Learn More About Conversational Support Software
What is Conversational Support Software?
Conversational support platforms organize all previous business-customer interactions around the customer instead of the incident. These platforms help create a continuous, insightful dialogue across all communication channels without sacrificing human interactions. Conversational Support accomplishes this by coordinating all previous dialogue on the omnichannel customer service into one coherent narrative of customer needs and pain points.
Depending on the size and structure of a business, a contact center may involve a number of specialized service experts who work varying hours. The intelligent messaging apps in this category enable customer service departments to streamline operations and centralize ongoing customer relationships. Within these advanced platforms, customer communication becomes a single string of interactions across various channels rather than a series of individual calls or messages. This ensures genuine relationships are formed and interactions are as helpful as possible. As customers consider new purchases or encounter issues with their current products or services, they can seamlessly jump back into a conversation right where they left off.
What are the Common Features of Conversational Support Software?
The platforms featured in this category are diverse offerings, each with its own unique tool sets that make them valuable virtual assistants to support teams. A number of these tools also fall into additional categories, with features that can help teams engage with customers in various ways. The following are some prominent features that define this emerging software space:
Unified conversations: A consumer brand in the digital age has a significant number of channels for interacting with customers, including email, social media, and chatbots on the company’s website. At different points in their experience, customers may choose to engage on multiple different channels based on personal preferences or other factors like email, SMS, or a traditional phone call. Conversational support software allows companies to monitor the differing methods used by individual customers and bring these separate threads together. Service team members can then engage through the singular conversation and broadcast individual messages to specific customer-facing channels at different times based on client preferences. These continuous support conversations make the service process more focused around genuine interactions rather than support tickets.
Additionally, several products in this category include conversational AI technology, which assists with the automation of responses or proactive messaging at various points in the customer journey. Administrators can configure AI platforms to track customer actions or sentiment in real time and engage the customer with helpful messages at the optimal time and during news alerts or product updates. These unique marketing tools use natural language processing (NLP) software to deliver human-like messages and correctly identify and respond to a customer’s message. Automated discussions are tracked in the unified conversation streams alongside the rest of a customer’s interactions with the service team.
Smart routing: Conversational support platforms include smart, skill-based routing features that help to distribute conversations to the employees most qualified to handle them. This can further streamline the end-user experience and save teams time and effort with internal routing. To deploy these features, service managers build out smart routing flows based on the expected customer scenarios and the employees best suited to handle customer issues. These settings can be updated as employees switch roles or gain experience. Intelligent routing tools ensure the most qualified employees handle the most critical conversations, ensuring customers receive the best and expedited answers to their questions. These features are especially useful for larger support teams, allowing conversations to flow smoothly without delays or incomplete interactions.
Customer knowledge: AI, data extraction, and integrations with other customer data systems help make relevant customer knowledge available during every conversation. When a service team member engages with a customer, these platforms display unified data such as a customer’s order history, product preferences, and contact information. This knowledge can help support specialists get to know a customer when joining a conversation, determine the best approach, and offer personalized assistance. Customer profiles on these platforms can be updated manually or automatically.
What are the Benefits of Conversational Support Software?
The following are some key benefits offered by conversation support software that can help users in several ways:
Framing: A key benefit of conversational support software is that by orienting customers’ past conversations, metadata, and sentiment, businesses can approach the customer experience with a cohesive narrative. In doing so, businesses make the customer conversations more organic and genuine in their interactions.
Cohesion: Using conversational support software, a customer feels as if they are communicating with the business as a singular entity rather than multiple agents across separate departments bouncing the customer around until the correct answer is found.
Automation: Conversational support software uses information from previous interactions and organizes it all around the customer using algorithmic or AI-driven automated procedures. This helps to select which data points are relevant for each engagement. Time and costs are reduced since customer service agents no longer need to sift through cases for context.
Synergy: Integrations into other sales and marketing tools can lead to proactive actions to deliver timely messages and guide customers through purchases, upgrades, or modifications.
Who Uses Conversational Support Software?
Customer service teams: Customer service teams are the front-line workers that directly engage with customers on pain points and resolutions for all incoming incidents. Using conversational support software, customer service experts create accounts and information about their roles, then administrators and department leads assign different permissions or responsibilities within the support workflows. Over time, with manual and intelligent updates based on performance, roles, and customer relationships, employees can be assigned different conversations. Collectively, the service team ensures each customer is given equal treatment within the engagement platform and wherever else their experience takes them.
Marketing teams: Marketing teams are responsible for maintaining the image of the business in a positive light while reaching out to prospects, investors, and customers. Customer data gathered on engagement platforms can be automatically transferred to existing CRM software and other platforms where this information may be useful. These powerful platforms are designed to fulfill the customer engagement strategy.
Software Related to Conversational Support Software
The modern buying experience can involve several technology solutions on both the company’s and customer’s sides. This can involve every step of the shopper’s journey, from the initial marketing to the ongoing support for products and services. The following are some solutions that can work hand in hand with conversational platforms to deliver a complete customer experience from beginning to end.
Live chat software: Live chat software allows brands to engage customers visiting the company’s website with pop-up chat boxes on the home page. These popular tools create a two-way dialogue with visitors that can translate to collecting new leads or influencing in-the-moment purchasing decisions. Millions of brands use live chat solutions to create personalized experiences directly on their website. Conversations on these platforms can be tied into larger conversation streams on conversational support platforms. In many cases, live chat conversations begin with automated messages but are transferred to live agents if and when website visitors decide to engage with the platform. In some instances, conversational AI enables live chat interactions that are automated, up until complex questions or inquiries require a support specialist to get involved.
Help desk software: Help desk software involves the more traditional, ticket-based execution of customer support interactions. As new inquiries are received from sources such as email or phone calls, details about the customer and their questions are saved on a digital ticket. Tickets are then organized in a support queue and assigned to service experts based on urgency or the topics discussed. Customer support based on help desk tickets allows issues to be resolved at a steady pace, with service agents reaching back out to customers once they determine the correct course of action and can remedy the situation. Following the subsequent interactions, tickets are either closed or updated and rerouted in cases where the issues remain unresolved. Any details related to customer issues can be used toward updating their account histories in CRM tools or other appropriate platforms used by sales, marketing, or customer service teams.
Customer self-service software: Several of the tools featured in this category integrate with or offer features of customer self-service software, with some being featured in both categories simultaneously. This software space includes tools that allow website visitors and customers to access valuable information and assistance with troubleshooting without the need for contacting an agent. This process often involves an interactive FAQ or other digital portals where customers answer questions or describe their situation and are directed to the most relevant insights. Customer self-service platforms enable businesses to offer 24/7 support for many common inquiries or situations their customers may encounter. In some cases, these solutions allow customers to modify their accounts or make purchases with automated assistance. These products may integrate with conversational support tools or other customer support platforms so live agents can intervene when necessary to help resolve issues.
Social customer service software: These days, social networks are often the setting for significant interactions between customers and their favorite brands, as well as a source for valuable company or product information and related discussion. Social customer service software helps consumer-facing brands interact with social media users who engage with a company’s posts or mention its products or services in their personal feeds. For instance, if a person on Facebook writes a negative review on the company profile, the support team can respond to the post and create and track a support ticket. This allows social media communications to be given the same care and attention as direct customer service calls. These tools can also help mitigate the brand’s reputation on the social network and spin the complaint into a positive interaction. Interactions through these platforms may be transferable to the omnichannel conversation timeline within some conversational support products, so support teams can remember each individual, their feedback, and any related customer service activities in future interactions. Marketing or PR departments may use these tools to ensure company messaging stays consistent and positive throughout public profiles and interactions with social media users.
Challenges with Conversational Support Software
Misassigned entries: Every engagement across all platforms must be attributed to the correct customer for relevant cases to be tracked and presented during customer interactions. If engagements are either not logged or misassigned to the incorrect customer, customers will experience a disjointed service engagement, be forced to repeat a previous incident, or have the wrong engagement logged to them.
Duplicate entries: It is possible to reenter customer profiles and have conversations separately by creating duplicate customer profiles, leading to a poor customer experience.
How to Buy Conversational Support Software
Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Conversational Support Software
Whether your business needs to acquire a new conversational support software or replace an existing one, the cause for purchase needs to be framed in a business need with software functionality. Concrete examples of pain points and hopeful solutions can help buyers narrow their prospects from a broad list of products and capabilities. Some essential questions include:
- Is it compatible with existing software products?
- Can the product handle the volume of service required by your company?
- Will the product input the data sources (SMS, email, chat, and voice) your company uses?
- Will this product help employees reduce response time, resolution time, follow up, and duration while increasing customer satisfaction?
Compare Conversational Support Software Products
Create a long list
Based on the list of requirements, buyers should create a long list of no more than 10 products that appear to meet the business needs. Consulting online review sites is a great way to start the long list. On G2, buyers can find the highest rated or most popular products based on reviews from verified customers.
Create a short list
Next, the list should be trimmed down to a more manageable amount. A good way would be to reach out to vendors for questions and queries directly. Vendors should be questioned on details not presented on their website or presentation to ensure the product is the best fit for your business.
Conduct demos
Demos must be performed to ensure the products measure up to vendor claims and to find any possible hiccups when integrating with your existing software inventory. Test runs of existing data sets should be implemented to ensure all executions are performed with outputs, not losing any data points in the process.
Selection of Conversational Support Software
Choose a selection team
Since these products are utilized in tandem with other software products, team leaders, project/program managers, and subject matter experts should all be included to ensure the product provides quality service for your business. It's crucial to create a winning team that will work together throughout the entire process, from identifying pain points to implementation.
Negotiation
Negotiation with vendors should be approached with a robust list of needs and wants. During the process, vendors will try to persuade buyers to acquire more functionalities their team needs. It is best to remember that users can always return and purchase more services later.
Final decision
The final decision should consider all the factors mentioned above but prioritize the requirements that matter most for the buyer.
Conversational Support Software Trends
The following solutions are related to the emergence of conversational support platforms and the shifting paradigm of how brands interact with their customer base.
Conversational marketing: Conversational marketing software enables brands to initiate a one-on-one conversation with potential clients early in the buying journey, when they show initial interest in the company. These conversations can take place directly on social networks, company websites, or in some cases, be initiated through SMS, messenger or email. Once an interested shopper is identified, these modern marketing tools allow businesses to send personalized recommendations or offers based on behavioral observations. If successful, these interactions lead to increased interest. Then the customer can be directed to payment gateways or product customization portals to complete a purchase. Conversational marketing and conversational support for customer engagement are tied together, helping consumers develop strong, intimate relationships with brands before, during, and after a purchase.
Conversational intelligence: Conversational intelligence software is a broad term used to describe AI-assisted customer interactions and insights that were not previously possible with traditional customer support tools. Conversational intelligence refers to AI that can develop natural-sounding conversation skills by observing how humans interact and simulating this in its own way. Then, when paired with its observations about products and typical conversation flows, this technology can offer logical suggestions to customers or redirect them to specific pages or real-life experts based on their needs. In addition to purchasing platforms that are preconfigured with this technology, companies may utilize these concepts when developing applications of their own. Companies can also hire an external agency that offers AI development services or artificial intelligence consulting to help implement conversational intelligence in their software infrastructure.
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