Reduce Customer Support Costs with Cognitive Search

Customer support is probably one of the most challenging elements of business. Your support team is on the front-line working hard to help customers resolve their issues as quickly as possible.

Customers expect - and often demand – answers, and fast, whether it’s from a support rep or a self-service support solution. If their issues aren’t resolved in the time they think it should take, frustration kicks in and plans to move to the competitive solution start to take hold.

The High Cost of Customer Support

Resolving problems quickly is challenging for many support teams. With customer information spread across many systems, reps spend more time hunting for answers - making phone calls, checking different systems, sending emails, than they do actually talking to the customer.

With each support call taking too much time, support reps resolve fewer issues and customer frustration increases.

It’s not just customers who get frustrated. Service rep churn is high in customer support. In many cases they are using outdated tools that don’t provide them the information they need to support customers, but also dealing with large numbers of frustrated customers is stressful. High churn rates result in increased costs for onboarding new service reps and an inconsistent understanding of how to resolve customer issues as quickly as possible.

There’s another cost to support that some organizations don’t realize. When first-level service reps can’t solve simple problems quickly, they often turn to expert level resources too soon. Experts have deep product knowledge but are typically only brought in when issues are complex and require deep product expertise. When the higher levels of support get involved, the cost per issue goes up.

How Companies Can Reduce Support Costs

The answer to the challenges above is not to bring in more service reps. The answer is to focus on operational efficiencies by better equipping reps or online support tools with information and answers.

How can cognitive search solutions help?

• Give service reps a complete view of the customer and their interactions with your company. Add product or service information to the view and your reps are set. All the information they need in one place - no hunting for it. And, the AI-powered search system delivers answers, not just a list of results. This alone increases resolution time dramatically.
• If service reps can quickly deliver answers, you can look at optimizing your resources. Now, you are empowering lower-level reps to handle more complex problems, reducing your reliance on expert resources.
• Finally, the right cognitive solutions give service reps tools that are easy to understand and use. Think about personal tools like Google, Siri, and Alexa. Service reps would love to use tools that work like those they use in their personal life, giving them faster access to information and increasing their engagement and loyalty to you. The result? Lower churn rates.

Don’t Let Customer Support Down

Satisfied customers become loyal advocates for your brand. But even satisfied customers require help from your support team or self-service solutions at some point. You can’t afford to let them down with a poor service experience.

It’s very easy these days for customers to switch to a competitor. Giving service reps faster, complete access to customer and product information empowers them to solve issues efficiently and quickly, reducing customer and service rep frustrations. Cognitive search reduces your support costs.

Learn more about cognitive solutions for customer support by downloading our eBook, Why You Need Cognitive Search to Scale and Optimize Customer Support.