Automated Customer Care System Problem Definition

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

One of the major problems with customer care service as one would imagine are the problems encountered by customers. That is not the case as the real problem with customer service is the customer service itself. Many organizations tend to believe that offering great products to customers or that low price factor on their products would ensure customer loyalty. But no, the absence of obstacles during service support encounters with the customers is what actually drives customer loyalty. The amount of effort a customer would expend in order to resolve a given issue with your organization is the primary driver for this loyalty. One major measure to this can be obtained by your customers the answering this question "How much effort did you personally put forth to handle your request?" as stipulated by the Customer contact council in their Customer Effort Score of 2008. [1] Customers want their issues e.g. support issues to be resolved as quick as possible and with less hassle involved. When your organization is able to actualize this, customers begin to become more loyal to the brand and organization at large.

Another major problem with customer care service is burn out. When there are too many customer issues to be resolved from various customers, the customer service representatives are overwhelmed by requests. This contributes to a longer wait for the customer and this frustrates them. Customers are at times made to wait for hours for even for the simplest issues that require quick resolutions. Some of the customer care representatives are poorly trained and do not fully understand how to deal with their daily tasks thus are more likely to make mistakes when resolving customer issues. It also takes longer for them to understand or figure out the problems that the customer is experiencing thus they take quite a while to identify and resolve the same. Their lack of concern and poor belief in the company’s products or services leads to poor customer service. When these employees are not motivated to love their work and care for customers, this will reflect on the type of service they offer.

All these problems stated can be handled by an automated customer care system. When you automate the whole process some of these shortcomings will be dealt with effectively. The system will a voice based mobile phone application where customers can speak directly to it, state their problem (problem with the products that the company offers) and be able to offer solutions to the customer in real-time by use of the Artificial Intelligence embedded into it. Companies can now only be concerned with creating better products and services.

ensuring success

Organizational innovation simply refers to finding new ways in which work can be organized, and accomplished in an organization to encourage and promote a competitive advantage. It can also be described as the exploitation of new ideas lending to the creation of new products or services. At the end of the day, the most crucial thing is that the innovations should be able to add value to the organization. This involves out of the box thinking to generate new ideas that bring the required changes that the organization needs.

product innovation and importance

The Automated Customer care system is a product innovation which entails introduction of a new product that a company never had initially. The customer care service will be considerably improved.

Many studies have confirmed that majority of businesses want to be more innovative. Innovation has become a major factor in influencing strategic planning of major corporations. Innovation leads to wealth creation and is essential for business success. When an organization is not able to innovate, it faces decline and extinction. [2] Many organizations are therefore adopting measures to strengthen their ability to innovate.

Innovation in an organization will also improve customer loyalty. Customer expectations drive the amount of innovation. Customers nowadays are more informed and know where to get better products or services. If an organization doesn’t offer that, they will quickly jump ship.

With this innovation in place, my organization will be able gain a competitive advantage over other rest in the market. This innovation will be able to completely differentiate the products offered by my company with those of the competition when it comes to customer case service. Our customers will have a smoother customer care service experience which will keep us in business. This innovation will increase the standard of living, provide opportunities and improve the lives of the customers and company employees. [3] This innovation will also be booster to my portfolio and a crucial milestone in my career.

impact on results

Improved Market Share – Tough times call for innovation. With this innovation my organization will be an aggressive competitor thus leading to increased market share. More customers will jump ship to our camp because we offer better products and services in comparison to our competitors.

Competitive Advantage – This innovation will make our company aggressive competitors thus enabling us gain that competitive edge.

Increase Customer Loyalty – Brand loyalty will be realized as our companies will be offering better products and services than our competition. Customers will be become more loyal to the company as the service delivery will be excellent.

Improvement of Service Delivery – this innovation will smoothen our customer care service.

Reduce Company Expenditure on Salaries – The Company will not require many customer care representatives as the process will be automated thus cutting on salary costs.

the innovation

The system is an intelligent customer care service assistant. It is voice based mobile phone application where customers can speak directly to it, state their problem (problem with the products that the company offers) and be able to offer solutions to the problems the customer is facing in real-time by use of the Artificial Intelligence embedded into it. The application will make use of natural language processing and computational linguistics to understand what the customer says, look up into its knowledge base and be able to offer a solution specific to their problem (same if not a better solution a customer care representative would offer). [4] The application will answer questions and also give recommendations to the customers.

creating customer value

The system will be able to resolve customer issues faster thus adding value to the customer. Customer issues will be resolved with less hassle involved. Customers’ lives will be improved as they will enjoy the products and services offered by my organization more than ever before.

The quality of customer service will also be improved. The system will be very intelligent and will give accurate solutions and recommendations to the customers.

implemetation process and measure of imPact

The Pilot approach implementation will be used. [5] The idea will be to try out the system to a selected number of customers as the organization continues evaluating the performance and qualities of the system before committing it to the rest of the customers. The chosen customers will be able to query the system and give feedback on its efficiency and state whether it actually solves their problems. When the pilot test is complete the system will be extended to the rest of the customers. Customers will be in a position to give feedback to the company and this is what the company will use to measure impact.

reflection on learning

From the development of this innovation, I have been able to improve my creative thinking. I was able to use a wide range of creation techniques e.g. brainstorming while cooking up this innovation. I was able to elaborate, analyze and refine my own ideas in order to maximize on my creativity. I was also able visualize how an innovation can be actualized in a real-life environment.