Helpshift Performance Index: What Customer Service High Performers Do Differently
Digital Customer Service Company Announces Benchmarking Report Alongside Automation Bots Product Launch
The second installment of the semi-annual Helpshift Performance Index Benchmarking Report used the anonymized, aggregated internal data of roughly 8 million customer tickets from the company’s gaming, retail, finance and technology customers to determine what customer service high performers do differently than other brands. This report is being released in tandem with Helpshift’s Automation Bots, a new product offering that will be launched at the inaugural Helpshift Symposium on March 20, 2019.
Three Key Insights From the Data
The report took a close look at standout brands with some of the best KPIs and highest customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores and identified three important trends:
- Brands see significantly higher CSAT ratings for messaging-based conversations than other support channels. On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest, average scores were 4.1 for messaging, 3.6 for live chat, 3.3 for email and 3.0 for web forms.
- Brands can automate more than half of their customer service interactions without affecting CSAT. Additionally, brands that use self-service tools like FAQs in tandem with automated workflows achieve the strongest KPIs.
- Agent productivity sees a significant improvement with the introduction of bots within web and mobile messaging. Bots significantly reduce the number of average agent-sent messages per interaction within live chat and asynchronous messaging.
A Look at the Impact of Automation
Brands that have integrated bots and AI throughout both their back-end operations and front-end customer journey are seeing impressive results in agent efficiency, ticket resolution time and customer satisfaction.
The impact of automation for standout brands by industry are as follows:
Gaming:
- 70 percent of incoming issues have been fully automated without affecting CSAT scores
- Bots have been used to assist agents by collecting upfront information in 20 percent of issues
- Time to resolution for issues involving bots and agents has improved by 50 percent
Entertainment:
- 20 percent of incoming issues have been fully automated alongside a full point increase in CSAT
- Bots have been used to assist agents by collecting upfront information in 60 percent of issues
- Time to resolution for issues involving bots and agents has improved by 25-50 percent
Retail:
- 45 percent of incoming issues have been fully automated without affecting CSAT scores
- Bots have been used to assist agents by collecting upfront information in 25 percent of issues
- Agents and bots combined have been able to handle twice the amount of tickets within a given time period
Introducing Helpshift’s Automation Bots
In tandem with the Performance Index Benchmarking Report, Helpshift is releasing Automation Bots: bots that enable brands to build fully automated customer service workflows that integrate with third-party systems directly — all within an easy-to-use bot-builder interface. Automation Bots add a new level of flexibility and functionality for B2C customer service teams by offering automation capabilities that are easy to deploy without developers. For example, mobile gaming companies can now fully automate tickets related to lost accounts, a frequent issue that results in 30-40 percent overall ticket volume.
In addition to gaming companies, brands across industries will now be able to automate end-to-end workflows for tickets related to topics like order returns, account recovery, account status and delivery status, with no human agent required.
With Automation Bots, brands can:
- Fully automate categories of issues that are standardized, repetitive and create high ticket volume
- Enable customers to resolve common issues themselves, within minutes
- Ensure that agents have time for complex, high-value customer issues
“Our customers have already been able to automate more than 50 percent of their customer service workflows with bots and AI. This new capability allows them to achieve significantly greater levels of automation by seamlessly integrating with other systems,” said Helpshift CEO Linda Crawford. “Brands will need to reach for higher and higher levels of automation while maintaining a great customer experience in order to be considered a top performer in customer service moving forward.”
Helpshift Automation Symposium 2019
Automation Bots will be launched at Helpshift’s inaugural Automation Symposium, a day-long product-focused event that will include hands-on bot training, coaching based on benchmark report insights and a Spring Equinox happy hour party. Speakers will include Helpshift executives as well as high-performing customers who will share their brands’ experiences automating with bots.
The event will be held in San Francisco on March 20, 2019.
About Helpshift
Helpshift’s next-generation digital customer service software enables B2C brands to scale their support while offering differentiated experiences through web, in-app, email and messenger app channels. Helpshift’s innovative asynchronous messaging model across these channels gives people back their time, keeps conversations in context and allows humans and automations to work together to solve problems faster. The Helpshift platform embeds knowledge and AI to let customer service organizations best utilize a mix of automated service, self-service and human-assisted service. Serving over 450 businesses worldwide, including Xfinity Home, Tencent and Supercell, Helpshift is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices around the globe. To learn more about Helpshift, visit helpshift.com and follow @helpshift on Twitter.