In today’s digital landscape, self-service options are essential for informing, engaging and retaining customers. Businesses can enhance these options by integrating a user-friendly customer portal that includes knowledge base articles, FAQs and a service portal. This empowers customers to access information instantly, resolve issues independently and provide valuable feedback that drives continuous improvement.
By Robin Gareiss, Metrigy Research
Published: Jan 2021
Customers increasingly rely on digital channels to make purchases, research products and seek advice. By 2025, more than half of all customer interactions are expected to occur through self-service portals. Robust digital service channels deliver faster responses to complex issues, streamline customer service experiences and reduce support costs. These channels also enable businesses to collect customer data, improving service delivery and refining contact center strategies.
CX leaders should prioritize delivering the benefits of customer self-service by taking steps to enhance the user experience now. Modern self-service tools go beyond basic knowledge bases and search capabilities, incorporating artificial intelligence and virtual assistants. Investing in these solutions allows customer service representatives to focus on complex issues requiring human attention, ensuring effective support across every touchpoint. This approach also empowers customers to navigate their journey and access answers quickly.
Here are five steps CX leaders can take to strengthen their self-service strategies.
1. Establish business drivers for self-service transformation
Business leaders should collaborate with CX, sales, marketing and product development teams to understand how self-service can improve the customer experience. While some interactions still require human assistance, self-service can deliver personalized experiences that boost customer satisfaction and reduce support tickets, allowing teams to focus on more complex issues.
Organisations must identify their most important drivers and align their self-service strategy accordingly. Key drivers include:
- Speed. Customers often experience delays due to long wait times for human support. Redirecting appropriate issues to self-service enables faster resolution. For example, voice chatbots can handle requests for mailing addresses, account balances and product information, cutting wait times and creating a seamless service experience.
- User experience. If an organisation’s knowledge management system is not engaging, adding multimedia content such as how-to videos, podcasts and images can attract customers and provide the information they need. This enhances the customer experience and keeps the journey on track.
- Revenue. Some sales leaders worry that shifting phone calls or live chats to self-service may hurt revenue. However, predictive analytics in AI virtual assistants can recommend products, increasing revenue and improving customer perception by delivering relevant suggestions at the right time.
- Operational costs. Contact center costs are rising, and live agents are the most expensive resource. Enhanced self-service options lower support costs and allow representatives to focus on critical tasks.
2. Set realistic expectations for self-service volume
Businesses must ensure their knowledge base, web storage, virtual assistants and network infrastructure are engineered to handle anticipated volume. This includes server capacity, bandwidth and the number of virtual assistants. Initially, it may be difficult to estimate the percentage of transactions managed by self-service. Planning with the support team in mind ensures the service portal remains responsive and resolves issues efficiently.
In 2020, self-service managed 36% of customer transactions, according to Metrigy’s “Customer Engagement Transformation: 2020-21 Research Study” of 700 organisations. Projections indicate growth to 43% in 2021, 49% in 2023 and 56% in 2025. As these numbers increase, a proactive support strategy will help maintain effective service across various channels.
3. Update knowledge bases and pair with AI
Most organisations’ knowledge bases require a comprehensive update in content, technology and usability. Content developers and product managers should expand and refresh content, including multimedia elements. Knowledge base articles must reflect current product information and address frequent support issues, helping resolve problems and gather feedback to enhance customer experiences.
Search capabilities must become more intuitive, with AI and machine learning improving results over time. AI-driven knowledge bases learn associations between questions and successful resolutions, as well as identifying unanswered questions. As data grows, virtual assistants become more effective at guiding customers and reducing channel bottlenecks.
By the end of 2020, 33% of organisations had implemented virtual assistants, with another 34% planning adoption in 2021. As AI becomes more widespread, enhanced service functionality and content delivery offer significant advantages for a comprehensive customer service strategy.
4. Address common self-service pitfalls
After deploying self-service tools, businesses often encounter traps that hinder success. To avoid these:
- Don’t ignore virtual agents. Virtual agents require ongoing human oversight to correct errors and assumptions. Proper management ensures virtual agents empower customers to self-serve more effectively.
- Don’t operate without data. Analytics are necessary to determine what works and what needs improvement. Use analytics to identify where customers get stuck and add escalation points to resolve issues before frustration escalates.
- Don’t isolate self-service. Integrate self-service with other channels so agents can access a customer’s journey regardless of channel, ensuring a smoother overall experience.
5. Measure success
Effective customer self-service tools improve business metrics. Organisations should establish success metrics at the outset and gather baseline data for comparison. Many rush implementation and neglect baseline measurement, but ongoing tracking of metrics such as support tickets, customer feedback and resolution times is crucial for refining service.
Organisations that established baseline metrics in transformation initiatives saw measurable improvements, including a 7.9% decrease in operational costs, a 37.9% increase in customer ratings and a 33.2% boost in agent efficiency. Focusing on effective service delivery and building a strong self-service foundation empowers customers and streamlines support teams.
