Improving the customer self service experience

Moving forward with self-service

In a report, professor Steven Van Belleghem found that the speed of resolving a customer service complaint was crucial to customer satisfaction: 90% of respondents named speed as a top concern, and 86% of customers who call a help desk expect a resolution within four hours or less. Many companies are failing to deliver on these expectations: they're short-staffed, or their staff doesn't have the knowledge to answer a question immediately. That can leave you with angry customers who are likely to take their business elsewhere.

In order to keep customers happy, your company should move to a self-service model to predict and provide answers to their customers' questions, preventing customers from needing to reach out for additional support.

Options for customer self service

There are numerous methods for creating effective self-service channels, including:

• A knowledge base: Create a detailed bank of free content that provides your customers with written and video tutorials that can help them learn more about your company or troubleshoot their products. Keep in mind that both new prospects and existing customers are likely to conduct online research, so make sure that you've provided information that can help them both learn about your company and understand how to solve problems with your products. The knowledge base should be easily searchable, so users can find what they need with a simple keyword search.
• An automated task management platform: If there are common tasks that a customer will need to perform, develop technology that can process those requests without the need for additional human support. For instance, if you operate a gym that uses a punchcard system, you can enable customers to check in to see how many visits they have left, as well as completing other tasks such as booking classes online.