Agentz Data Reveals Nearly One in Four Consumers Prefer Communicating with Small Businesses Using Automated Assistants
With staffing shortages persisting for many small BUSINESSES, automated assistant technology is poised to ease the hiring gap. Evidence comes from businesses that have installed the Agentz Automated Assistant showing a 37.2% increase in user engagement in 2021 as consumers demonstrate their willingness to self-service using smart automated tools vs. relying on live human help.
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“It is quite remarkable what we saw last year,” said Kerry Baldwin, Head of Channel Partnerships. “The level of consumer engagement with the Automated Assistant grew quarter over quarter resulting in nearly one-fourth of consumers opting to use automation. Even more remarkable is that less than 1% of those engagements resulted in the consumer requesting live help. This proves that technology can elegantly handle many types of customer inquiries easing the workload for understaffed small businesses.”
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Surpassing simple ‘lead capture’ tools, automation has evolved to handle many routine tasks. Some key evolutionary trends:
- SMBs are increasingly comfortable trusting automation to answer questions and schedule appointments on their behalf
- Transferring missed calls to an automated SMS conversation is the feature most in demand by SMBs who continue to miss upwards of one-third of their calls
- The ability for businesses to provide the same self-service experience across SMS, Facebook, Google My Business, website, and voice is increasingly valued
- Consumers expect help 24/7 – Agentz data shows that one third of automated conversations are after hours
Founder, Ketan Shah, notes: “The ability to service a quarter of customers using automation is a game-changer for small businesses struggling to keep up with demand. The heavy investment in automation tools has historically been at the enterprise level leaving a real opportunity for us to tackle the underserved SMB audience. We’ve democratized automation technology with the SMB in mind.”
