November 27, 2020
How to automate customer success with chatbots
Learn how Helpfruit supported rapid growth for contactless check-in solution EVA Check-in.
Automating customer service and success with Helpfruit has supported EVA Check-in's rapid growth. In April 2020, in the midst of New Zealand’s level 4 COVID lockdown, Theta’s innovation lab invented EVA Check-in – a contactless check-in solution. Designed to help organisations with their guest register requirements, EVA Check-in was built and launched in just 12 days. In the 6 months since then it’s gone on to become a successful product with over 3 million contactless, fast and secure check-ins across more than 500 customers and thousands of sites.
EVA, the EVA Check-in chatbot is a key player in the customer success story enabling the product team to support customers 24x7, capturing leads and providing early warning for issues. Says product owner Andrew Taylor:
“Using Helpfruit to support our new product meant we could grow our customer base quickly without hiring extra support staff. When we did the figures, it was obvious what made sense for us. Comparing the cost of hiring a customer support specialist with a solution like Helpfruit – even with implementation and maintenance factored in – it totally stacked up. And knowing we were expanding our capability during the Covid-19 pandemic, without an increase in salaries, meant that we were managing our growth in a pragmatic, customer-focused way too. A win-win!"
EVA has already answered more than 3,000 customer questions. Deployed on public-facing website evacheckin.com, chatbot EVA answers pre-sales questions from prospective customers about pricing, product features and signing up. EVA also supports end users who need help checking in. Many of these questions would otherwise end up as emails for the support team to deal with - quickly overwhelming them and providing a poor customer experience.
Common questions are highlighted up-front - based on analytics data the team knows what is commonly asked rather than guessing.
Deeper, delightful engagement with chat
Throughout the site, EVA also provides additional detail on new features, like kiosk mode, via special buttons at the end of a post that invite the reader to “ask our friendly chatbot about…” and launch EVA. This provides the possibility for deeper engagement – shifting from reading to chat – and to surprise and delight customers.
See another example of this kind of page-to-bot interaction – click one of the buttons on this page.
Supporting sales and service
As well as the excellent work on evacheckin.com, EVA helps the EVA Check-in sales team in their direct interactions with customers. Sales Consultant Peter Romeyne explains:
"It's been a great experience to use Helpfruti to help with our sales activity for EVA Check-in. The nice thing about the chatbot answers is that I don't have to find the right wording to come up with my own explanations. The answer was always 'on brand'. Also once you answer one question, Eva often raises follow up questions. I was able to refer people to the chatbot so that if they had more questions they could ask for the answers themselves and get immediate responses. I was dealing with a lot of volunteers for sports clubs who worked outside standard business hours so being able to answer their questions at any time of the day was invaluable."
Understanding the customer journey
Helpfruit’s conversation history and chat analytics allows the EVA team to review the entire conversation a prospect had with the bot, including web pages visited, questions asked and answers received, to get greater insight into our customer journeys.
Says product owner Andrew Taylor:
“The comprehensive conversation data in Helpfruit has been invaluable for the product team, helping us to pinpoint potential adoption issues and supporting continuous improvement of EVA Check-in that’s aligned with customer needs.”
A single chatbot performs multiple customer support roles
The same chatbot also appears on the EVA Check-in admin portal, and can answer questions from logged-in users about how to access reports, change settings or configuration, billing and more.
Even better, because users are logged in, we can see which customers ask specific questions or need help, and follow up directly with them when appropriate – allowing us to provide proactive customer support.
Are you keen to automate customer success and grow capacity to support your customers, with chat?
(This blog was originally published by FAQ Bot. FAQ Bot rebranded to Helpfruit in May 2024. This blog has been updated accordingly.)