Definition: What is FAQ automation?
Who, how, why, why, why - Regardless of industry, product, service and company size, every company deals with this frequently asked questions (also Frequently Asked Questions or FAQ called) by customers. Until now, such standard questions have traditionally been answered either as part of an FAQ page or a help center or by customer service staff.
However, thanks to rapidly evolving technology, it is now possible to answer recurring questions to automate using artificial intelligence. With the help of Natural Language Processing (NLP), AI can quickly understand customer inquiries and answer them individually as part of a conversation. This automation of frequently asked questions is known as FAQ automation.
Why is FAQ automation important for companies?
In the context of the digital age, the majority of customer communication nowadays digitally and via many different channels. In this fast-paced, digitalized environment, customer expectations are high: Responses to questions, feedback or concerns should be provided within a very short period of time. Also an individual and personalized care must be guaranteed.
And be honest: Who wants to fight their way through an FAQ for hours on end? Users often don't find the Help Center right away - and even when they find it, they often don't have the time or desire to click through the individual questions. In our digital world, where short, concise, and bite-by-bit information dominates, the attention span of users is comparatively low. In the worst case scenario, the question you're looking for won't even be answered in the FAQ section, which in turn can lead to frustration.
If companies want to meet these expectations and optimally manage the high volume of customer inquiries, simply providing an FAQ page and traditional customer service is therefore often not enough. FAQ automation can Effort, time and resources, which are spent on answering customer inquiries, is decisive reducing.
The role of AI chatbots in FAQ automation
But how exactly can FAQ automation be implemented in practice?
Probably the most common and effective method for automating recurring customer questions is the use of a AI-based chatbots. This is an artificial intelligence that can understand and evaluate the texts entered or spoken by customers in a chat. One such AI — which on Natural language processing (NLP) is based and therefore understands people's natural language — recognizes the customer's intention and topic and can provide appropriate answers based on this. Since AI chatbots are able to learn, they automatically optimize themselves as customer inquiries increase and therefore get better over time. You can find out more about how a chatbot works in our article”What is a chatbot?”.
Chatbots of this type play a decisive role in FAQ automation: In contrast to an FAQ page or a help center, a chatbot can be used on inquiries users react and individually address their concerns. Unlike customer service employees, a chatbot is also not bound to working hours, but can 24 hours a day be on duty seven days a week.
It should be noted that an AI chatbot is not intended to replace customer service, but should only support recurring, automatable tasks. In this way, employees from the Customer Service on your core business concentrate and have more time for the essentials.
Benefits of FAQ automation with AI chatbots
Cost savings and scalability
The increase in efficiency and the associated savings of time and resources means that the Lowered costs become. If you want to get an overview of how many costs you can save by using a chatbot, feel free to try our ROI cost calculator off. In addition to cost savings, an AI chatbot offers the advantage that it has a serve a large number of customers at the same time Can. This is particularly promising if your company is growing rapidly or the volume of inquiries fluctuates for other reasons.
Improved customer experience and 24/7 availability
As already mentioned, customers today expect quick and individual feedback on their inquiries. There is a chatbot available 24/7 is to answer questions in a personalized way, customer satisfaction can be significantly improved.
Data collection and analysis for continuous improvement
Another major advantage of FAQ automation through AI-based chatbots is that artificial intelligence is valuable Customer Insights collects and provides. The saved conversations provide information about which challenges Users are confronted and what their needs are. Such data analysis is essential to improve products and services and to offer customers the best possible experience.
Smooth communication thanks to the chat function
The chat function has long since crept into everyone's everyday lives and has become an integral part of it: The majority of digital communication between people takes place on platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Signal or Telegram. The decisive advantage of this is that calls can be made in real time and it is very easy to use. For this reason, users appreciate chatbots in contact with companies: The question they have right now can be answered live and without much effort.
More individuality through free text input
The fact that customers can freely and individually describe their concerns in chatbot communication is also an advantage. In particular, when users have specific concerns, it is helpful to be able to formulate the text the way you want. It is much faster to get an answer in this way than to search for the question in other words in the FAQs.
Fressnapf x moinAIsuccess story
Because of the convincing advantages offered by FAQ automation using artificial intelligence, the use of a Chatbots are not uncommon these days more. Numerous successful international and Germany-wide companies use AI-based chatbot solutions to automate classic first-level support requests, i.e. recurring questions (FAQs). So too Fressnapf, the largest retailer of pet food in Europe.
As part of a new product launches Fressnapf implemented moinAI's chatbot for two main reasons. On the one hand, this brought technically complex Product involves a high number of recurring questions, which could only be answered to a limited extent by a help center and service staff. On the other hand, the success of the new product stood and fell with customer satisfaction, so fast and good all-round customer support was required.
Thanks to the introduction of the chatbot on the website, a landing page and in the app, Fressnapf was able to provide valuable in many ways scores to achieve:
- scalability: Demand for the new Fressnapf product rose rapidly within a very short period of time. Thanks to the scalable chatbot solution, all questions could be answered while maintaining the same resource input.
- Service volume: Recurring questions could easily be automated by the chatbot, giving customer service more time for more complex inquiries.
- Quality of answers: Even with a rapidly increasing volume of customer support, Fressnapf was able to guarantee consistent response quality thanks to the chatbot.
- rapidity: Service employees have a certain volume that they can process per day. Especially during peak phases, employees may not keep up with answering questions. The chatbot offered Fressnapf a good alternative for users who needed a quick answer.
- Customer Insights: Thanks to the chatbot, Fressnapf was able to collect valuable data about its customers, such as their problem areas or their feedback.
Tips for successfully integrating AI chatbots into customer service
For FAQ automation to run as smoothly as possible, it's important to know the most important tips and tricks:
Avoid copy & paste
Especially if you want to be inspired by the existing FAQ page when choosing topics for the chatbot, care should be taken: While you like to provide more detailed answers in a classic FAQ, you should provide brief, concise and easy-to-understand information with a chatbot. Images or videos could also be played out in a chatbot.
Training, training, training
Because a chatbot usually works with free text inputs, every user can formulate the request as he or she wants. In order for the chatbot to understand every individual question, it needs a training phase, especially at the beginning, during which minor mistakes can occasionally occur. In general, the more queries the chatbot receives, the faster and better it learns and trains.
Good to know: Training an AI can be quite complex. For this reason, moinAI not only offers software-as-a-service, but also AI-as-a-service. In plain language, this means that moinAI customers do not have to train and monitor the AI themselves. This is done by moinAI's team. If you already want an insight into how to train an AI, you should read this article, written by the Head of AI: Training data and AI: How a chatbot is trained.
Human Takeover
The chatbot is and remains an artificial intelligence and should not be equated with a human being. In particular, he can answer recurring questions — i.e. FAQs — well, but can also reach his limits when it comes to more complex topics with very specific requirements. At this point, it is important to establish contact with a real employee and forward the request to this person.
Small theme pool
The launch of a chatbot works particularly well if only a relatively small number of topics was defined. For example, you can be inspired by existing FAQ questions and customer service feedback.
Chatbot extension
As time progresses, the chatbot will collect further topics that interest users and as new ones Suggested topics save. It is useful to keep an eye on these suggestions and expand the repertoire if necessary.
Prioritize the customer perspective
During implementation, it is also important to put yourself in the shoes of customers again and again and their Prioritize needs. This should be considered in particular when formulating answers to customer questions.
Integrate high-quality content
Just as with FAQs, it is important to consider the user when formulating chatbot answers Quality, added value and helpful solutions because customer satisfaction and the success of the chatbot depend largely on this.
conclusion
FAQ automation, i.e. the automation of frequently asked questions, is no longer a nice-to-have in the context of ever-increasing customer expectations in the area of customer support and service, but a decisive one Contributing to ensuring customer satisfaction.
Especially the use of AI-based chatbots can help with FAQ automation. In this way, efficiency gains and cost savings can be achieved and the customer experience can be improved.
Read the full success story of our customer Fressnapf and find out which promising results he was able to achieve it thanks to moinAI's chatbot.
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