In the world of customer support, speed is everything. In fact, 71% of consumers said a quick customer service response can drastically improve their customer experience.
That speed factor gets particularly tricky as companies scale. As e-learning platform Learn It Live quickly grew its customer base, it saw the same increase in the number of support tickets.
Adam Shoqar, VP of New Partnerships and Innovation, quickly recognized this growing problem and knew he needed to find a solution for his small Support team so they could maintain a great customer experience.
That's when Adam saw Zapier’s announcement for the release of Chatbots. Within an hour, he was on his way to a support solution that would scale with the company and curb long wait times.
Challenge: Too many support tickets, too little time
Like many Customer Support teams, the Learn It Live team aimed to provide high-quality support to its customers. But they don't just want to solve problems—they want to address them quickly.
As the company saw a surge in new users during the COVID-19 pandemic, they also received a corresponding spike in support tickets. While the rapid growth was exhilarating, it put added pressure on the Support team to find innovative solutions to manage the influx.
When Adam was thinking through solutions, he realized he needed something that would check a few boxes. First, it needed to solve support tickets for two groups of users:
Those hosting the classes, such as a yoga instructor
Those signing up to attend classes, such as a novice cook signing up for a cooking class
“We’re not only B2B,” said Adam. “Our platform is also B2B2C.”
This means the Support team and their solutions need to understand every part of that ecosystem.
Additionally, Adam discovered that not all of their users are very tech-savvy. Because of this, he knew the solution needed to be simple to use no matter their customer's comfort level with technology.
Finally, the right solution needed to dramatically cut down on tickets. Their Support team spent a lot of time offering the same advice over and over to users while the more complicated issues weren’t getting enough dedicated time. Adam knew the right tool would allow the team to spend more time on the tickets that really required a human touch.
“Before, a lot of human hours were just not utilized properly,” said Adam.
Solution: On-demand support with a chatbot
Adam decided to test out Chatbots, one of Zapier’s newest products. In less than an hour, Adam built an AI-powered chatbot he could embed into the Learn It Live website.
Here’s how Adam did it:
Created the chatbot. Building the chatbot was as easy as answering a few questions in the Zapier builder. These include: naming the bot, creating the welcome message, providing some instructions, and customizing the bot to match your branding.
Plugged in a knowledge source. Adam wanted his chatbot to be as helpful as possible—so, he had to plug his bot into a knowledge source to assist with the answers. To do this, he added the most common questions the Support team answers with the corresponding answers into Zapier Tables. Then, within the “instructions” tab of the chatbot builder, he selected that table as a knowledge source. Adam can easily edit the table with new questions or different info and the changes go live instantly.
Tested the bot out. Before going live with the chatbot, Adam tested it with all sorts of questions, including queries that were confusing or poorly written. No matter what questions were asked, “the chatbot came up with good suggestions,” said Adam.
Set up more action triggers. To ensure quality responses, at the end of each answer, Adam includes triggers that allow customers to select whether or not they’re satisfied with the chatbot’s response. If someone indicates they’re unhappy with the response, a notification is automatically sent to a Slack channel so the Support team can follow up. This option also allows Adam to ensure the chatbot is providing appropriate responses. Adam also added an option to submit a support ticket directly from the bot. Customers submitted a ticket in a small percentage of conversations, which highlights the chatbot's ability to solve their problems.
He embedded the chatbot into the Learn It Live website and on their partner websites as well.
Results: 40% reduction in support tickets
With the support chatbot live across their sites, the Learn It Live Support team has seen a 40% reduction in support tickets.
The reduction in tickets is a win-win situation for Learn It Live. Instructors and students can get support in real-time for simple problems via the chatbot, and the Support team can focus on more complex issues needing a human touch.
According to Adam, “We prefer to resolve specific things with a real person. With the bot up and running, we can now allocate enough time to those issues without overloading our stakeholders.”
Above all, Adam was able to build a flexible solution all on Zapier with no coding needed.
“I enjoy Zapier’s Chatbots builder because it’s intuitive and the interface is easy to navigate.”
