcript and any details the bot collected, such as order number and account email, to the agent.
2. Tell the customer a person is joining and roughly how long it will take.
3. Have the agent open by restating the problem in their own words, so the customer knows they were heard.
4. Tag the conversation so you can review why the bot handed off and improve it.

Step 3 is where agents lose the most time and consistency. With TextExpander, your team can save handoff openers, apologies, and next-step replies as shared Snippets, with fill-ins for the customer’s name and issue, and use them in any app you type in, on Mac, Windows, Chrome, iPhone, iPad, and Android. Our live chat scripts include ready-made openers to start from, and TextExpander for customer support shows how teams share them.

An alternative to chatbot customer service

What if you could give your human reps the power and efficiency of a chatbot? TextExpander makes it possible by supercharging your team’s responses. Our small TextExpander support team uses it to provide legendary customer support.

Don’t just take our word for it. The 73-person support team at WooThemes saved 693 work hours over the course of three months thanks to TextExpander. That adds up to over 86 8-hour work days.

How can TextExpander accelerate your customer support team? Let’s say one of your reps gets this inquiry from a customer:

“Hi, the tracker said the package arrived but it wasn’t on my door when I got home. I checked my ring cam and my neighbor picked it up, but she says she doesn’t know what I’m talking about! what do I do?”

Unfortunately, packages are lost every day, which is why your TextExpander administrator created a Snippet to easily handle that response. Try it for yourself!

This handles 99% of your lost package responses, but it doesn’t quite fit in this unfortunate situation. The beauty of TextExpander is that you can edit the text after expanding the Snippet to something like this:

Oh no, a porch pirate! Contact the authorities if you wish, but please don’t feud with your neighbor on our account. We will overnight you another one at no additional cost. We’ll add a signature requirement to ensure its safe arrival. If your neighbor fesses up, please let us know, but don’t worry about sending the extra one back.

Needless to say, you’re a fun and customer-first brand.

You can also take advantage of Fill-in and Optional fields to create customizable customer responses. Our support team uses these at TextExpander to automate workflows while retaining that human touch. Below is a screenshot demonstrating one of our support team’s more-complex Snippets for handling a common customer concern.

Here’s a video demonstrating how Fill-ins work:

With this Snippet, we can select and deselect the paragraphs that apply to the customer, and we have Fill-in fields for potentially problematic applications that could be causing the problem. With a Snippet like this, you can automate and standardize your team’s responses so they spend less time typing and more time helping customers.

If you decide to deploy a chatbot program later, you can then program it with these standardized and field-testing responses. And then even if your customer has to escalate beyond the bot, your human reps can quickly help your customer.

Try TextExpander yourself with a free account and discover what TextExpander can do for you and your team. When you’re ready, contact our sales team to supercharge your support team. With a Free plan and paid plans starting as low as $5 per user per month, billed annually, you’ll find TextExpander much more cost-effective than most chatbots.

Related resources

• ChatBot pricing
• DigitalGenius: Why Chatbots Don’t Solve all Customer Service Problems
• Forbes: Chatbots And Automations Increase Customer Service Frustrations For Consumers At The Holidays
• TextExpander 101 Webinar