The conversation with the customer doesn’t end with the termination of the call

The adage ‘Actions speak louder than words’ resonates in the dynamic interaction between service providers and their customers. According to a recent survey, a staggering 70% of respondents acknowledged businesses making promises in the past year. However, only 60% perceived those promises as fulfilled. The disconnect deepens as nearly two-thirds of participants reported multiple instances of broken promises by the same company.

Keeping promises is crucial for enhancing Net Promoter Score (NPS) and, ultimately, the lifetime value of customers. On the other hand, breaking promises not only undermines these metrics but also leads to unnecessary repeat calls. Thankfully, artificial intelligence (AI) and automation offer service providers a readily available and easy solution to this enduring challenge.

What does promise management entail?

Promise management is the process of ensuring that commitments made during a call are effectively fulfilled through seamless and timely follow-up actions. Almost every conversation involves some form of commitment, such as handling billing requests, scheduling appointments, or authorizing certain tasks. Once an agent makes a promise regarding a particular action, promise management comes into play.

To establish enduring, positive, and growing customer trust, consistent and reliable delivery is essential. Effective promise management by an agent includes prompt responses and accurate, targeted resolutions. However, without technological support, this task often becomes manual and time-consuming. Agents have to step away from phone calls to engage in follow-up activities based on handwritten, often vague call notes, leading to potential gaps in keeping promises.

Automating Promise Management

Implementing automated promise management can significantly reduce the manual follow-up tasks performed by your agents, leading to a decrease in the number of repeat calls caused by unfulfilled commitments. This automation has a direct impact on enhancing the customer experience, increasing satisfaction, and fostering customer loyalty.

Now, let’s delve into how automated promise management actually functions. By leveraging conversational AI, a program is able to instantly recognize and log promises made by agents during live customer interactions. 

These commitments encompass a wide range of actions, such as applying promotional credits to a customer’s bill, ordering a replacement device, or scheduling a service call. Following the interaction, the program sends the customer a comprehensive summary of the promises made, and it subsequently handles the fulfillment of those commitments using robotic process automation (RPA).

Benefits of Promise Management Automation

The advantages of automating promise management are significant, particularly for telecommunications providers. Recent data reveals that missed promises have been identified as the top detractor of Net Promoter Scores (NPS) for a major U.S. communications provider. Furthermore, a staggering 90% of consumers who experience a broken promise either switch to another company or seriously contemplate doing so. With the challenges involved in fostering customer loyalty in the telecom industry, it is no surprise that the interest and investment in promise management automation are on the rise. Service providers who have implemented such solutions frequently report the following benefits:

1. Streamlined processes: Automation reduces the need for multiple handoffs and simplifies the execution of workflows related to registering and fulfilling promises made to customers.
2. Decreased repeat calls: By fulfilling commitments in a timely and reliable manner, service providers experience a reduction in the number of frustrated or disappointed customers who feel the need to make repeat calls.
3. Improved efficiency: Automated promise management leads to shorter average handle times (AHT) and reduced call wait times by minimizing the amount of after-call work (ACW) required, thereby enhancing overall call center productivity.
4. Enhanced agent performance: With the automation of promise management, agents can focus more on providing quality service during customer interactions, resulting in improved call scores and overall agent productivity.

In summary, the adoption of promise management automation offers tangible benefits that contribute to increased customer satisfaction, reduced churn rates, and improved operational efficiency for telecommunications providers.

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