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Being prepared for high demand in customer service is key to maintaining a good relationship with customers and delivering satisfactory solutions for those involved. TAG Livros, a Brazilian e-commerce and literary subscription company, realized the need to streamline its process and invested in technology to improve these metrics, which is why it is featured in the Sales Strategy category at the Aivo Awards 2021.
Lígia Braga, Head of Product-Led Sales at Aivo, talks with Michelle Stefanello, Service Coordinator at Tag Livros, about how Sofia, their bot with conversational AI, has become a key player for support and sales during commercial campaigns.
A bot as part of the service team
How did TAG Livros start the automated service project?
Our customer service team works closely with some business lines (different subscription clubs, e-commerce, and literary tracks) clearing up doubts and following up on the entire journey experience, such as purchase, renewal, and delivery for leads, customers, and associates.
We have always been recognized for the quality of our service, focusing on conversations and solving problems in a close and empathetic way to understand what is happening and what can be done with each situation. Several projects were designed to resolve this issue and the chatbot was one of them, opening a door for this change, making us available in more channels at a speed that was not possible before. So we created Sofia, which supports those who need an initial service on the website and Whatsapp. We use TAG's application and, from there, we can continue with self-service or transfer it to a human agent if necessary. And now we are investing a lot in monitoring interactions, observing the results, analyzing conversations to understand what we can continue to improve.
Our main objective has always been to maintain the experience, without jeopardizing the journey and satisfaction, reconcile agility, the volume of available information, and provide an in-depth service, meeting the expectations of our associates and maintaining our standard. And Sofia is an essential part of this process.
Related article: E-commerce chatbot: how to increase sales and retention on your website
How is Sofia involved in the sales process, especially in campaigns?
We have a great connection with the Marketing team for creating campaigns and updating the bot's content so that everything is aligned. At our “Book Week” (Black Friday at TAG Livros) Sofia was our frontline service, sharing coupons, reprints, kits, promotions, and gifts. She was prepared to answer most of the questions that are expected during this time of high demand so it doesn’t require transferring to a human agent. It is also our 24/7 service, so it is a great gain for our team, an important alternative for the subscriber who wants to clear up a question on weekends, for example.
Preparing the bot today is one of the first steps in launching a campaign. This exchange and communication between the teams are important, involving people who are focused on this in different areas, including Product, and who will gather information and generate a perfect conversation flow for this relationship with the customer. And this shared knowledge brings the assurance that we are training Sofia well to achieve the expected goals, constantly renewing the content, based on the metrics that we monitor on the platform.
Efficiency and empathy in customer service
How has Sofia been involved with Sales? Is she also being a good salesperson?
We have two focuses in working with Sofia: the first is sales support, solving queries, presenting products, and explaining the differences of our clubs. She covers the beginning of the relationship, the presentation phase, so that the person can get to know our business and, from there, consider becoming a client. We also included in the bot the sales pitch, a challenge that we are dealing with very closely at the moment, evaluating which parts of the speech best fit Sofia's profile and when to hand it over to the human team in this negotiation.
We are in the experience stage to understand how Sofia can sell, balancing agility and quality in automation – and we are already reaping results! We even need to reward her for that!
You might also like: Discover all the featured cases of Aivo Awards 2021!
What advice would you give to make customers happy and satisfied?
For us, the objective of strategically fitting what we need as a business has always been very strong, for example, sales, growth, customer retention, and the journey that satisfies the customer and makes them happy, finding all the information with autonomy. Our team is ready if the customer wants to talk to us, but we also understand that some customers prefer the phone or email, others prefer the bot, others want to research on the help platform, and we need to be available in all situations and formats. We will continue investing in technology, automation, research, and training, but always keeping an eye on what the subscriber wants.
Giving customers the freedom to access our service in the way they prefer is putting them at the center of decisions, and that makes all the difference. This balance also brings the customer to our "meeting table", there is no point in making decisions thinking only about our business without giving effective attention to the customer and what they want.
Want to achieve results like these?
If you haven't already, check out the full list of featured clients at Aivo Awards and discover the story behind their chatbots.
And if you'd like to implement our technology into your customer service strategy, don't hesitate to schedule a call with one of our representatives.