Organisations need to shop around for the best customer experience strategy

The role of automation in customer service was a key topic discussed at a recent Chief Wine Officer Retail Industry Reception co-hosted by communications provider Kcom.

Representatives from ASOS, Tesco, John Lewis and other retail organisations attended the event at The Swan above Shakespeare’s Globe in London, where discussions focused on the growing challenges of providing consistent customer services across a growing number of communication channels.

Mark Pritchard, Customer Experience Specialist at Kcom, presented guests about the future of automation in customer service and how it can change the way consumers communicate with organisations.

Mark said: “Technology developments around biometrics and dynamic speech applications coupled with increasing use of social media and mobile channels means the experience we give our customers must change. Automation can have many benefits for an organisation – it increases efficiency and ensures that a large number of customer requests are handled in real time at any time of day.

“But it can be both a blessing and curse. When resolving quick issues such as delivery queries or renewal subscriptions, customers are often happy to have the matter resolved through an automated service. However, when it comes to more serious or complicated customer issues, there’s no substitute for human interaction as a way of demonstrating that problems are being taken seriously.

“Organisations will need to evaluate their own customer experience strategy to decide whether automation will fit with their current way of working and communicating with customers.”

Other speakers at the event included representatives from the CCA and Sainsbury’s.

About Kcom

Kcom, part of the KCOM Group PLC, provides communication services for multi-site enterprise and public sector organisations across the UK, and has a well established reseller channel. As an independent provider of these services, supported by its BT Wholesale partnership, Kcom is able to offer advanced network capability and related added value services, coupled with a flexible approach to delivering a different class of service to its customers.

Its customers include GVA Grimley, British Airways, North Wales Police, Specsavers, City of London, Phones4u, Rosslyn Analytics, Hermes, University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust, Windsor Telecom and Diva Telecoms.