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Sometimes, merchants express concern about automating support. They’re afraid of stiff, unhelpful experiences for their customers. (And for good reason: Your customers deserve better than getting trapped in chatbot hell.)
Also, when we discuss Automate, some merchants get concerned about adding Chat (where many Automation features live) to their site.
Here are some of the common myths about automation (and what concerned merchants should know):
Actually, thanks to automation, customers no longer have to wait to get the information they need to get on with their day. Automation helps merchants answer basic questions instantly, which is important to 90% of customers.
Our analysis shows no correlation between automation rate and CSAT. However, that is likely because no CSAT survey is sent after automated interactions — only human ones. We’ve heard from merchants and customers anecdotally that automation is great, but we’re hard at work finding data to quantify the positive impact of automation on CX.
It’s important to understand that automation is not a solution to every single question. Automation is best at delivering simple answers to repetitive questions. It can pull customer information, like order numbers or estimated delivery times, to give a personalized answer. But it can’t (yet) think outside the box like a human — that’s your job, which you’ll have more time for thanks to automation.
Gorgias Automate helps us to provide better CX. It’s easier to get their answers without contacting us now, even if we try to answer really fast. What’s great too is that we have some shoppers that don’t want to contact us — and now they can find the answers to their questions whenever they want.
— Capucine Schahl, Customer Care Manager at Franklin Pet Food
Many of Automate's features happen in Chat, and some merchants think adding Chat to their site will drown them in chat tickets. Totally understandable, but this is a misconception for two reasons:
If you’re worried about high ticket volumes, make sure you’re using Offline Mode (which deactivates live chat when your agents are offline) and Control Ticket Volume (which requires customers to use automation before sending a message) to limit the number of incoming live chats.
We have yet to find an AI-powered tool on the market that is 100% accurate, all the time.
Automate uses AI to power Autoresponders and Article Recommendations. While these tools are quite accurate, you can shape your support strategy around automations that are even more accurate:
This playbook and the Gorgias team encourage you to hide your support email from your website, which may seem blasphemous. But hiding your email doesn't make you less available.
Between the Help Center and Automate's self-service tools, you provide plenty of great options for customers to get instant answers, even if your team is offline. And with the Contact Form, you’re just as available as you were with email — except the Contact Form protects you against spam, and requires customers to categorize and structure their message.
If your email is the most prominent way to contact you, you’re actually slowing down your customer service. Customers will email repetitive questions, like “Where is my order?” By steering customers toward automated and self-service options, they’ll get an instant answer, and your team will have more time for more complex interactions waiting in your inbox.
If you’re a B2B merchant (or serve both B2C and B2B), the Help Center is a great option. That’s because you can create a Help Center for your B2B customers, and refer traffic (from B2B support or outbound campaigns) directly to this segmented resource. Here’s an example of Loop Earplugs’s B2B Help Center:
You can also use Flows to segment your B2C and B2B shoppers, prompting customers to self-identify to get the most accurate answer. While the product is built for ecommerce merchants, we at Gorgias use a robust Help Center, Chat, and Automate to provide support for our B2B audience.
Automate is a Gorgias product that provides instant, automated answers to common questions via your email, Help Center, and widget. Your customers can get a quick response (and resolution) around the clock, even when a live agent isn’t available. Gorgias Automate includes Quick Responses, interactive Flows, Order Management, Autoresponders, and Article Recommendations.
Gorgias Automate pricing scales with your usage, just like the Gorgias helpdesk. Pricing starts at $30/month for 30 automated interactions and scales up to custom enterprise-level plans. One note: The more automated interactions you have, each one costs less and less. For example, 5,000 automated interactions per month is $2,500 (meaning each one is only $0.50, compared to $1.00 for the lowest plan).
Two features drive the most automation are Quick Responses and Article Recommendations. Start with these two to quickly unlock the potential of automation!
We tested these methods with ecommerce brands and found they consistently achieved at least 30% automation when implemented. The top 5% of brands achieve up to 45% automation rate with Gorgias Automate.
Contact your CSM or, if you’re a Basic or a Pro customer, you can schedule a call with our automation consultants team. If you’re not a Gorgias customer, book a call with our team using the link at the end of this playbook.