Purposeful and conscious de-automation of business

We often talk about how to automate different things here. But sometimes it is necessary to do a completely reverse process - to remove automation where it interferes. In our case, for example, where it obviously prevents to earn or communicate with the buyer.

For example, we cut out almost the entire IVR; made a script to bypass the filling of the cart fields; ensure that personal contacts of employees are almost everywhere (even on a cashier’s receipt a direct telephone number of the regional manager is printed); put direct mailing addresses of all the founders on each page of the site; thrown out part of the auto-notification and replaced them with live calls.
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And generally behaved defiantly in terms of IT.

At the same time, the amount of code, the required power and the complexity of the implementation of processes grew. The fact is that such de-automation requires very unfriendly investments in IT. Now I will explain with examples what is the matter and why we are doing so strangely.

Call center

Most of all in online stores I hate waiting for the operator to respond and wandering around IVR. I generally have quite a few kinks and dislikes like “no logos on objects around,” but this thing turned out to be far from just my personal impression.

We have an IVR. He is a worker. But we include it only in very extreme cases, when the peak load on the QC exceeds the permissible limits. In other situations, live operators respond. And fast. This is a service. It helps to sell.

At the conference about automation of KC in retail, I somehow moderated a round table with a Sportmaster representative. They did a titanic work, so that a person left a maximum of data on the site, in the application and anywhere else, but did not call and load their operators. Because the task was to reduce the cost of contact processing. In our case, any live contact with a trained operator is a good buyer's mood. A product such that a good mood directly means an increase in the average check. And in general, until you have grown to 10 thousand orders a day, the live operator perfectly increases the check.

While Sportmaster sawed the automation platform, we were still looking for places where you could, on the contrary, switch a person to an operator. One of these places is the shopping cart site. There, for more than two years, there is a button “I'm tired of filling in, call back, I will dictate the rest.” It may sound a bit strange for IT people (it's easier for us to fill out the form), but live contacts for the most part non-IT professionals are much preferable, simpler and more convenient. Therefore, after pressing this button, the operator calls you.

Notice that the order arrived, often subjectively comes in the mail after the operator calls. Just imagine: you leave the order - and they immediately call you. Well, or in 5 minutes. Many shops are able to do this, but in the same 2009 such a chip looked like a miracle. And shoppers liked it so much. We even arranged a race for orders among operators so that the return call would arrive as quickly as possible. No conversations with robots. Now we call back not so instantly, but nevertheless promptly.

Naturally, there are a number of notifications that are sent automatically. We tried to make them as human as possible. Here is the gradation:
- Heartless Robot: Your order number 12551 has been sent.
- Living man: Hi! My name is Vasya, I collected your order number 12551. I checked twice that everything was good there and was in place, packed the cup very carefully so that our mail would not beat her. My mail is here, the phone is here. If anything - write or call, I will help-help.
- We have a compromise option like this: Hi! I am a specially trained robot Mosigra, which is responsible for sending orders. I was instructed to tell you that your order number 12551 has just been sent by RF mail. To track how the parcel is going, here you can follow the link. The average travel time to your city is usually 5-6 days, so even if you do not receive a notification or do not see in the tracking that the parcel arrived, you should call the mail - the order may be there 2-3 days earlier than the postman brings a piece of paper. If suddenly something is lost, it is delayed more than usual, it will be beaten, there will be any other questions or you just want to clarify something about tracking - call 8-800-NN or write, we will definitely help.

There were problems with this. For example, at first there was a “Hello! Your order has been received. Just in case there is a list of what you ordered, but the phone number of the head of the online store. ” It looked too human, and people thought they were being written by a live cameraman at 2 am. And waited for the call. It was necessary to come to the form: “Hi, I am a specially trained robot of Mosigra in charge of new orders. Now all the operators sleep at home, but I will definitely give them your order in the morning. In the meantime, just in case a list of what you ordered. And here's the phone of the head of the online store. ”

One more thing. In most cases, we will call (by the live girl from the call center) when the package arrives at the end of the track.

Mails on every page of the site, phone numbers on checks

Normal people know that it is absolutely impossible to do this. Filled with spam, they will write announced, hell and collapse will happen. Therefore, special automatic feedback forms are made. Especially when tens of thousands of users run through your site per day.

We also cut out these forms.

Mail to the site - from the purchaser to the founder, all direct - at least a year and a half, if not more. And nothing terrible happened yet.

Plus, specifically I (unlike the others) still left my direct telephone. Also not too scary. Plus 10-15 minutes a day for the racket of new letters - and just a sea of ​​business opportunities. And also very rich and useful feedback. I was so used to this that when, as a client, I ran into problems at Crossroads, I almost lost my mind about having to look for their director already at LinkedIn to get at least somehow to get in touch.

On checks, we write the direct telephone number of the regional manager.

This all has another cool effect - when you have a problem in your store, people immediately talk about it. The seller in Uryupinsk does not want to blush in front of the founder, so the number of possible problems decreased simply at times.

Hatching discount cards

The normal procedure for working with a customer’s discount card is to scan the receiver on it so that it will utter a word and the customer will receive a discount. We have this. But where it is more convenient for buyers to call their phone or name instead. Because then it doesn't matter if you have a card, gave it to your friend, rummaged through the corporate network like in Yandex (we were dragged from this client for a couple of million rubles of purchases) or simply forgotten at home. You received it once - it is there.

Again, in 2015 this part of de-automation will not surprise anyone - it took investments in IT to add different human natural interfaces besides scanning a piece of plastic, and so many are doing so now. In 2010, this again caused the wild delight of customers. As well as the fact that the card was a key fob, and it read “If you found these keys, please take them to the nearest Mosigra store”.

In Chaypey (we did this to anti-cafes), it was possible to use plastic cards to authorize users and calculate the time of the visit. This was already accepted practice in the market. So, we deliberately abandoned this and made boards for recording people in order to be able to greet everyone. And plus - rounded at the end of the time down by 2-3 minutes, which pleased the guests. Inaccurately, a lot of human factor - but at the same time far better automation.

Fuzzy search

Buyers do not have search discipline and are increasingly corrupted by natural interfaces. This, again, smacks almost by manual selection of synonyms in the search, so that upon request "Tower" there was the game "Jenga", upon request "Scholar" - the game "Scrabble", upon request "Cheburashka" - the toy "Crocodile Gena".

You can estimate how many IT tools you need to “de-automate” and simplify the search, you can in this topic of mine about fuzzy search mechanics by product. And this is far from being the limit.

Product classification

For three years we have classified goods according to various criteria. And then someone remembered "Mental hospital in the hands of patients" and decided to see what would happen if you make the button "all goods". To straight meat and meat without classifiers. And you know what? It is not so sharp, but increased conversion.

The mechanism of action is the same as when choosing a movie on an airplane - there are 50 of them there, and it is easier to browse the entire catalog than to guess in which category “Cards, money, two barrels” lie in comedies or thrillers.

Scripting

Sellers and call center operators are usually scripted on the most do not indulge so that surprises (for us) in the conversation was not. We teach these scripts and then we show what to do with them.

You can create any garbage, if there is a result. For the result of the case usually does not arise.

Long ago, I saw a scene with a tired businessman on Prospekt Mira:

- Here is my card. What's next?
Charming girl seller in a sweet voice:
- Farther? Then I have to chop off your finger.
The man slowly lifts his head, shakes his head, comes out of his stuck, looks at her smile and also starts to smile.

Such moments - the most important thing in the store.

Every time I think about it when I meet robots from call centers. In one shoe one day I could not understand until about the fifth phrase, a person calls me or IVR. There was an extremely tortured man at the end of the shift.

More points

Forms (except the one most important with the contacts of the buyer) do not contain the required fields. Telephone and mail are not checked for standards “so that without typos” - this is especially true after the messages “I’re deaf-and-dumb, please only in the mail” left in the field, “7905-123-45-67, please do not call between 11:30 and 12:30, left by regional numbers, numbers with additional numbers and even one American number with letters (in Russian online store). In the backend we try to normalize all of this and write to the database. But if something goes wrong, a live operator in CRM will see that the robot who parses phones does not like it, and he will understand the situation himself. Our task is to accept the order. And robots should not stand in the way of the buyer.

In general, we are constantly looking for such places and try to make the interface natural. De-automatization concerns only those parts where it is more convenient for a person (buyer) to work in a natural environment. Now we are still remaking the basket, sawing through a fully automated gallery from the product pages (it turned out that it’s much more convenient and practical to show all the pictures right in the description under the scroll column), we do a lot of different things. Recently, we have added to the update plan to remove all noreply -type emails - they are fucked up, they did not do it right away.

The general principle of our actions is:

• There are many obvious and ready things like IVR that automate processes, but at the same time interfere slightly with the same service.
• When we are doing something new, we use the “standard configuration,” that is, how it is, in theory, is usually done.
• Then we come up with our yardstick and evaluate what is changing. For example, in the case of the same IVR, we change the number of operators in a shift to the instantaneous response of a person.
• Determine whether it is worth it or not. Suppose, in the example decided that it is worth.
• We register a new process, more “manual”, methods and conditions for switching back to “safe” automation (all lines in normal operation should not be busy, IVR is turned on when everything is busy, for example, at the peak).
• We register the automation of the backend for the “manual” process - in the example, new calculations of operator shifts, revision of the call routing system, and so on will be required.
• We roll out in test operation and see what is changing. Sometimes our sense of what we do correctly and well changes, but more often numerical indicators appear.

Naturally, in those places where automation does not conflict with the service and is really needed (almost all logistics, commercial backend, and so on) we do everything so that robots help people in every way. And do not offend them.