Do I Need a Contact Centre? AI and Automation for SMEs

How AI and Automation helps Small and Medium Businesses to expand customer care

Growth is critical to the success of any business and as the Institute of Customer Service research has repeatedly shown, customer service levels are inextricably linked to business returns so it makes sense to make customer care a priority.

However, limited resources often restrict the ability for smaller businesses to provide comprehensive customer support. With fewer than 10% of all UK businesses supported by a customer contact or call centre the majority of brands begin by managing inbound enquiries and customer transactions themselves.  With limited resources in-house, this often leads to inconsistent customer experience and therefore risks brand reputation and profitability.  

Can SME's compete with large enterprises when it comes to customer experience?

Enterprise-sized businesses are already heavily investing in AI and automation platforms to improve their customer experience (CX), and many Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) providers are building AI into their products to help. However, these solutions are often costly and too cumbersome to implement for most growing businesses.

Therefore, unless you have large budgets and in-house technology expertise how can you go about improving customer service and increase your ability to compete with leading brands? In the UK there are well over 200,000 businesses classified as Small and Medium Businesses, and while they may not have the scope or need to use traditional contact centre technology, they do want to improve customer experience and to provide a great CX, whether managing customer enquiries, providing support, being more proactive with web visitors, or automating order processing or renewals.

How AI and Automation expands customer service channels for growing businesses

In this situation, Digital or AI Assistants can add significant value, enabling businesses to enhance their customer service without the overhead of outsourcing to a call centre.  The key lies in flexible solutions which can be tailored to fit the unique needs of each business, whether connected to a call centre or simply routing priority enquiries to a mailbox, providing a cost-effective way to manage customer interactions effectively in-line with customer expectations.

Customer service automation, including both online messaging and phone calls can help growing businesses to:

• Offer round-the-clock assistance with the ability to escalate to an employee based on levels of importance.
• Maintain personalised interactions for each customer ensuring that the response is specific to their individual needs.
• Deliver instant responses whether through messaging/chat or voice calls avoiding the need for additional actions.
• Track every interaction to understand your customer requests and predict future trends.

More intelligent AI Assistants can also support sales and marketing teams by providing an 'AI sales assistant', tracking orders, checking stock availability or even recommending related products or services - they can also take secure payments and confirm bookings online.

Help to identify the most urgent or important enquiries

By implementing smart automation and AI tools for customer service, growing businesses can avoid spending precious time answering repeat customer queries. Not only does this improve customer satisfaction ratings, but also leads to wide ranging operational benefits:

• Reduce response times, leading to more engaged and loyal customers.
• Maintain consistency in service quality across all touchpoints – there are no ‘off days’ or missed follow-ups.
• Direct important interactions straight to an advisor for a live conversation.
• Gather valuable insights from customer interactions to inform business decisions, including customer surveys and feedback.
• Increase self-service options for customers who prefer to find answers independently

The value of this approach for smaller businesses also lies in its adaptability, AI and automation solutions can be tailored to reflect your brand, tone of voice, sector-specific needs, and unique customer base.

Self-service, while maintaining a personal touch

It's important the growing businesses choose technologies which are easy to manage by their existing team, augmenting their capabilities rather than replacing them. Enabling your team to manage and maintain the tools themselves allows you to maintain the personal touch that sets your business apart, while significantly expanding your capacity to serve customers.

In today's competitive environment, the ability to provide exceptional customer service can be the differentiator that sets you apart, builds your brand and business reputation and keeps customers loyal.  

By leveraging automation and AI, even small and medium businesses can meet and even exceed their customer expectations without breaking the bank. For more information, or to discuss the individual needs of your business (of any size) please get in touch.

Take a look at our infographic How Small & Mid-sized Organisations can Transform Customer Service