What are the key factors determining business success? A company that has big-time aspirations should offer a high-quality product or service at competitive prices, be able to robustly market it, create a positive brand image, correctly identify its target audience, administer aggressive advertising campaigns, keep its employees satisfied, and make lots of other steps that will open the door to the major league of business in the niche.
Yet, you may do all these things but see your clientele leaving you in droves. Why? Because you fail to provide adequate customer service for them. In fact, 61% of consumers stop cooperating with a brand if the customer service experience they obtain turns out poor. Realizing this, organizations go to all lengths to have a properly functioning customer support service in place, trying to enhance its efficiency by leveraging cutting-edge technologies (like artificial intelligence).
Self customer service is an essential component of a customer support strategy that is developed and implemented by companies poised for success. This article will help you discover the nature of this brand-client interaction type, expose its benefits, and reveal the best practices for setting up an efficient self service to keep your clients satisfied.
What is Customer Self Service?
How does a conventional customer service system work? A client addresses the company with some query or complaint. A support team representative (or an AI-driven support system) creates a ticket with the issue description, the caller’s contact information, and submission time. Then, tickets are categorized, prioritized, and assigned to a support agent qualified to handle them. As soon as the issue is solved, the customer is asked to confirm the resolution and give feedback on their experience.
A long and tedious routine, isn’t it? It can be accelerated if customer service and call center responsibilities are delegated to artificial intelligence, but it is human personnel who will ultimately have to tackle problems anyway. Can the mundane workflow be essentially streamlined and facilitated? It sure can. As seasoned customer service representatives say, the ideal support ticket is one that has never been created. In such cases, people figure out how to solve the problem themselves.
So, what is self service? You have definitely tried it yourself when you leveraged an ATM to withdraw cash instead of going to the bank or paid for purchases at a grocery terminal instead of standing in a long line at cashier-operated checkouts. People learn to perform such simple operations very fast and prefer to follow this path without having to wait for the personnel to serve them.
With the advent of online experience, the practice of allowing site e-commerce shoppers to fend for themselves was borrowed into the virtual domain. What is customer self service regarding online experience? Organizations with a digital footprint enable their online clients to act independently without waiting for the support team to step in. For two-thirds of consumers, this is the first option to try when encountering some setback or discovering issues with the product, anyway.
It takes people much less time to do quick research across the available resources, troubleshoot the issue, and find an effective solution than involve assistance from a support representative. After all, your problem may appear a minor one that doesn’t require any high-expertise help or advice and can be tackled on short notice without waiting for the support ticket to go through all pipeline stages.
What are the assets of self customer service?
Zooming in on the Upsides of Self Service Customer Service
A robust self service system is a win-win platform for all stakeholders involved in client-brand interaction.
Customers stand to benefit because:
A choice of interaction form
Some people aren’t very comfortable with novel communication technologies or lack the necessary technical skills to handle them, so self service is a preferable option for them. Non-urgent and low-effort tasks are what such categories of consumers will easily cope with on their own.
Being in control
Realizing that you crucially rely on someone to solve your problem is not a pleasant thought. People don’t like feeling helpless and dependent. With self service, they are in the driver’s seat, doing things on their own terms and taking responsibility for their actions.
Higher satisfaction
This is again about self-esteem. When you have solved a life-and-death (as you believe) problem all by yourself, your confidence soars, empowering you to aim for new horizons.
Reduced waiting time
As a rule, contact centers, even if they are AI-powered venues, are snowed under queries, making callers wait fuming until a support employee gets around to them. Customer self service eliminates this exasperating practice and saves much precious time for busy clients.
24/7 Access
Only 28% of support teams work round-the-clock, whereas half of them are available during business hours on working days. But you can do nothing with Murphy’s Law when the most unpleasant thing occurs at the most inappropriate moment. Especially when you are in the wrong time zone. Self service is a godsend in such situations.
Organizations are on the winning side, too, because:
Reduced support staff OPEX
By enabling customers to solve issues themselves, you won’t need dozens of reps who spend days and months answering the same questions over and over again. Such a workforce can be redeployed to deal with more complex and creative tasks, while the profession of a support team member will gradually fall into disuse.
Increased workflow efficiency
Since self customer service relieves pressure on support teams, they can handle their job better without botching their tasks just because they didn’t have enough time to look into them.
Boosted customer loyalty
Happy customers who solved their problem themselves (remember this I'm-the-boss feeling?) in a matter of minutes are likely to repeat this experience with your brand again, becoming loyal clients. Moreover, they are sure to recommend you to their family and friends, turning into a brand advocate (and it won't cost you a penny!).
Sounds impressive? Then, you should understand what interaction channels you can offer as self service options.
Customer Self Service Examples Scrutinized
You can enable your clientele to harness a DIY approach to solving their problems in several ways.
FAQ page
This is the easiest self service feature to set up. Why? Because the variety of common queries customers make is rather limited. You can figure it out by talking to your call center reps and studying people’s questions to chatbots. Conventionally, they relate to warranties, shipment conditions, prices, discounts, refunds, and other shop floor niceties.
There are three pivotal things you must remember about FAQs. First, the answers must be simple and concise. Second, don’t forget to include internal links into them to redirect your clientele seeking more detailed information. Third, make sure you review the FAQ list and add new items that have started to crop up in customer’s calls and queries.
Chatbots
The live chat feature offers people the easiest and fastest way to get the information they need by selecting the proper option button. Responses for typical queries are pre-recorded and stored in bots, so the machine recognizes keywords in visitors’ questions and draws from its memory answers containing them. In this way, chatbots give suggestions and guide people toward solutions. If the chatbot is asked a question beyond its "competence", it redirects customers to a qualified human agent who will step in to solve more complex or unorthodox issues.
Nowadays, most chatbots are AI-driven customer self service solutions. Their machine learning capabilities make them more sophisticated as they operate, enriching their response base from conversations with callers. ML-chatbots can also improve the accuracy of their responses, anticipating people’s needs.
Want to make an AI-powered chatbot a part of your self-service package? Request a quote from us.
Knowledge base
As 43% of self service users claim, they couldn't find the response to their queries because they lacked information on the topic. To exclude such instances, you should add a knowledge base to your self customer support. It is a centralized storage containing how-to guides, video tutorials, troubleshooting tips, common bottlenecks and roadblocks, full-size articles, and other organized documentation (including detailed dossiers on the company’s products and services).
While chatbots are used for quick dealing with queries, the knowledge base is meant for more fundamental research. Its visitors can dig deeper into aspects and areas of expertise and obtain a comprehensive and detailed picture of the issue they are interested in.
Customer portal
This is what the lion’s share of consumers expects from a solid and reliable brand.
Such a portal is a dedicated hub where all customer interactions with the organization take place. It should contain a straightforward and intuitive interface from which people will proceed to submit support requests, order tracking, review privacy policies and other features, streamlining their customer journeys and addressing their support needs.
Online community forum
If you can’t find an answer to your question across the customer self-service resources offered by the organization, it makes sense to seek advice and help from fellow consumers. This is when the forum comes in handy. Here, they can learn the opinions of real-world users who will consult them on the minutiae of usage, various workarounds, specific use case customization, etc.
Consumers tend to trust such peer-to-peer tips more since they come from financially disinterested people who aren’t trying to sell them something. Besides, by joining the community, they feel like brand insiders ready to share their experience with others, which drives customer loyalty immensely.
Typically, forums are moderated by community members but enjoy some company oversight. Moreover, the organization’s customer support personnel should monitor forum activity to step in for answering questions or correcting inaccurate responses.
Mobile app
It mostly performs other functions, but there is no reason why you shouldn’t make it an integral element of your self service ecosystem. Customers can solve their problems (like making changes in orders or applying for a refund) and report issues directly in the app without contacting the support team.
Interactive voice response
In the age of across-the-board digitalization, having an IVR function seems somewhat timeworn. However, trying to reach out to as large a user audience as possible and boost their customer experience, you should leave no stone unturned. This technology relies on pre-recorded answers to FAQs that can be obtained through automated voice menus.
As you can see, there are plenty of self service options that will empower your clientele to solve problems themselves and lessen the workload for your reps. How should you go about establishing efficient self service capabilities?
The Best Practices for Implementing Customer Self Service
As a vetted customer support outsourcer, SimplyContact can share with you some tips that will maximize the value of your customer self service initiatives.
User-friendly interface design matters
For some people, finding answers to their questions on the site without anybody’s help is a challenge in itself. Don’t make it harder by page navigation intricacies and cluttered UI. Intuitive menus, clear instructions, and visual clues will allow them to access the capabilities quickly and complete their self service journey in a no-sweat way.
Leverage generative AI to create self service content
In our fast-paced business world, speed is mission-critical. ChatGPt and other generative AI platforms will swiftly supply you with various articles and content pieces to enrich the knowledge base and provide customers with a vast volume of information regarding topics they need help with.
Make use of reporting tools
Here, artificial intelligence is a good crutch too. AI-fueled tools excel at analyzing customer interactions, identifying trends, and pinpointing topics that generate more queries. You can utilize such data as actionable insights to improve your self service capabilities.
Regular maintenance and updates are a must
Don’t look at your customer self service resources as carved in stone once and for all. You should leverage customer feedback in reviewing and trimming them regularly, flagging knowledge gaps, eliminating outdated content, and introducing new items to take dynamic user needs in their stride.
Besides, you should ensure your infrastructure receives all necessary updates and security patches to keep the reliability and performance of its hardware and software at a high level of quality.
Integrate self service with other support channels
If a customer can’t cope with the difficulty unassisted, they should be able to escalate to other options (live chat and phone support from reps, email assistance, etc.) in their quest. The ultimate goal of their customer support journey is to have their problem solved, and you should provide them with every opportunity to reach this goal, even if self service didn’t work out.
Assess customer self service efficiency
The KPIs that will help you realize whether people enjoy your site’s self service capabilities include customer satisfaction score (CSAT), customer effort score (CES), and average handle time. Also, you can ask simple yes/no follow-up questions concerning task completion success and encourage site visitors to upvote (or downvote) your self service page content.
By analyzing client feedback and tracking vital metrics, you can understand where you underperform, outline remedial and improvement measures, and gauge the effectiveness of your customer support strategy in general.
Launch customer training
Although most modern people are digitally savvy enough to wise up to employing self service channels, there are some users whose skills in this aspect are subpar. You can offer them a training course that will teach such people the basics of using customer self service options. Just make sure the course is brief, foolproof, and engaging, with gamification elements (like getting a certificate or badge) to encourage participants to complete it.
You can use these tips as guidelines for implementing a comprehensive customer service strategy that will include the implementation of a balanced combination of various self service capabilities reinforced with the expertise of your support team.
Want to obtain a consultation regarding customer self service implementation or outsource your customer support?
Top-notch customer service is a pivotal element that drives success in the conditions of a highly competitive business landscape in the early third millennium. Alongside support personnel-powered assistance, you should provide a wide spectrum of self customer service options, including a FAQ section, AI-based chatbots, a comprehensive customer portal, an extensive knowledge base, a robust community forum, a dedicated mobile app, and IVR.
By uniting multiple self service channels into an integrated ecosystem with other support capabilities, you will reduce customer support costs, relieve pressure on the support staff, streamline customer service workflows, and drive customer loyalty. Your clientele also stands to benefit from it since they receive a 24/7 available opportunity to solve their problems themselves without waiting for support personnel to help them.
To maximize the value of your self service initiatives, you should equip them with a user-friendly interface, leverage generative AI and reporting tools, ensure regular updates and maintenance, and systematically assess their efficiency.
Business Tips
Was this article helpful for you? Share it with your friends.
