Alex RaineyAlex is an experienced CTO and founder who largely focuses on all the technical areas of My AskAI, from AI Engineering, Technical Product Management and overall Platform Development.
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Aside from providing top-notch products and services, customer support is crucial to business success. Without quick and efficient support service, your business is bound to flop. In fact, around 86% of customers are willing to jump ship to another company offering superior customer support.
Automation is currently the leading innovation for stellar customer support. Automated programs and AI-powered technologies like chatbots, IVRs, email assistants, and ticketing systems are now working with live agents to address large volumes of customer concerns daily.
But let’s be honest - adopting new technologies means additional costs to the company, and we only want to spend on worthy investments. So, in this article, we estimated customer support automation costs to see if this is an affordable solution to keep your business’s support service on par with the competitive market.
Why Use Customer Support Automation?
Okay, you have first-rate support reps in your business, and they’re quite good at handling customer calls and emails. So, why should you adopt customer support automation?
Well, automated technologies can provide benefits that human agents alone cannot.
- Day and night customer support. Most AI customer support platforms, such as chatbots, interactive voice response (IVR) systems, and AI email assistants, can operate 24/7 to address customer concerns. These tools are trained using volumes of business files and documents, enabling them to provide instant responses to basic queries.
- Streamlined support workflows. Automation reduces manual, repetitive tasks. For instance, AI-powered ticketing systems can automatically generate concern tickets and route them to appropriate reps.
- Scalable service. Automated tools are capable of handling large volumes of customer concerns simultaneously, unlike live agents that can handle only one to two concerns at once.
- Customer insights generation. Automated programs can go over hundreds of conversations, tickets, and emails to analyze commonly raised customer concerns that you must focus on.
- Economical Innovative solution. It’s more cost-effective to employ and maintain automated tools than to recruit new staff to perform customer support tasks.
Cost of Implementing Customer Support Automation
Having understood the benefits of customer support automation, let’s now delve into its
implementation cost.
A business’s automated customer support expenses can span from $0 to $10,000 per month (or even higher). Well, we can’t expect a single estimate for the cost of automation as there are different methods of development available, not to mention the wide range of features you can include with its development.
To make an accurate estimation, let’s consider the expected costs when you create an automation program by paying a software provider and building your in-house applications.
Subscription-Based Customer Support Automation: Cost Estimation
The easiest (and fastest) approach to automate customer support is by paying software providers. These providers create programs that you can implement to automate customer support tasks.
For instance, you can subscribe to My AskAI to easily create AI chatbots that can respond to around 75% of customer queries. This provider also provides an AI email assistant that can automatically respond to email queries on your behalf.
Businesses can select from a provider’s subscription plans based on their desired automation tools and features. Many providers offer free products but limited functionalities, which is perfect for small businesses that don’t have the budget yet. For instance, My AskAI offers $0 automated solutions for customer support with options for branding customization, website embedding, and basic analytics.
If you want automated tools with a wide range of capabilities like unlimited app integrations, statistics reports, lead generation, or full customization - get ready to pay a couple of bucks per month.
Startups and small businesses might have to spend around $15 to $100 per month to have high-quality automation tools like chatbots, interactive voice response, email assistants, ticket routing systems, and feedback collection programs.
For revenue-generating and large businesses, expect to spend up to $500 to $2000 per month for seamless customer support automation. Some providers also provide the option for custom pricing for businesses who want more automation features (e,.g. auto-translation, custom SSO, custom API, meeting scheduler, etc) for a budget-friendly price.
In-house Customer Support Automation: Cost Estimation
You may also opt to build your automated programs for customer support. While this option is pricier than subscription-based development, an in-house automation tool has better customization options, easier integration into your existing IT infrastructure, and more robust data security.
In this approach, you need multiple professionals to help you develop automation software - project head/manager, software developer, UX designer, data analyst, and quality assurance (QA) professional.
Here are the estimated salaries of these professionals in the United States, as well as their respective tasks:
- Project Head ($63.84/hr): This person overseesees the development procesAe a supervisor acting as your alter- can play this roleego, but you can also play this role to save money.
- Software Developer/Engineer ($51.58/hr): Set up the codes necessary to run the automated program.
- UX Designer($48.84/hr): Creates a user-friendly interface for chatbots and other automation programs, keeping their aesthetics matched to your company’s brand.
- Quality Assurance professional specialist ($33.08/hr): Test the automation programs to detect bugs and other issues and create a comprehensive report for the project head and software developer.
To sum up the expected expenses above, you need at least $5,000 to $10,000 per month to create and maintain in-house automation tools for your business.
Shifting to automated customer support is definitely not cheap, whether you opt to create automated tools with a software provider or hire a team of professionals. But oftentimes, automation generates a satisfying ROI in the long run in the form of maximized customer loyalty and retention. Imagine the amount of workload reduced in your support team, making them faster, more efficient, and more productive.
Starting Automating Your Business’s Customer Support
Save time responding to basic customer queries with an AI chatbot from
My AskAI. Try out our free plan today and let our smart assistant automate the process of handling first-level customer concerns.
Written by
Alex Rainey
Alex is an experienced CTO and founder who largely focuses on all the technical areas of My AskAI, from AI Engineering, Technical Product Management and overall Platform Development.
