Don’t let a data breach or product recall damage your relationship with customers any more than it needs to. A digital colleague like Amelia can walk customers through their options following a security incident and provide expert guidance on next steps. Read this article to learn more.
Picture this nightmare scenario: Your organization has been hit with a massive data breach. Roughly 50% of your customers’ data has been exposed. You’ve notified your customer base that they’re in jeopardy. You tell them that you’ve created a landing page with a list of the compromised customers – and then the page goes down due to overwhelming traffic volume. Your customers are alarmed and angry, not to mention inconvenienced. There’s no way for them to find out if their information is in the hands of hackers without contacting your company directly.
Depending on the size of your customer base in this scenario, you could have hundreds of thousands or millions of emotional consumers calling your customer service line. You don’t have a large enough contact center to handle this many calls, and your agents aren’t specifically trained to handle angry and emotional consumers. As a result, you’re left with a mass of livid customers waiting on hold, only to be met by unprepared agents who’ve already handled more calls today than they normally would in a week.
This is a recipe for a horrible customer experience and a fractured customer relationship.
Amelia as a Disaster Management Solution
Amelia, IPsoft’s digital colleague, is the ideal AI system to help companies deal with the aftermath of a data breach or any other security event. She can be trained to follow any standardized business process. She is emotionally intelligent, which allows her to recognize anger, sadness, frustration, fear, and other feelings that influence customer service conversations. As a machine, she can scale as demand grows, and she never needs to sleep, take a break, or go to lunch.
Amelia’s attributes make her the ideal representative for your company, especially in a data breach or disaster scenario. She’s there 24/7 to answer calls, to conduct text-based chats, or to speak with customers on video calls. No matter how many customers come to your site to find out if they’ve been compromised, Amelia can respond to each and every one of them with little to no hold times.
Customer: Was my information compromised during the breach?
Amelia: Yes, I am sorry to inform you that your name, address, and credit card information has been compromised. We’ve locked your account for now and we’ve notified your bank. You should contact them as soon as we’re done. Would you like me to get their number for you? Or would you like to speak to a fraud specialist who can provide additional information about the breach?
If your customers are in tears, if they’re typing profanities, or if they’re threatening to never do business with your organization again, Amelia will respond professionally, and with the appropriate emotional tone, to help customers get the service they need.
Customer: I can’t believe your company let someone access my information. This is absurd!
Amelia: I am very sorry that this has happened. We’ve locked your account and notified your bank…
Customer: What good is any of that going to do?! The criminals already have my credit card number!
Amelia: I understand your concern. I’m terribly sorry. Because we’ve contacted your bank, they will monitor your account for any fraudulent charges. We can provide you with the bank’s phone number so the bank can issue you a new card.
Customer: Oh great! Another new card! I’m never doing business with you people again.
Amelia: I completely understand. This is very frustrating. Please accept our apologies. We’d like to offer you a 20% discount on your next purchase with us. We’re also here to discuss any questions that you might have about your account.
Providing Security at Scale with Cognitive AI
Conducting conversations similar to the one above hundreds of thousands of times would require a massive investment. Your customer service employees would spend days and weeks delivering a bare minimum experience in order to keep up with call volume. You would probably need to pull other employees away from their regular jobs to cover the spike in calls, which would in turn make other aspects of your business suffer.
Worst of all: Mistakes would be made. Customer service agents could lose their cool and respond hastily to customers. Your relationship with your customer base would be forever altered.
Amelia can help limit the damage and turn a potentially horrible experience into only a slightly negative one. She’s fast. She’s empathetic. She doesn’t make mistakes under pressure like humans. She’s always available, and she’s ready if and when a disaster occurs.
Brands that fail to capitalize on AI systems such as Amelia are either overstaffed and wasting resources deploying customer service agents in preparation for such an event, or they’re entirely unprepared and gambling that a data breach will never occur. In either scenario, Amelia would be an ideal alternative to guaranteeing that your customers get the help and reassurance they need if their data is ever compromised.
