Customer Support Automation
Every question answered, the right ones handed to a person. Email, website chat and text handled from your own documents and systems, escalated by rules you write, for businesses across metro Detroit and Michigan.
Talk to usIn short
The written questions your Michigan business gets all day, answered inside a minute from your own documents and systems, with anything that needs a person handed to one with the whole thread.
- Answers only from your documents; cites them
- Actions in the systems you already run
- The sort is a rule you write
- A person gets the thread, not a repeat
Why the inbox is where customers are lost
The question was simple. The wait was not.
An audit of 2,241 companies found the average first response to an online enquiry was 42 hours. Not because the questions were hard. Because answering them was nobody’s job until the end of the day. By then the customer has asked the next business on the list.
We build the system that answers the hundred-times questions inside a minute, from the documents you already have, and does the things you allow it to do in the software you already run. The question that needs a person still gets one, sooner and better briefed, because the system cleared the other ninety.
Illustrative. Which questions are answered and which go to a person is a rule you write, not one we guess.
- 42 hours
- the average first response to an online enquiry, across an audit of 2,241 companies
- 21x
- the odds of qualifying a lead when the reply comes inside five minutes rather than thirty
Response time: Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington, The Short Life of Online Sales Leads, Harvard Business Review, 2011. Odds: Oldroyd, The Lead Response Management Study, MIT and InsideSales.com, 2011.
In the work
Answers, actions, and the sort
Answers from your own documents
Hours, policies, what you do and do not do, the insurance list, the returns terms. It answers only from what you gave it, cites the source, and says so when the answer is not there. Nothing is invented to sound helpful.
Actions in your systems
Order status looked up, an appointment moved, an address changed, a receipt resent. Done, in the software you already run, rather than described. Each action is one you switched on.
The sort
Rules you write decide what it answers, what a person takes, and what counts as urgent. A refund, a complaint, a safety issue or a legal word goes to a person every time, with the thread attached.
Every channel, one queue
Email, website chat, text and direct messages land in one place and get the same answers. When a customer switches from chat to phone, the desk knows what was already said.
Hand-off with the whole story
When a person takes over they get the conversation so far, what was tried and why it stopped, not a customer repeating themselves for the third time.
A report you can read
What was asked, what was answered, what went to a person and how long each took. One page a month, and the questions it could not answer become the next paragraph in your documents.
Getting there
Gather, write the rules, connect, run beside you, run
- 01
Gather what you already know
Your policies, your FAQ, your terms, the answers your staff give ten times a day. Most businesses have this scattered across emails and heads; we collect it into the documents the system will answer from.
- 02
Write the rules
What it may answer, what it may do, what always goes to a person. Written down, in your words, before anything goes live.
- 03
Connect the channels and the systems
Email, chat, text and messages in; the order system, the calendar and the CRM behind them, so an answer can be an action.
- 04
Run it beside your team
Two weeks with a person reading every reply before it goes out. What they correct becomes a rule or a document. Then the reins loosen.
- 05
Run it
Monitored, repaired when a system changes, reported monthly. The documents are kept current, because a support system is only as good as what it was given last week.
Fitted work
What comes up here, specifically
The snow-day inbox
A storm across metro Detroit produces a morning of reschedules, cancellations and is-it-still-on questions, all at once. The queue answers them from the calendar and the weather policy you wrote, and the desk starts the day with a list of what changed rather than a hundred unread messages.
The seasonal business
A marina, a lodge or a landscaper up north runs a full season and a skeleton winter. The inbox does not know that. The system answers the January questions about May bookings with May's answers, and the one person on duty is not the whole front desk.
Arabic and Spanish
In Dearborn, Hamtramck and southwest Detroit a message arrives in the language the customer thinks in. The answer comes back in it, from the same documents, with the same rules.
The repair shop question
“Is my car ready?” is most of a shop's inbound. Answered from the job status in your shop system, with the estimate attached if it is waiting on approval, so the service writer stops leaving the bay to look it up.
Right time when
When this is worth doing
A good fit
- The same twenty questions arrive every week and someone types the answers by hand
- Messages wait until evening, or until Monday
- Customers write on three channels and nobody sees all three
- You have written policies, or could write them in an afternoon
Not a fit
- Most enquiries are calls, in which case the phone desk is the page
- Every question is genuinely unique, which is rare but real
- You want the system to make decisions you have not written down
Scope
What we do not build
Make things up
It answers from your documents and your systems. When the answer is not there it says so and hands the question to a person, because a confident wrong answer costs more than a short wait.
Pretend to be a person
It says it is an assistant when asked and wherever it matters, and a customer who wants a person gets one. Presenting a system as a person is poor practice and increasingly unlawful.
Take the complaint
Anything with a refund, a dispute, a safety concern or a legal word in it goes to a person, with the thread. The system's job is to make sure that person has the whole story, not to talk the customer down.
Reasonable to ask
Before you commission it
Which questions does it answer?
The ones you allow: hours, policies, what you offer, status of an order or an appointment, and anything else your documents cover. The list is written with you and can be widened as the system earns trust. Everything outside it goes to a person.
What happens when it does not know?
It says so, tells the customer a person will follow up, and routes the conversation with the thread attached. It never guesses. The questions it could not answer are reported monthly, and most of them become a new paragraph in your documents.
Does it work with our email, chat and CRM?
It is built into what you already run rather than replacing it, through those systems' own integrations. We do not name vendors until we have connected one for a client; tell us what you run and we will tell you exactly how it connects and what it cannot do.
Will customers know it is a system?
Yes, wherever they ask and wherever it matters. It introduces itself as an assistant, and a customer who wants a person gets one immediately.
Can it issue refunds or credits?
No. Money and disputes go to a person, every time. It can look up an order, move an appointment or resend a receipt, because those are actions you switched on. Anything financial is yours to decide.
Send us last week's inbox.
Twenty messages are enough. We will sort them into what a system would have answered, what it would have done, and what would have gone to a person, and tell you what that week would have looked like.
Talk to us