How to automate the process of handling requests in the company?

Why is an effective customer service process so important?

Many companies focus primarily on acquiring new customers — investing in marketing, advertising and sales activities. However, when the results are not satisfactory, he often looks for the reasons in the wrong strategy or offer, rather than looking at what is happening on the service side. Meanwhile, it is the inefficient customer service processes that keep customers from coming back, and some of them quit before the purchase is finalized.

The customer's first impression is very important — it is often what determines whether the customer will stay with the company for longer. This applies to both the B2B sector, where potential business partners contact to make appointments, and the B2C sector, where customers report questions or problems with orders.

In this article we will focus on how process automation can improve communication within the company — both external with customers (e.g. through automatic responses to requests) and internal communication between teams such as sales representatives or customer service (e.g. automatic assignment of requests). With these solutions, organizations can respond more quickly to customer needs, avoiding chaos and delays in the delivery of information.

Later in the article, we will show you how to automate the handling of requests in a company to streamline processes, improve customer satisfaction and at the same time reduce operating costs. If you are interested in a specific sector, use the side navigation to go directly to the relevant section.

Monitoring and processing queries from different channels

We will start with a problem that affects both the B2C and B2B sectors. In many enterprises, the process of handling requests works smoothly, as long as communication with customers is carried out only through one channel. The situation changes when a company starts receiving messages from multiple sources — contact forms, email addresses, site chats, social media or hotlines. Suddenly, it turns out that part of the queries is lost, and the employees do not know who answered the client, where the correspondence is located or which request is priority.

The solution to such chaos is the implementation of a notification system for companies, which allows you to monitor and process queries coming from different channels in one place. Thanks to this, every contact with the customer - regardless of the source - goes to a common panel. A properly implemented system allows you to manage customer requests, assign them to the right people, as well as set priorities or deadlines. In addition, if we integrate such a tool with the messenger, it can send all requests to one internal communication channel, for example to Slack or Microsoft Teams. As a result, the customer service team works in a single environment, has a complete conversation context and responds faster to customer needs.

Such a centralized solution also provides an excellent basis for further automation of customer service. When all query data is in one system, you can easily create rules for automatically assigning cases, sending notifications, or preparing initial responses. You can read more about these improvements in the following paragraphs.

Automated request handling systems for B2C

As the number of customers grows, many companies need solutions that allow them to organize their communications and optimize their daily processes. Properly implemented customer service automation helps companies take over repetitive tasks and relieve the burden of teams that until now had to manually analyze each query. In the next paragraphs, we will focus on how modern solutions and platforms for handling requests help not only to receive and organize cases, but also to classify, prioritize and forward them to the right people. Stay with us and learn how to automate the handling of requests in your company!

Voicebot and chatbot in customer service — automating the acceptance of requests

In B2C companies, service departments often face a huge number of requests, customers very often send even the simplest questions. However, each of them has to be reviewed, evaluated and handed over to the right person, which consumes time and causes constant flipping of tickets. Instead of focusing on real tasks, employees are busy selecting cases and answering repetitive questions, which reduces efficiency and slows down the response to more urgent topics.

To relieve the burden on teams and allow employees to focus on more demanding tasks, more and more companies are implementing customer support automations, often using chatbots and voicebots as the first point of contact. Such a solution performs the function of automatic customer service, which responds in real time to incoming requests. Bots, which are actually properly prepared software, can answer questions on their own, based on the company's knowledge base. However, in order to maintain an adequate level of service, if the reported case requires human consideration, the system automatically directs it to the appropriate department. If in your company, employees have to devote several hours a day to analyzing queries and constantly answering the same questions, the implementation of automation of communication with the client can significantly speed up their work. In the next paragraph, we'll show how dedicated contact software saved one of our retail customers 60-80 hours a month.

Case study: Automating the handling of requests with an AI agent

A customer who deals with the sale of metal components came to us. The problem in the company was the time-consuming preparation of offers — the customer service staff accepted requests by phone. At the same time, while talking with the customer, they added all the products to the order, and then, after the end of the conversation, checked the availability of individual items. Through such an arranged process, it often turned out that the products were not available and the customer had to be contacted again to propose a replacement. Accepting orders was also too time-consuming — so as the company grew and the number of requests increased, the efficiency and response time of the customer support department decreased. The company decided that they wanted to improve their customer service processes and contacted us for this purpose.

In order to improve the bidding process, we analyzed the entire process of handling the inquiry and identified the stages that most burdened the sales department. Based on this, we designed the automation of contact with the client consisting of implementation of an AI agent, which analyzes inquiries and prepares a preliminary offer. With the integration of the software with the VoIP PBX and the transcription tool, once the employee finishes the call, the AI agent automatically creates conversation summaries, which eliminates manual notes and reduces the team's working time. In addition, the combination of data from HubSpot, Subject and purchase history made it possible to quickly classify customers and prepare price proposals more efficiently. As a result, the company has significantly reduced service costs by saving time — employees now spend up to 60-80 hours less per month on this process. In addition, the quality of customer service has increased thanks to faster access to information and reduced number of re-contacts.

Automatic SMS with confirmations

Automatic SMS is a relatively simple to implement solution that can significantly improve everyday communication — especially in companies where customers often forget to confirm visits or collections. The system can send notifications on its own or generate ready-made text templates, which will automatically be supplemented with customer data. In addition, a support staff member can adjust the content to make it more personalized.

Classification and prioritization of applications

Is your team still manually analyzing all customer requests? Properly implemented automation of customer service, allows you to organize the work of the team and respond faster to the most important matters. For example, automatic analysis of customer sentiment with AI makes automation systems able to recognize the emotional tone of messages. If the client is agitated or urgently needs help, his case can automatically go to a higher priority. Thanks to this, not only is the service more empathetic, but key requests are handled faster and more efficiently — without having to look at each ticket for hours and manually swiping in the CRM system.

In the case of one of our clients, all orders flowed to a common e-mail box, which caused disorganization in the service team — it was not known which cases were already in progress, which files were submitted for analysis, and which were still waiting for consideration. In addition, the inbox was full of spam and non-order related matters. To solve these problems, we created an AI-based customer service automation system that first checks the content of all messages and then automatically distributes them among traders. AI mechanisms immediately detect whether the message is an order or spam. In addition, the system uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology to check the content of PDF files in which customers submit orders. Such automation of tickets in the company has really relieved the burden on employees, who until now had to do all this manually.

Monitoring of telephone calls

In many companies, managers do not have a real opportunity to track how employees serve customers over the phone — especially where there is no professional helpline, and phone calls are just one of the many tasks of the customer service department. We also often encounter the situation that despite using a CRM system for customer service, employees do not fill in information about the course of conversations, which makes it difficult to assess the quality of service, check the status of the case or even state what the conversation was about. The lack of data prevents analysis and makes the management of the process largely “on the feel”.

Fortunately, automation of customer service processes comes to the aid of entrepreneurs. Thanks to modern no/low code solutions, you can quickly create a dedicated system that allows you to streamline the entire process and automatically monitor telephone calls. As part of such solutions for our customers, we often integrate the telephone exchange with AI tools — the resulting system generates call transcripts, creates summaries, and sends managers and team notifications about missed calls to remind them of the need to call back. Importantly, dedicated solutions work on the basis of integration of the system with the current IT environment used by companies, and the whole works smoothly thanks to automation, providing full insight into customer communication and improving the quality of service.

B2B Customer Service Automation

Confirmation emails

For many companies, this topic may seem downright banal - “after all, everyone has confirmation emails”. Well... it might seem so, but as a company implementing process automation, we regularly meet sales teams that have never implemented such news. If a customer fills out a form, leaves a contact and does not receive any confirmation that their message has arrived safe and sound and that someone from the company will respond within a certain time — this is a sign that there is a serious gap in your sales process. And especially worrying is the situation in which the form does not have a so-called thank you page at all, so the user is not sure that everything on the page worked correctly.

Meanwhile, such simple elements of automation of communication with the client are the foundation of professional first contact. Moreover, much more can be built on automatic confirmations: the system can send automatic responses to requests with a dynamically changed footer of the currently available trader or, thanks to AI analysis, automatically send a message to the lead with a link to the team calendar only if it detects an extremely valuable lead. Such B2B customer service automation solutions help companies not only speed up the first reaction, but also make the customer feel noticed and properly cared for from the first seconds of contact.

Automatically Assign Seller Submissions

In many B2B companies, the same problem arises: sellers do not always know who should take the new lead, because the process of splitting applications is not clearly defined. The lack of structure makes part of the queries backlog, and some go to random people so traders are charged unevenly. Meanwhile, properly implemented automation of customer service in the company allows us to effectively solve such problems.

Thanks to advanced automation rules, the system can analyze the current workload of the team (such as the number of active leads, the time consuming of running cases or pending tasks in CRM) and assign the request to the salesperson who actually has the space to take care of it. If a customer applies through an online form, automation can assign a suitable supervisor even before the lead goes to CRM.

The CRM system prepared in this way with the automation of requests immediately keeps order and evenly distributes the work between team members. In addition, it is also possible to send an instant confirmation email from the relevant merchant. The message is sent automatically, but thanks to its full personalization (sending from the merchant's personal email, selecting his footer, etc.) the client has a sense of individual approach.

Monitoring of e-mail messages

Do you know how your salespeople communicate with customers? What answers do they give, how do they negotiate and how do they develop sales relationships? Without control mechanisms, the sales process easily loses transparency: it is not known at what stage the conversations with leads are, and at the time of the trader's vacation or departure from the company, chaos arises and it is difficult to determine which sales opportunities were actively conducted. That is why solutions that automatically save correspondence in CRM are so important, providing full visibility of communication at every stage of conversations.

There are various options on the market for integrating mailing with customer relationship management systems. Popular CRMs offer a Smart BCC feature that saves the message in the system when a hidden recipient is added — however, this requires connecting the merchant's private email box, which raises the risk of data leakage and loss of control over the flow of information. An alternative is more advanced solutions, where salespeople use dedicated email addresses, so that only sales-related messages go to the CRM. Such integrations, combined with AI, make it possible not only to systematize communication in the system for handling requests, but also to generate email prompts or analyze the tone of messages.

As Sagiton, we have created solutions that support sales automation, which, among other things, allow companies to regain control of email communication with customers. Learn more about our sales automation modules here: https://www.sagiton.pl/en/products/sales-and-customer-service-automation-modules

Is it profitable to automate the notification system in the company?

Yes, in most cases, automation pays off, although, of course, it all depends on the specifics of the activity and the number of queries that go to your company. Simple mechanisms, such as confirmation emails, are today a fundamental element of the relationship with the customer and a standard in any customer service system. However, if you receive several dozen inquiries every day, and several employees are engaged only in reviewing them and giving repeated answers, it is worth considering a more advanced automation of business processes, which will not only improve the efficiency of service, but also optimize informing customers about their request status.

More extensive projects, such as dedicated systems, complex integrations or AI agents, may require more time and budget. However, if the implementation of such automation allows your company to speed up work many times and significantly reduce operating costs, it can prove to be very beneficial in the long term (and often even in the short term). The key here is an ROI-driven approach: if the solution pays for itself in a few months, automation becomes a real investment in a better customer experience and more efficient team work. At Sagiton Automation Agency, we help companies assess whether automation in customer service teams is profitable before they make a decision to implement it.