Lend a Hand: Improving Customer Support with Self-Service

How to optimize your customer service potential by improving self-service capabilities.

Self-service may seem like a limited customer service option, but according to research by Forrester, 72% of customers prefer self-service over phone or email help. However, only 52% are actually able to resolve their concerns through website self-service. With metrics like that, it certainly pays to prioritize improving your company’s self-service capabilities. Follow these easy steps to maximize the potential of your self-service customer support.

1. Keep Knowledge Base Articles Up-to-Date

Knowledge base articles are where your online customers are likely to seek the information they’re looking for. By keeping them up-to-date, you can keep your clients happy and free up agent handling time. But articles that are no longer relevant or have a consistent history of not being helpful to customers will only hurt your website’s self-service. Use these tips to keep knowledge base articles fresh:

• Set an expiration date. By setting an expiration date on your content calendar for each article, you can create regular tasks for your support team that analyze the ongoing relevance and effectiveness of each article. Use expiration dates as opportunities to update keywords and check on what information might be lacking based on search tracking.
• Constantly improve. By embedding a rating button or a comment feed at the bottom of each article, you can determine how effective each article is. Respond to customer inquiries or reported dissatisfactions promptly and thoroughly to ensure that your knowledge base articles are doing all that they can for your consumers.

2. Be Proactive

Don’t wait for consumers to contact your support team when they can’t find the solution to their problem, or, worse, abandon you altogether. Instead, be proactive about updating your company’s self-service capabilities. To nip cases in the bud before they come back to haunt you, use these simple techniques:

• Flag cases in need of self-service content. You can do this by tracking the inquiries and concerns that customers ask your agents. Be sure to track customer inquires on all channels, not only the phones. Once you or your agents notice a pattern of repeated inquires, flag those cases. Then, your support team can decide whether self-service content should be produced to address the repeated inquiries.
• Create a holidays FAQ. The holidays are a time of booming consumerism, meaning the demands for customer service are off the charts. Instead of tying up your agents on the phones, use your system of flagging repeated inquires to develop an FAQ page specific to the holiday season. This can include information on gift-wrapping, speedy delivery or personalized gifts.

3. Optimize for All Devices

A study by Echo Research concluded that 50% of smartphone users would prefer to use a mobile self-service application before calling a contact centre directly. What’s more, research by Numero found that 48% of customers think that the phone is the most frustrating means of communication. Get the most out of social media, smartphone apps, SMS and live chat by integrating self-service into each channel of communication. Self-service capabilities are not limited to websites, and these additional channels continue to gain relevance to consumers of all ages. Also keep in mind that optimizing self-service for all devices can significantly save on agent handling time, making varied self-service options one of the most cost-efficient means of satisfying your customer base.

Customer self-service is here to stay. With consumers increasingly coming to prefer self-service over phone time with an agent, plus the budget-friendly benefits for contact centres, improving your self-service capabilities sooner rather than later is a wise business move. For more information on how to improve customer support with self-service this season, download our free white paper.