What makes for a good customer experience? Speed. Convenience. Consistency. Empathy. Every customer service team recognizes these values ​​but still often fails to provide frictionless support, negatively impacting user retention levels. In this article, we identify the main problems that contact centers face and how integrating technology can solve them to achieve better results with less effort. In increasingly competitive markets and industries, customer service is one of the main pillars to sustain business growth if we consider that 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a good experience. To give it even more significance, according to a Salesforce report, 80% of customers say that “the experience a company provides is just as necessary as its products or services”.  Under this scenario, a third of the companies that gave a low priority to investing in customer experience areas before Covid-19 now plan to invest more in those, 35% plan to add more services to their channels, while 29% plan to invest more in agile solutions. Challenges that arise With the increased use of mobile devices and digital channels, users increasingly demand quick and efficient responses. Here are 4 of the main challenges that contact center teams face and that affect the organization’s results: <ol><li>Slow response and resolution times. The workforce can be overwhelmed by a high influx of tickets, which affects the quality of the service provided and, consequently, implies a risk to the company&#39;s image. Not only must the speed of delivery of response be improved, but also its efficiency.</li><li>Increase in customer support tickets. The most valuable resource available to the contact center team is time. Therefore, when the business is expanding and the flow of user visits and inquiries grows, it is advisable to incorporate automated processes to solidify the foundations that will allow the company to be more efficient in its costs and operations. Furthermore, having available responses and automated processes to major customer pain points is important to anticipate demands and resolve them promptly. </li><li>Lack of insights. Whether it is the number of solved cases per agent per week or CSAT scores, being able to track and measure how the contact center team is doing and the perceived value from the customer is essential for any organization looking to stand out for its service. The increase in the volume of inquiries may affect the ability of companies to measure the quality of service provided by the contact center. </li><li>Inconsistency across channels. An 11-star customer service seeks to reduce to the minimum the pain points of its clients. Your company should aim to provide 360 consistent user ​​experiences, so if your organization is adopting new communication channels it may be a good time to incorporate a platform that centralizes communications and gives your agents an easy way to respond to incoming messages.</li></ol> Faced with these challenges, the automation of contact center processes represents a necessity for companies that are growing and, consequently, receiving more and more questions from their customers.   What is contact center automation? Contact center automation is the connection of departments, systems, and people to lay the foundation for innovation in customer support. It allows the generation of detailed reports and also captures, prioritizes, routes, scales, and monitors business processes, in an integral way. Ultimately, contact center automation accelerates and scales customer service by synchronizing data in real-time, streamlining manual processes, and empowering customers to solve end-to-end issues by themselves.  The benefits of contact center automation using virtual assistants Virtual assistants play a fundamental role in the customer service strategy since they offer a more efficient interaction and facilitate the handling of a greater volume of conversations. Companies can monitor every action and conversation to optimize service flows and try to provide an increasingly better service. An intelligent virtual assistant on social media, app, or desktop can solve the most recurring problems and thus reduce the waiting times of a user, increasing their overall satisfaction. The integration of this type of technology makes it possible to combine self-management with human service, allowing agents to intervene only in those cases that are necessary. At Hikko, we automate customer service processes with proprietary products that seamlessly integrate with Salesforce Service Cloud and allow clients to solve up to 82% of transactions automatically, reducing waiting time and costs by +50%.  In sum, automation drives innovation and efficiency. It&#39;s key to ensuring that customers and prospects receive consistent service to solve their needs and questions fast and simply. The optimization of the support during customer experience journeys allows an organization to detect opportunities for improvement, achieve better results with less effort, and, ultimately, have more satisfied customers.

4 customer service challenges that can be solved through contact center automation

Customer retention has become a central issue for brands. The market proves that it is more profitable to prevent a client from switching to the competition than to attract a new one. But according to data from ThinkJar, this is not an easy task: retaining the current customer is seven times more difficult than winning one.  One of the most important metrics for marketing and customer service and experience teams is the churn rate. Customer churn rate is the percentage of customers who stopped using the product or service of a company, during a given period. If it is the responsibility of the marketing leader to attract new customers, the service and experience teams have the task of keeping them satisfied. This is why loyalty and satisfaction programs have gained greater relevance in the agendas and budgets of companies. What does reducing churn mean: it means finding ways to reduce the rate at which customers stop doing business with a company over a given period of time. In this regard, 40% of the companies plan to expand investments aimed at retaining their customers, according to Invesp. The advantages of focusing on strategies to reduce customer churn rate are multiple. Current consumers are 50% more likely to pay for a new product or service from the company they are already users of. Furthermore, 80% of a company&#39;s future profitability depends on its current customer base. Virtual assistants: allies in the retention strategy To work on customer retention, it is necessary to understand the reasons why consumers stop being frequent users of a brand. One of the main factors is poor customer service. The attention that a company pays to an inconvenience that a client is facing is decisive for the continuity of its relationship with the public. Consumers are no longer loyal to a brand simply because of the features of a product or the price strategy. Nowadays, they base their loyalty on the experience they receive, according to Microsoft&#39;s &quot;State of Global Customer Service&quot; report. For this reason, 68% of consumers say they are willing to pay more for products and services from a brand that provides good service, according to Gladdy&#39;s “Customer Service Expectations Survey”. A strategy that will help your company better retain its users and reduce customer churn rate is the incorporation of virtual assistants into customer service processes. The implementation of virtual assistants makes it easier for users to provide answers and solve problems with greater speed and convenience, avoiding long waiting times. At the same time, it allows customers to use different digital channels as self-service platforms to automate complex transactions and processes. At Hikko, we help organizations from different industries to create digital experiences through the implementation of virtual assistants for customer service, which have automated interactions by up to 82% and reduced the waiting time by 50%.  With our consultative method, supported by proprietary technology easily integrated with the world-class Salesforce platform, our team is able to provide specific metrics at each stage of the customer journey, allowing the detection of opportunities for improvement and strengthening the quality of service.  Better service will result in better customer experiences which will lead to more brand recommendations, a reduction in churn rate, and revenue growth according to a report by Bain &amp; Company that establishes that by increasing the customer retention rate by 5%, a company&#39;s profits can increase between 25% and 95%.

How to reduce client churn through better customer service

As climate change becomes one of the most urgent challenges of our time, more companies are taking steps to reduce their environmental impact. Rodrigo Capdevielle, the CEO, points out that Hikko has become carbon neutral by neutralizing the CO2 emission of both the company and our team. We were chosen by Nexos+1, a platform working for Climate Action in Latin America, as a successful reference case from Uruguay in the LATAM Business Climate Action Report. This milestone demonstrates Hikko&#39;s commitment to sustainability and its role as a leading company in the fight against climate change. What does it mean to be Carbon Neutral? It means that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions generated by our company are fully offset by actions that reduce or eliminate equivalent emissions elsewhere. Measurement of CO2 emissions There are three levels or scopes to understanding companies emissions:   SCOPE 1: Direct EmissionsThose that came from activities owned or controlled by an organization.  Direct emissions are principally the result of the following types of activities: • Generation of electricity, heat, or steam.• Transportation of materials, products, waste, and employees.• Fugitive emissions. • Physical or chemical processing.  SCOPE 2: Indirect EmissionsThose released into the atmosphere are associated with the consumption of purchased electricity, heat, steam, and cooling. These indirect emissions are a consequence of an organization&#39;s energy use but occur at sources not owned or controlled. SCOPE 3: Other Indirect EmissionsThose that are a consequence of actions that occur at sources not owned or controlled and cannot be classified as Scope 2 emissions. Examples of Scope 3 emissions are business travel by means not owned or controlled by an organization, waste disposal, or materials or fuels an organization purchases. True Impact  Hikko has gone beyond the traditional measurement and developed a calculator that allows one to obtain each individual carbon footprint. This initiative widens the extension of Scope 3 and has enabled more accurate and detailed measurement of the CO2 emissions of each member of the company. <h1>In 2022, we generated and neutralized our footprint of 346 tons of CO2. 84 tons were issued by the company and the remaining 262 were issued by our team. </h1> Sophia Zeballos, Hikko&#39;s Sustainability Manager, underlines the importance of measuring, analyzing, and reporting on our Carbon Footprint is a crucial step that we, as companies, must take in the battle against climate change. Now more than ever, we need innovative solutions, with the IT industry playing a key role and leading the way. Our Scope 3 extension, which includes the footprint of our entire team, serves as a remarkable demonstration of this. Achieving carbon neutrality for the second year is a significant achievement for Hikko. It is proof of our strong commitment to sustainability and environmental protection. With this, Hikko demonstrates that companies can take an active role in the fight against climate change. Hikko will continue to be a role model in reducing CO2 emissions and pursuing a greener and more prosperous future.

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