We have all been there: that frustrating moment when you are trying your best to resolve an important and time-sensitive issue relating to an order you placed. You hope and wish for a simple solution, until you find out the hard truth: an automated customer service system stands between you and our goal. Despite the fact that these systems have been around for decades, they still often add unneeded layers of complexity to the problem-solving process to this day. What's worse, given the labor shortages that have been rising as a result of the post-Covid economic recovery, these automated systems will likely be used even more as companies try to serve ever-larger groups of consumers.

As good business owners, we should strive to provide to customers the same experience we would want for ourselves: a quick and efficient automated (or better, personal) solution that solves the problem instead of doubling it. To aid in that effort, here are five ways that bad automated customer service can hurt your relationships with customers, and how to improve those for the better by leveraging good preparation and planning!

1) Automated Phone Call Menus

This is the oldest of the old school when it comes to automation, yet it remains among the most frustrating things about customer service today. Poorly-implemented automated phone menus essentially trade wasting the company's own time for wasting the time of the customer, which is not the best way to convince those customers that you have their best interests at heart! These menus often require you to painstakingly enter various account numbers, select from many ill-fitting "problem categories", and/or wait for lengthy periods of time until someone can speak with you. This is a surefire way to turn an annoyed customer into an angry one!

How to make it better?

For starters, offer callback service! This is a simple way to make sure that the customer does not have to waste time waiting for the next service representative and can simply be called back when a rep is available. An effort should also be made to keep menus as simple and brief as possible. If it takes more than a minute for a customer with a common issue to get as far as the menu option they need, more simplification is needed! Finally, another option to be explored is to skip phone service altogether and keep things online. While this might seem less helpful, by focusing customer service on online chat or email based assistance, multiple customer issues can be resolved simultaneously, thus ensuring that neither the customer nor the representative is stuck waiting for someone else to act. The future of this kind of support is "smart chatbots" that can quickly direct each customer to the right representative, who in turn can instantly bring up all of the customer's information and see precisely what the issue is. Take the first step in this direction and clean up your automated phone support today!

2) Automated Social Media Responses

Many modern, tech-savvy customers who are comfortable reaching out to companies through social media expect more from customer service: better response times, clear and concise answers, and the ability to resolve the problem without any additional steps on their part. Sadly, most of what they tend to get are generic response statements and delayed (or even nonexistent) follow-ups. Too many companies treat this channel as an afterthought, even though it is fast becoming the primary way that younger customers choose to resolve their issues. Stand out from the crowd: do your utmost to meet your customers where they already are!

How to make it better?

While social media websites like Facebook allow you to create automatic responses to customers who message your page, understand that these exist primarily so that the customer knows real people will respond to them soon. Commit to response times that show the customer that their time and business is valued, and offer customers assurance that they will receive a solution without undue delays. If you find that the majority of your customers are contacting you about the same issue, most social media websites allow you to program limited "chatbot" answers to help guide customers to a solution without the need for a live representative. However, you must beware falling into old habits: if customers hate long phone menus, they're sure to hate long social media chats as well! Nothing replaces the service a human can provide, so do your best to ensure your company responds to each message personally as often as possible!

3) Automated Emails

Pre-written email responses are par for the course for most businesses today. Given the sheer volume of emails exchanged in an average day, there really aren't many ways around automating this function, though some companies make it harder by failing to provide expected response times or common solutions that the customer can try to implement themselves for a faster resolution. Another common issue unique to this particular moment in history is the newfound reliance on pandemic-related excuses to justify extremely long wait times. These won't work forever, and it would be wiser to utilize this time to strengthen your customer service automation instead of using it to shield yourself from criticism.

How to make it better?

Be creative and humorous with responses! Emails tend to be a somewhat dry way to reach out to customers, so why not take the opportunity to liven up the exchange and really get the reader's attention? It might not help them get their problems solved any faster, though it will help to dull the negative feelings associated with waiting. Speaking of waiting, it pays to commit to specific response timelines. Once you appreciate how integral fast responses are to overall satisfaction, this becomes the key to your entire customer service approach.

4) Automated Complaint Resolution and Feedback

All too often customers get reduced to feeling like "fix-it tickets" drifting with the current of your company's complaint resolution department. This is a huge mistake, as an ongoing client relationship can be lost forever in the moments when an otherwise smooth process breaks down and takes valuable time out of the client's day. Generic, slow, and/or vague responses are sure to leave the recipient with a bad memory, and they will carry that bad memory with them to their next purchasing decision with you. This can be made even worse by having an unattended automated feedback process. Even the worst experiences can be forgiven if the company's representative goes out of their way to empathize with the customer, though this can never happen if all feedback just goes to a dusty email inbox that no one ever checks, let alone personally responds to.

How to make it better?

When mistakes have been made, automation should only be used to tell the customer that help from a real person is moments away! This kind of communication MUST be personable and preferably done by phone, as nothing makes an upset customer angrier than being ignored or emailed halfheartedly when their original needs were not even met in the first place.

5) Automated New Customer Outreach

While this is more about first impressions than customer service, the way your present yourself to new potential clients makes a monumental difference in just how many become valued customers in the first place. Poorly-crafted form emails rife with spelling errors, bad formatting, or vague information about what you can offer them all contribute to the likelihood that your message will end up in their trash, or worse, their spam folder.

How to make it better?

Making unique outreach emails is difficult for those with large companies who require many new customers to maintain growth, though at the very least you should have several email lists that allow you to customize the content your new customers see based on what you know about their interests and attributes. Show that you care about them as an individual! Those who rely on fewer customers have even more freedom to personalize their outreach, and doing so by phone or extremely focused emails complete with details about why your company has the perfect opportunity to improve their lives is a great way to stand out from the bulk-mail masses!

The above are only a handful of the ways you can ensure that your customers feel like they can rely on you no matter what happens. Automation is necessary in any growing business, yet it should be done carefully and sparingly. In the end, your client may forget the deals you gave them or even the product they bought but they will never forget how you made them feel. Make sure that the feelings they take away from their experiences with you are good ones!