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What is automated customer service? A complete guide

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A comprehensive guide to automating customer service

Last updated January 24, 2025

According to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report, 90 percent of CX Trendsetters believe 80+ percent of issues will be resolved without a human within the next few years. But, for autonomous support to become a reality, businesses must set up automated customer service solutions for success.

From AI-powered customer service chatbots to translation automation and more, customer service automation is on the rise, helping teams provide the high-quality, seamless customer experiences (CX) individuals expect.

In our guide, we’ll help you learn more about automated and AI-powered customer service software, including how it works, how it benefits businesses, and how you can implement it in your business today.

What is automated customer service?

Automated customer service is a form of customer support enhanced by automation technology and artificial intelligence (AI). Businesses can use it to resolve customer issues—with or without agent involvement.

A Venn diagram showing the differences and similarities between traditional customer service and automated customer service.

With automated customer service, businesses can provide 24/7 support and reduce labor costs. They may leverage automation to handle customer interactions from start to finish or use it as a tool to assist live agents.

For example, automation technology can help support teams by providing contextual article recommendations based on customer feedback and automatically routing requests to the right agents. This helps boost agent productivity and allows agents to focus on resolving issues that truly require a human touch.

How does automated service work?

Automated customer service works by leveraging technology—like conversational intelligence software and customer intelligence solutions—to efficiently handle customer interactions. This software and these tools then follow these steps to a resolution:

  1. A customer initiates contact and explains the issue.
  2. The automated system recognizes the intent using keywords and natural language processing (NLP).
  3. The system generates a response or initiates a ticket escalation based on the query.
  4. The system delivers the response to the customer and executes any necessary actions on its end.

Using NLP and generative AI principles, the system learns from previous interactions to create more consistent responses and provide better resolutions and support during future interactions.

Automated Customer Service Example

A customer has an issue with an electronic product that won’t turn on.

They reach out to your company for a solution, and your customer service

automation handles the interaction.

StepDescription
Step 1The customer navigates to the support page on your website.
Step 2

An AI agent—an autonomous AI chatbot—greets them

and gathers information about their problem.

Step 3

The AI agent directs the customer to an article

discussing the issue in your knowledge base.

Step 4

The article instructs them to perform a certain task.

If the task doesn’t work, the AI agent can offer a

new solution or route the customer’s ticket to a human agent.

How to automate customer service

A list of the six steps for automating customer service.

To successfully begin automating your customer service and increasing customer satisfaction (CSAT), consider following these six steps:

  1. Know your needs: Consider where automation will have the biggest business-wide impact, but don’t neglect your customer needs, expectations, and preferences.
  2. Identify automation opportunities: Know where your customers may require more guidance and where conversation flows will be most effective. Be aware of the high-volume, simple tasks your support team spends a lot of time on, and focus your intelligent automation efforts in these areas.
  3. Flag agent-specific tasks: Identify specific customer service tasks that live agents should perform, especially those requiring empathy, product expertise, and a human touch.
  4. Choose your tools: Invest in high-functioning and responsive software that supports backend integrations and APIs. Consider tools like AI copilot—an AI-powered agent assistant that automates tasks and suggestions while providing insights—so your teams are agile enough to keep pace with customer expectations and changes.
  5. Test your processes: Use analytics and insights to fine-tune automation and conversation flows. Plus, incorporate auto QA from the jump to test workflows and improve processes before completely rolling out your service.
  6. Monitor and improve: Use customer insights to drive continued success and identify areas for growth while monitoring and improving use cases, channel distribution, and more.

During automation implementation and future improvements, keep your customer service team in the loop. You should also consistently audit your automated customer support offerings to ensure accuracy and correct operation, including auditing your knowledge base, updating pre-written responses, and testing AI agent responsiveness.

10 examples of automated customer service

Ten examples of automated customer service, including AI agents, intelligent routing, and AI knowledge bases.

Depending on your industry and company size, automated customer service can be simple or complex. When implementing automated customer service for your business, consider the following examples of automated support:

  1. AI agents: The next generation of AI-powered bots, Zendesk AI agents are the most autonomous CX bots trained on billions of real customer interactions and equipped to fully resolve even the most sophisticated customer issues.
  2. Automated ticketing systems: AI-powered ticketing automation routes inquiries to the agent best equipped to respond to tickets, decrease resolution times, and improve CX.
  3. Interactive voice response (IVR) software: An automated tool that can greet callers, direct them to the right place, accept payments, and answer common questions using pre-recorded responses.
  4. Intelligent routing: Ticket routing—including omnichannel routing—that bases decisions on agent skill, capacity, status, and conversation priority.
  5. Autoresponders: Tools like email automation software that send direct, consistent responses to customer inquiries across various channels like email and social media.
  6. Automated notifications: Tools capable of providing proactive customer service using intelligent notifications based on set rules.
  7. AI knowledge bases: Centralized data hubs that support customer self-service and surface relevant information to users on demand.
  8. Workflow automation: Systems that use workflow automation software and pre-defined rules to automate actions and keep tasks moving forward.
  9. Predictive analytics: Data findings that report currently successful practices, potential workforce needs, buyer expectations, and more.
  10. Automatic translation: Translation services that allow teams to help customers globally, reaching a wider audience without increasing resource strain.

Whether you need an AI agent to point your customers in the right direction or want to improve your contact center using IVR software, automated customer support systems like Zendesk can help you enhance your customer experience across the board.

What are the benefits of automated customer service?

AI-powered bots can deliver 24/7 answers across service channels, leading to higher satisfaction rates and increased loyalty.

Automated customer service has the potential to benefit businesses of all sizes. Whether you want to deliver good customer service or reduce costs, here are some of the common benefits of customer service automation.

  • Increased agent productivity and efficiency: Automatically tag tickets, intelligently route interactions to the correct agent, manage workflows, and respond to inquiries quickly with automated customer service.
  • Improved customer satisfaction: Address common customer pain points and offer increased consistency
    and accuracy to improve satisfaction with each customer interaction.
  • Reduced costs: Tools like AI agents can handle all types of interactions without human intervention, reducing costs as support agents dedicate their time to the customers who need it most.
  • 24/7 support: Keep up with customers' busy lives by using AI agents and self-service options to deliver around-the-clock support—even when your human agents are sleeping.
  • Better customer insights: Combine customer support and sales data from across channels to better understand customer behavior and use automated customer service reports to gain visibility into all customer interactions.
  • Lowered wait times: Provide near-instant answers to FAQs, route tickets to the best agent or department, surface knowledge base articles, and more, reducing waiting during high-volume periods.

With Zendesk AI, you can automate personalized support, respond to customer inquiries around the clock (and the world), and resolve complex interactions—all without breaking a sweat.

How to check if your customer service automation is working

Ensuring your customer service automation is effective doesn’t have to be complicated—start by testing it yourself. Walk through the customer journey as if you were a user and note any friction points or gaps.

To thoroughly check your automated customer service:

  • Review feedback and survey responses: Use AI customer feedback analysis to identify patterns, areas for improvement, and successful service interactions.
  • Track customer service metrics: Set benchmarks for key metrics like response times, resolution rates, and CSAT scores to measure your automation’s performance.
  • Implement quality assurance (QA) practices:
    Be vigilant about checking the quality of your interactions through call listening and other manual and automated QA processes.
  • Identify abandonment points: If certain pathways lead to customer drop-offs, analyze why customers may exit the system without resolution and refine workflows based on your findings.

By regularly evaluating these areas, you can fine-tune your customer service automation to ensure it consistently meets customer expectations and enhances their overall experience.

Frequently asked questions

Degreed

Degreed sees $1M in cost savings by switching to Zendesk

“Insights on the kind of requests coming from customers can help you develop product features that truly meet customer needs and proactively identify issues before they worsen. That creates a positive impact on retention and customer satisfaction.”

Kevin Barry

VP of Global Technical Services & Support

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Ready to try automated customer service?

It’s time to give customer service automation a shot. From intelligent routing and 24/7 support to Zendesk AI agents and AI copilot, Zendesk is an out-of-the-box solution for providing fast, high-quality customer support—and, above all, positive customer experiences.

Try Zendesk today and discover how you can use powerful AI tools to streamline customer service and solve customer problems—with and without agent intervention.

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