Have you or a colleague ever said, “Why can’t our customers just READ THE WEBSITE? The answers are there!”

By Tanya Newhouse, Co-founder at Clevertar

Have you or a colleague ever said, “Why can’t our customers just READ THE WEBSITE? The answers are there!”

If you have, then maybe you or your team are fed up answering questions like, “Do I need a form for this?’ I must admit, answering questions like that would be annoying.

The other day I was speaking with one of our customer’s team members who said he ‘loved getting into the legislation to sort out a gnarly issue for a customer’.

He made the point that people with interesting questions (he’d love to tackle) often have to wait in the queue, sometimes giving up before they get an answer.

This person couldn’t wait to get an intelligent virtual agent to help customers with repeat questions — not because he’s lazy — so that he could spend more time on issues that he could solve through experience and knowledge.

Satisfaction in work is a strong motivator and, where customer demand for support outstrips resource availability, the case for automation is not difficult to make.

Yes, the machines are coming but most people I talk to aren’t threatened by them… they are excited automation will free them up to work on more ‘human’ and interesting work.