Have you wondered, should you be automating all the communication that goes out to your end customers, or should you actually be providing all the human personalized attention at the moment in the journey? I wish automation was the one spot answer to everything that you can and you should automate. For example- All the mundane communication that goes out to the customers. BUT it’s not that easy. In this article, we try to answer whether automation or personalization in customer success is the way forward.
It makes sure that it is consistent, it’s delivered on time, all that is fantastic but is that going to solve all the desired actions that you want your customers to take? Will that communication translate into that?
Fundamental Goal
Before we talk about the solution of should we automate, or should we not that fundamentally will depend on what exactly is the behavior that we are trying to achieve, what are we trying to solve. So, if you really look at it, you’re fundamentally trying to educate the customer, whether it’s a new user, a new customer whose onboarding just started. And with that education, on the other hand, you’re trying to see if the education is going to work.
For example, if you drop a customer an email on how to set up a dashboard, how to configure a campaign, how to set up a new deal depending on what your technology does has that translated into true product adoption. If that is the end goal, sending out communication simply cannot be treated as onboarding or communication complete or job done.
What you fundamentally should be looking for is that we initiate this journey of sending communication out, and this could be self-served which is great. Whether you’re pushing the right videos, you’ve created the right resources, the right content, which will enable customers to self onboard. But when to provide human intervention depends on how far this automated journey is taking you.
Read, automation to drive customer retention.
Human Touch
We start automating with the right spirit that all the customers will succeed, self-serving, self onboarding itself with automation. If at any point in time it breaks. That is the moment we bring in human intervention. So, what is the right way of enabling customers? Is it 100% automation, or is it 100% personalized attention? An answer is a hybrid approach. We call it optimized human intervention: you automate everything and wherever or in whichever case, in whoever’s case it breaks, then comes human intervention.
Conclusion
You bring in human intervention on the track and then automated again. If it breaks, we need human intervention again and that is an optimized human intervention for customer success. You get the best of both worlds. You get the maximum mileage out of automation. At the same time, you’re able to get the maximum mileage out of your human interventions as well. Automation or personalization in customer success depends on so many different variables. Choose one that supports your business wisely.
What do you think? Have you tried a combination of human intervention and automation at the same time, let us know.
