The Value of Customer Self-service
Self-service is the approach where users access resources to find solutions on their own, without the need for human assistance. Providing a customer self-service offering is key to empowering customers with information while also reducing the burden on customer service professionals within your organisation.
With the option available, 81% of customers are found to prefer using a self-service option to address their issue, instead of getting in contact with a customer representative.
Discussed below are some of the valuable reasons your organisation should be creating more self-service options for your customers.
Cost Effective
While implementing self-service tools can be a large investment initially, with good execution it’ll drive down costs in the long run as there are fewer requirements for human customer service interaction.
Since your technical/customer support team make up the bulk of your customer service expenses and won’t be dealing with as many tickets, the self-service model will drastically reduce costs over time.
Saves Time
The availability of self-service helps save time for both the customer and the employee. Customers want their queries answered quickly. In fact, fast response times is one of the most important aspects of providing good customer service.
With the option to do simple tasks yourself without needing to contact a customer service agent eliminates the need for waiting to connect and back and forth conversation, saving time for customers.
By freeing up your customer support agents from answering repetitive questions, a greater focus can be made on more pressing issues. Not only does self-service just help your customers, but it can also add tremendous value to your customer success team.
With even a basic knowledge base or community forum, simple issues can be found on search engines when customers are searching for their issue. This will also have search engine optimisation (SEO) benefits for the business.
Increased Customer Satisfaction
With self-service options made widely available, customer satisfaction scores rise. The reduced time it takes to tackle their issues will give customers the ability to solve their problems at their own pace. An appropriate self-service system means your organisation will benefit from “always-on” support.
Knowledge bases, chatbots and self-service portals don’t have working hours like customer service agents. This means that customer service can be provided 24/7, which is especially important if your customer base is located around the world in different time zones, making it more difficult to provide effective human-based customer service.
Similarly, a great knowledge base can easily be translated into the customer’s local language.
Providing robust self-service options can help a brand better serve their customers and enhance their trust in the brand.
Personalised Experience
Personalisation always starts with data collection and analysis. Using the data collected on customer behaviour, demographics and preferences, businesses can gain far greater insights into the customer journey and identify areas for improvement.
This data can be used to improve personalised greetings and shopping suggestions all within self-service tools such as chatbots or online portals.
Personalisation is an important component of self-serve support. By using data and analytics to personalise interactions and follow-up communications, a more seamless customer experience builds loyalty amongst customers.
Businesses must allow customers to easily provide feedback, allowing decisions to be made to improve self-service personalisation in the future.
While human customer service representatives will most likely always be present within businesses, it’s clear that the latest technological advancements and changing customer behaviour is leading to a shift towards self-service support.
Are you preparing to alter your customer experience in 2023? If so, contact us today on +353 1 8041298, or click on the link below to be brought to our contact form.
