Takeaways from the MBA in Automation Virtual Roadshow
I recently had the pleasure of hosting Helpshift’s Virtual MBA in Automation Roadshow in Europe at the end of June. We were joined by dozens of top companies who joined us from across 16 countries. The event pooled customer case studies, round table discussions, and interactive workshops to help organizations get started with and optimize their digital customer support automation.
A personal highlight of the event was definitely hearing from leaders in the mobile gaming industry and understanding their experiences scaling their customer support from inception to massive scale. During a customer panel discussion, we heard from Nataly Kuzmina, Head of Support at Playrix, and Matt Knapman, Head of Customer Support at Hutch.
I always find it fascinating and inspiring to hear from companies who are ahead of the curve in terms of support technologies. Playrix had the vision four years ago to shift from their email-centric support solution to a first-class in-app customer experience and automated their customer issues with advanced bots. That decision to transform their operations and processes really paid off during the Covid-19 pandemic. They managed to scale flawlessly, without additional resources, through a dramatic increase in the number of tickets (the number of tickets doubled and tripled in some of their games!). Last month, they automated over 73% of issues, and bots resolved over 50% of all issues. Without automation and the ability to create more bots, they would have struggled to handle that increased workload.
Unfortunately many companies didn’t have the adequate technology infrastructure to manage the crisis and ran into issues. Those companies ended up leaving frustrated customers waiting on the phone for hours, if not days, to obtain the right answers. We’ve all heard the stories of companies that damaged their brand image and lost customers in the process. At this event, it was nice to hear from a company that had avoided that fate.
I also loved hearing from Hutch Games. The line that really struck me from their session was this:
“Every single player matters. You stay competitive by iterating a refined player experience over time. We aim to reply to every single person who contacts us, not just spenders, whether that be with a problem, a question, or some feedback. It helps us provide valuable feedback to the development teams and stay ahead of the competition.”
It is impressive to see a company truly able to close the loop with the feedback they collect from their customers and continuously improve the product experience via their development teams. We too often see companies, under-utilizing the customer feedback gold mine that is at their fingertips. But when the silos are broken down, and other departments of the organizations are enabled to use the invaluable source of data that customer support can provide to them, it truly gives them an edge compared to their competitors by having a top-notch player-experience.
We also had some wonderful interactive sessions about how Hyperscale Automation helps companies improve CSAT and increasing support capacity while decreasing cost in the face of crisis. This topic could not be more relevant in the current situation. Whilst customer support requests have skyrocketed, the companies had to deal with finite and even lower capacities at times, with agents having to work from home or on occasion being ill. This has often left customers with a tethered experience holding on the phone line for a very long time to get an answer, or trying desperately to speak to an agent in a live chat. In fact, most companies have asked their clients to not call them because they could not handle the high volume of requests they were getting through. It seems like Covid-19 has been a huge accelerator to digital transformation, and was an eye-opener about how automation has been a saving grace for the ones that had already started their digital customer support transformation journey.
We also had some great discussions during our virtual workshop sessions. In one session, attendees started their journey to automation by building their first bot in only a few minutes. In another session our customers were able to exchange best practices to continue to strengthen their journey towards more automation. It was fascinating to see firsthand how organizations can quickly do so much more with automation.
As an event organiser, nothing makes me happier than hearing the overwhelming positive feedback we received from attendees. Shifting an event that should have been face-to-face in London to virtual one meant a lot of changes from our original plan. But I am happy that we created an environment where guests were allowed to interact, network, and connect with each other. One attendee told me, “During this pandemic, I’ve been to around 5 similar online events, and I have to give you credit for knowing how to make things feel homey and relaxed!” It was great to get people together in this sort of informal setting to discuss their successes, their learnings, and their plans.
Sarah Perrochat
Senior Marketing Manager, Helpshift
