What is Customer self-service?
Customer self-service is any process where the customer can resolve their own problems quickly, without having to reach out to support staff
What are some benefits?
Quick resolutions for customers – no one wants to wait on hold, or wait days for a response
Helps your support staff productivity – your support staff can focus on the more complex issues
Better CSAT- customers love quick, fast, and easy resolutions. If you were to give your customers a choice of fixing their own problem without having to wait on hold, or wait for email responses, they will most likely take it and be happy that it was so fast, and that the company cares enough to educate their customers. Not to mention, this shows that you care about your customers time as much as you do your own.
How do you make it possible?
It’s as simple as making it easy for them to get the answers they need. Customer self-service comes in many shapes and forms, but here are just a few of my favorites:
FAQ page: Brief answers to most commonly asked questions your customers may have. For example, return policy, loyalty program information, shipping procedures. You can include a brief overview and then provide a link to a more in depth explanation, perhaps in a knowledge article or another page on your website.
Knowledge base: An easy to search repository of all knowledge available to your customers. It could be policies, instructions on how to use a product, etc. Another important thing is making sure it is categorized easily for your customers to understand – remember, they speak a different language then your support staff.
AI powered chat: You can set up a chatbot that can understand the customers question and present them with knowledge articles and FAQs (lets be honest, searching isn’t always fun, sometimes we just want the answer presented to us).
IVR – Yes, I know the point is for them to not call you, but if your IVR can support providing simple answers to common questions, it can prevent that call from coming to you. Think about how much time on the phone the banks and credit card companies save their support agents by allowing customers to pay their bill through the IVR. It will also prevent them from taking up hold time for the customers with complex issues that actually require a support agent.
While we may not get them all with customer self-service, we can get the majority of them, and if it means your support staff can focus on the more complex issues and your customers are happy, then it’s a huge win. Contact us today as we have a couple of great platforms we can help you choose from to accelerate your CSAT scores!
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