The adage, “Actions speak louder than words” couldn’t be truer when it comes to how service providers interact with their customers and prospects. According to a survey by Accenture, 70% of respondents felt businesses had promised them something in the last year, but only 60% felt companies delivered on those promises. Nearly two out of three of those surveyed said the same company broke a promise more than once.
Keeping promises is critical for improving NPS and, ultimately, lifetime customer value. However, breaking promises not only degrades those metrics; it results in unnecessary repeat calls. Fortunately, artificial intelligence (AI) and automation offer service providers a ready, easy solution to this long-standing challenge.
What is promise management?
Promise management occurs after promises have been made during a call, ensuring that each commitment is kept with smooth and timely follow-through. Every conversation will likely involve some element of commitment-making. These may include billing requests, appointment scheduling and other tasks that an agent approves. After promising a certain effort, promise management comes into play.
In order to build long-lasting, positive and growing customer confidence, there must be consistent and dependable delivery. An agent’s promise management should include timely responses as well as an accurate and pinpointed resolution. However, without technological assistance, this is often a time-consuming, manual task, requiring agents to leave the phones to pursue follow-up activities based on often imprecise, handwritten call notes, if the promise is kept at all.
Automating promise management
As we’ve reported before, automating promise management can reduce the amount of time your agents spend on manual follow-up tasks and, subsequently, the number of repeat calls due to missed commitments. All of this translates to improved customer experience, satisfaction and loyalty.
But just how does automated promise management work? Using conversational AI, a program like U-Assist automatically recognizes and logs promises agents make in real time during live customer interactions. These promises can range from applying promotional credits to a customer’s bill to ordering a replacement device to scheduling a service call. After the interaction, the program sends the customer a summary of the promises made and automatically manages their fulfillment using robotic process automation (RPA).
Benefits of promise management automation
Missed promises are a major concern for telecommunications providers. In fact, according to data from Uniphore, a major U.S. communications provider recently ranked missed promises as its top NPS detractor. In the same Accenture survey mentioned above, 90% of consumers who encounter a broken promise either switch companies or seriously consider switching. Given the challenges in maintaining telecom customer loyalty, it should come as no surprise that both interest and investment in promise management automation is on the rise. Service providers that utilize products, like U-Assist, frequently report benefits including:
- Reduced handoffs for approvals and fewer steps needed to execute workflows that register and fulfill promises made
- Fewer repeat calls from frustrated and/or disappointed customers
- Shorter average handle times (AHT) and call wait times by reducing the amount and effort of after-call work (ACW)
- Improved agent productivity and call scores
Want to learn more?
Discover how U-Assist can streamline agent follow-up actions with automated promise management.