Raghavendra Rao, Director of Customer Excellence at Sprinklr, outlines three steps to build a customer service strategy centered around self-service.

Have you ever been in a situation where you were running late for a flight, and an airport self-service kiosk saved the day? For starters, airport self-service kiosks speed up the formalities of boarding a flight, making life easier for staff and passengers. It’s a win-win.

Why do you need self-service to improve customer service?

An impeccable customer service strategy focuses on having excellent interactions — it is not about your agents meeting their SLAs but ensuring that every interaction with customers is pleasant, helpful, and memorable.

“Go the extra mile rather than letting your customer travel miles to get a solution!”

Not every customer is looking for an agent to resolve their issues neither does every problem need an agent intervention. Get an insight into the channels your customers prefer and guide them towards solutions by building a self-service system as a part of your customer service strategy.

Three steps to build a customer service strategy centered around self-service

1. Start by scoring your customer interactions 

A needle and a sword are two equally useful tools. As the famous idiom goes, why use a sword when you get the job done by a needle? Categorizing a complaint helps you understand if the query at hand could be solved by a needle or a sword. Most often, you will realize that all you need is a bot with a canned response to resolve a query. Human intervention isn’t required at all!

The first step is to have a framework to objectively categorize customer queries/complaints. Start by scoring them as per their complexity, severity, and effort. It helps you understand the context of the query and map the right channel for resolving it later.

a. Determining Query Complexity [High – Low]

1. Is the answer readily available?
2. What information do I need to resolve the query?
3. Can it be handled by automation, BOTs, a knowledge base, or an agent?

Example: Query – I need help programming my Amazon Fire Stick remote.

• Is the answer readily available? – Yes.
• What information do I need to resolve the query? – The product name is Amazon Fire Stick.
• Can it be handled by automation, BOTs, a knowledge base, or an agent? – Yes, directing the user to a knowledge base article or a chatbot that provides step-by-step configuration instructions should do the trick.

Overall Complexity Score – Low

b. Determining Query Severity [High – Low]

1. Does the query require urgent attention?
2. How emotionally distressed is the customer?
3. Will this query affect the brand reputation or the user’s safety?
4. What are the financial costs involved for the customer?
5. Will not resolving this query on an urgent basis have repercussions on the brand image

Example: Query – What is your website’s return policy for the MacBook Pro?

• Does the query require urgent attention? –  Yes
• How emotionally distressed is the customer? – They don’t have clarity on the return policy, which impacts their decision whether to buy the product or not.
• Will this query affect the brand reputation or the user’s safety? – Yes
• What are the financial costs involved for the customer? – High, if the customer finds the return policy favorable, he will tilt more towards buying the product. If he doesn’t, he will move on to a brand with favorable return policies.
• Will not resolving this query on an urgent basis have repercussions on the brand image? – Yes

Overall Severity Score – High

c. Determining Customer Effort [High – Low]

1. Does it require a high effort to answer this query, like a repair or full diagnosis?
2. How difficult would it be for the customer to resolve it?
3. Is it easy for the customers to follow instructions?
4. Are tools and resources readily available so the customer can easily resolve the query?

Example: Query – It’s been 2 days since the purchase, and my phone is still not updated with the complimentary antivirus solution.

• Does it require a high effort to answer this query, like a repair or full diagnosis? – Yes
• How difficult would it be for the customer to resolve it? – Very difficult, customer effort required is high for this query.
• Is it easy for the customers to follow instructions? – Yes, the complexity is low
• Are tools and resources readily available so the customer can easily resolve the query? – It’s a case of delayed complimentary service and could only be resolved through agent intervention.

Overall Customer Effort Score – High

2. Map your service channels based on the query interaction scores

By using the above approach, you will arrive at 8 ways of scoring every query, starting from Low, Low, Low, until High, High, High. If you wish to spice things up, introduce ‘medium’ to your high-low scoring scale. You will discover 27 unique scores instead of 8.

Start mapping a primary and a secondary channel for each score. The tables below show lists a sample approach based on the interaction categorization model:

Channel Mapping for a Technology company

3. Understand your customer’s resolution jobs 

Gartner has identified six jobs or tasks that customers complete during their resolution journey. These tasks don’t have any particular order, and customers may need to accomplish more than one “job” at a time.

“Service leaders must first understand the customer resolution jobs and then guide customers into the right channels that require the lowest effort and provide the quickest outcome.  – Gartner

Source: Gartner

Key takeaways

1. How powerful you want your customer to feel depends on how easily they can resolve a query independently.
2. It’s all about interactions, keep it easy for the consumer. Better interactions lead to better customer experience!
3. Aim to make customer resolution easier, assign the right channels based on the query context.

At the end of the day, the devil lies in the details. Take care of small things, and big things will fall into place! It’s true in the case of customer service, too.

About the Author

Raghavendra Rao is Director of Customer Excellence at Sprinklr.

Great customer support is all about simplicity. When a customer has a problem, often the best experiences are when they can solve it themselves.

In fact, according to a recent study, 69% of customers want to resolve as many issues as possible on their own, and 63% of customers always or almost always start with a search on a company’s online resources when they have an issue. However, the same research also shows that most customer experience teams aren’t offering channels beyond phone and email, meaning they aren’t living up to customer expectations.

If this sounds familiar to you, you might want to look into a little thing called semantic AI.

What is semantic AI? Simply put, semantic AI allows you to tag and classify your customer support content in a way that makes it easy for customers to find the answers they’re looking for. It also enables this content to be delivered via AI-powered chatbots, smart virtual assistants and other self-service applications that can identify what your customer needs in the same way a human would, without the need for any actual human interaction. So, what should you have in place to transform customer support in this way?

Create an interconnected network of knowledge

It all starts with laying a solid foundation for managing knowledge across your organization. Too often, customer service information is unstructured, scattered across various internal systems, and formatted in several different ways. It’s important that the environment you manage your content in can render your content in a consistent way that is easily understood by machines and is organized centrally for easy access.

The best tool for this sort of knowledge management is a component content management system (CCMS). CCMS’ make information easy to find, manage, and disseminate by means of componentized content. This means that content is structured into small modules, often called ‘topics’, and stored in a central repository. And because it has been componentized, content classification and tagging becomes much more granular, since it happens at the component level, not the document level. Information becomes much more findable when you can search for a keyword and get the precise section you’re looking for, as opposed to the whole gamut.

And that’s not all – the beauty of a CCMS is that content is separated from its format, meaning it becomes much more flexible and can be moulded to fit any channel or format. Your customer service agents won’t have to plough through hundreds of pages of documents to find answers, they can simply search for the relevant ‘topic’ and share it with the customer. Or the content can be published to an online knowledge base, mobile app, or self-service hub. And when you combine a CCMS with semantic AI you create ‘intelligent content,’ which is where your ability to deliver contextual information to customers comes into its own.

Semantic AI – the smart solution to self-service

By turning traditional documents into intelligent content, your customers’ self-service experience really comes to life. Searching for information becomes a smooth, Google-like experience. Their searches are auto completed. They don‘t have to find an exact match but get results based on synonyms and context. They can see suggestions for related content. This type of intuitive, responsive search experience is the best way to satisfy the expectation of customers being able to solve their issues independently.

Considering that 90% of Americans use customer service to decide whether to do business with a company – it’s absolutely critical that you get your customer service right. That’s where the combination of semantic AI and a CCMS can really help, and transform one-off customers into life-long loyal fans.

If you would like to learn more about Semantic AI and how it can power your customer support strategies, click here.

About the Author

Fraser Doig is Associate Product Marketing Manager at RWS.

About RWS

RWS is the global leader in content management and translation technology and services. 90 of the top 100 global companies work with RWS. Tridion Docs provides streamlined end-to-end component content management. It includes easy web-based authoring, reviewing, versioning, translation, and publication management, underpinned by the DITA XML standard. As a true collaborative environment with a familiar Microsoft Word-style interface, subject matter experts (SMEs) in your organization can contribute their knowledge.

Authors and reviewers can work simultaneously in the same document providing comments to each other, tracking and merging changes. Tridion Docs supports global enterprise use cases including single sourcing, product documentation, learning and training, policies and procedures, and efficient translations with delivery to multiple end points such as documents, PDFs, knowledge portals, Intranet, customer facing websites, apps, chatbots, and IoT devices.

Contact RWS here or visit their website at rws.com. Twitter:@rwsgroup, Linkedin: RWSGroup.

The first choice for many consumers is now self-service. Studies have shown that almost 90% of clients anticipate a brand having its own service portal – and they prefer knowledge base enabled self-service channels such as FAQs.

Managing knowledge is critical to successful self-service, but it’s difficult to achieve it. However, it can be done, and the payoffs can be huge. Relevant research supports the idea that people prefer to help themselves rather than seeking help; it is therefore essential to offer exceptional self-service. This means that you can collect and quickly reach the answers to questions from your customers. Once objectives are established, a company needs to develop a process and the right instruments to collect and store the information and knowledge. Regardless of how this happens, critical knowledge must be stored in a user-friendly location and format.

The advantages of self-service:

A self-service customer portal is one of the most powerful applications for knowledge management. Customers receive quick answers, and call center agents can handle more complex queries and tickets free of charge. If agents can concentrate on more valuable cases, your business increases, and scales. Few other solutions offer a win-win situation.

The only way to get support from some organizations is to hang on the phone for long periods. With a self-service mindset, when customers have a problem with a product or service, their first idea is to go online and to find the necessary answers with FAQs, articles, manuals, videos, chatbots, and virtual assistants.

How can customer relationships be improved with knowledge management?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an integral element of the sales and service process. By managing knowledge, a business can track the number of calls, emails, questions asked and resolved, and the issues discussed most often. This will allow a company to see how customers usually interact with their products and services, allowing it to make any improvements necessary. The management of knowledge also increases customer satisfaction through self-service. For example, a FAQ page and personal account information can be entered on a website, removing the need to talk directly to an agent to help customers get their desired answers quickly. Customer feedback tools further optimize knowledge management. Feedback forms can be strategically placed on a website or included in an email, such as online surveys or opinion polls. If clients see a simple survey with the option to answer or not and are also able to see how others respond, they may be more likely to talk and share experiences.

Benefits of Knowledge Management in Customer Service:

• Fast and detailed responses to questions often asked.
• A personalized experience for customers. You can track past purchases and interactions, make custom suggestions, address customers by name, and create portal content addressing new issues using customized data.
• The possibility of building an online community where clients share information and support employees from your organization.

Adding Knowledge Management makes Customer Self Service easier

Customer self-service is a simple and effective way to build customer relationships and satisfaction. Unfortunately, over half of the customers find self-service portals difficult to use. If your self-service portal isn’t easy to use, the effort put into creating it is all for nothing because your customers won’t use it. Most clients can solve their own difficulties, but only if they know where to find information. The exceptional experience of customers can be achieved through a knowledge base software that provides simpler, easy-to-understand solutions to common issues. Customers have agreed on the fact that they would like to explore knowledge management tools if it is faster and convenient. Choosing a knowledge management system with self-service abilities that makes the flow much easier for customers is important.

A knowledge base for self-service also:

• Helps customers to carry out typical tasks with their live agents.
• Provides 24-hour support from whatever device you use on any channel, including chat, voice, e-mail, and social messaging applications, to anyone seeking assistance from where they are.
• The knowledge base of self-service is convenient and also carries complex functions.

Self-service in a modern contact center has become a requirement for success. You will not only meet your customers’ expectations, but you will also reduce costs to support your organization and improve your brand’s reputation.

Many measures can be used to measure the performance of your self-service portal. The most frequently used are:

• The proportion of contacts for live support compared to self-service options.
• How many times do customers go and visit a solution without requesting live support?
• The results of customer satisfaction are the main measure and are usually measured by surveys.
• When customers find what they need through self-service, they should lower their call volume trend or the number of customers per day.

Finally, your company should measure the savings from self-service. And, while monetary savings alone are of great value, the additional value should be seen in employee satisfaction and retention, driving additional savings.

Knowledge management for self-service changes the customer experience altogether. New-age customers want quick solutions to their queries and knowledge management tools to add pace to that method. Your knowledge management tool for self-service is not a substitute for great customer service. It is a great tool to help both your customers and their agents to add value and save you time and money in the short term. Regardless of how far you are at this stage, it is never too early (or too late) to begin strategically approaching your organization. An effective system of knowledge management assists clients in obtaining the right type of support and faster. Knowledge Management initiatives focus on achieving well-defined, achievable, and best practice goals that provide a competitive advantage over the long term in terms of improving customer experience overall. Incorporating Knowledge Management for Self Service in Customer Service is a huge step up for improving the customer experience. Which KM tools would you prefer for your business?

Predictions for the property market in the coming year vary widely.  The end of the stamp duty holiday and ambitious government targets for building new homes are set to make for an interesting year. Property companies will continue to focus on customer service as a differentiator. 

Abbie Heslop at EBI.AI takes a look at how to improve customer experience (CX) using conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) and virtual assistants.   

Spending more time at home during enforced lockdowns has prompted people to question what they really want from their homes. According to homeowner and ‘buyhavioural’ data agency TwentyCi, the residential property market is at levels not seen for a decade and the market continues to enjoy a ‘post pandemic surge’. There is positive news for the rental market too as experts like Hamilton Fraser anticipate the coronavirus crisis will lead many to view renting as ‘a preferred option’ to home ownership because it makes it easier to move on when circumstances change.

5 ways to embrace the new world of right-sizing

People have always talked about escaping to the country or right-sizing their properties.

Now, there is more emphasis on how people use their properties and what is required. That may mean an extra room for a new working from home (WFH) regime, undercover or heated outside space or investing in cosy interiors. It’s a trend that’s set to continue and offers huge opportunities for property agents and landlords to improve the customer experience and drive competitive advantage.

Through automation and machine learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI) combines efficiency with empathy. Implement the latest solutions to:

1. Help customers self-serve their entire move experience – with quick and efficient answers, from the moment they start looking for a property to when they finally pick up the keys. For example, a prospective buyer could ask their smart speaker assistant “to find an estate agent near me” or “show me 3 bed houses in my postcode under £220,000” and then look for information on the local school catchment area, broadband speed or nearest train station. Next, use AI to support tenants as they settle into their new homes.  Take the example of Get Living, the largest operator in the UK’s build-to-rent sector. Their Get Living AI Assistant called Evie is already welcoming residents of 500 new homes in Stratford, East London with information about their home, their appliances, utilities and surrounding amenities. Programmed to answer more than 150 queries, residents are able to ask questions from: “How do I set up an account with my energy supplier?” to “Where’s the nearest pizza place?” and “What’s happening around here this week?”

Like all AI tools, the more the Get Living Assistant is used, the smarter it becomes while the inbuilt feedback functionality is crucial for understanding residents’ needs to deliver a more personal service and improve the rental offer.

2. Create genuine sales and lettings leads for agents – pent up demand for property means higher customer expectations and greater competition among agents and landlords.  AI is able to sift through and analyse unlimited amounts of data to provide real value to estate agents and landlords looking to stand out from the crowd. For example, a prospective customer can use online queries or voice commands such as “I want to view flats that have a communal garden in my area”, “how much is my home worth?” and “how do I get a mortgage?”  The AI assistant would qualify and then book the customer in for a viewing at their preferred choice, give an approximate home evaluation or offer basic mortgage advice.  All this information, along with the customer’s contact details, are visible to the property agent who then has valuable insight into the customer’s situation and buying preferences.

3. Encourage self-service guided advice – at EBI.AI we have seen how property organisations are beginning to create a truly immersive experience using Alexa-style AI assistants that offer advice and visually show customers how to work the heating systems or reset the trip switch. Expect to see more of this type of ‘guided advice’ as innovations in AI power live video chats between digital assistants and customers to enrich the end-to-end property experience.

4. Support efficient problem capture – things go wrong even in the best managed buildings.  A tenant who has just moved into a new flat might turn to an AI assistant to ask what to do if the washing machine breaks down or the oven fan doesn’t work.  To offer quick service when things go wrong, commercial and resident property estate agency JLL launched “Property Bot”.  Tenants use the AI to report maintenance and repair issues via the website or app. After reporting the fault, tenants receive an instant reply. This gives them advice about how to remedy the fault or direct access to an engineer or handyman to book a visit. Good for tenants and good for promoting local businesses and services.

5. Automate routine tasks – and save precious time and energy.  The AI technology at JLL takes just 30 seconds to deal with an issue. Because the bot can take on more routine tasks like maintenance requests, contract information and booking an appointment with a tradesperson, it frees up busy property managers to concentrate on providing a better rental experience for customers.

Now is the time to gear up to a positive, post-pandemic future. Use the benefits of AI automation and machine learning to improve the customer experience in the property market and boost competitive advantage for forward thinking companies. For more case studies, ideas and inspiration, visit www.ebi.ai

About the Author

Abbie Heslop is a Commercial AI Analyst at EBI.AI.

Established in 2014, EBI.AI is among the most advanced UK labs to create fully managed, Enterprise-grade AI assistants. These assistants help clients to provide their customers with faster and better resolutions to their queries, and liberate front-line customer service agents from the dull, repetitive and mundane.

EBI.AI selects the best AI and cloud services available from IBM, Amazon, Microsoft and others, combined with bespoke AI models to deliver its AI communication platform, called Lobster.

Combined with it over 19 years of experience working with big data, analytics and systems integration it has successfully implemented AI assistants that now handle hundreds of thousands of conversations a year across Transport & Travel, Property, Insurance, Public and Automotive industries.

For more information, please visit www.ebi.ai.

Contact centres are on the frontline when it comes to customer experience, so with pressure mounting, many are asking how they can further improve their customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores.

The modern customer is used to getting what they want, when they want it. They can pick and choose when and how to interact with a brand, and they expect consistent levels of personalisation and attention across every channel. This means that high quality service leads to increased loyalty from customers.

The industry is also recognising that there is a direct connection between customer experience and revenue. Recent research by West, The State of Customer Experience 2017, found that while a huge majority of contact centre leaders (92%) agree that the link between CX and revenue exists, just 29% strongly agree that their contact centre can design and deliver a seamless customer experience across multiple channels.

Enda Kenneally, vice president of sales & business development for West’s Unified Communications Services looks at the top three practical techniques that will ensure you continue to meet customer needs and increase satisfaction.

1. Remove drivers of customer effort

Industry research shows that around 30% of customers report spending what they considered a high level of effort to get their problem resolved. This often means that by the time they make a call to an agent, they are already frustrated. Forcing customers to switch from the web to the phone, or asking them to re-explain an issue, together with having to repeatedly contact a company are three main culprits of reported high customer effort levels.

By identifying where the effort drivers are, firms can proactively work to eliminate them or ease the friction and provide a satisfying customer experience. In fact, many contact centres find that most of the issues causing customer effort can be easily avoided with the right technology and process flow design.

2. Empower agents

Too often frontline customer service representatives just don’t have the right information – and are often not given the responsibility – they need to resolve customer queries first time. Make sure you give agents the training and technology tools they need to keep your customers satisfied. If your agent can’t clearly see the data or information about the customer they’re speaking to, they will be unable to personalise the attention given to the customer.

It’s also worth thinking about the style of interaction you are encouraging. When did you last review the workflows and scripting technology of your contact centres? Do they support your agents to make their interactions as natural and human as possible? Or are they inflexible, robotic and frustrating for both parties? If so, it might be time for an overhaul.

3. Develop a self-service strategy

Most consumers, across all demographics, prefer self-service for simple transactions and interactions. Research from the world’s leading air transport IT and communications specialist, SITA, showed that almost every flight is now booked using self-service technology; and only 4% say they will seek out a human.

Yet contact centres have been slow to catch on; recent research commissioned by West shows that just 21% of contact centres offer self-service. It is time for a change.

Whatever industry you are in, find ways to empower your customers to self-serve, whether via a touchpad, the web, within the IVR, or even a mobile app. For example, if you start to see customers reaching your contact centre with the same or similar issues, then investigate if the solutions can be introduced into a FAQ on your website, or a self-service strategy. By deploying successful self-service tools, you can empower your customers to quickly resolve minor issues the way they want to and customer service representatives can spend more time on dedicated and complex queries as the contact centre load is reduced.

You can even extend self-service into calls, by playing personalised messages in call queues, such as a customer’s predicted delivery time. Or in call menus, where customers can interact with the system without needing to speak to a live agent for issues such as requesting product information or even payment processing. However, you must make sure that customers are given the option of whether to use your self-service system – always provide them with a choice to speak to an agent if they wish to.

These principles are not difficult to put into practice; but they can involve a cultural shift. The effort invested will be worthwhile, allowing you to continue to match customer expectations and boost satisfaction by focusing on their changing needs rather than a rigidly-defined strategy. At the end of the day customer satisfaction is about getting the balance right and making sure your customer always has a choice. By increasing convenience for your customers­­­ you will find a welcome by-product: lower operational costs and pleasing spikes in your customer satisfaction ratings.

About the Author

Enda Kenneally is the VP of Sales and Business Development at West, previously Magnetic North. Enda has a wealth of experience in the communications technology industry delivering against UK, European and Global senior sales and business development roles. By building inspired, dynamic and successful teams, Enda has led three different voice vendors to number one market share positions in the UK. Before joining Magnetic North (now West), Enda worked at Avaya, Excell Managed Services and Mitel Networks.

Lately it feels like a precarious time to be a customer service employee. Thanks to the millennial influence, customers are turning to digital self-service tools more than ever, and Artificial Intelligence is developing to the point where chatbots and chatting humans are becoming interchangeable (sad face emoji). If there’s a pushback on automated customer service solutions from customer service agents, it’s a pretty understandable shove.

With the impact these solutions can have on customer service departments as well as the entire organization, they simply cannot be eschewed, no matter how much an organization wants to keep its agents satisfied. Yet for those looking for a solution that improves the organization while actually being welcomed by employees, it’s time to get to know performance management software.

What it’s all about

Performance management software (PMS) is a system designed to track the immense amount of data attached to the sales and customer service processes. It then analyzes this data in order to transform it into the kind of insights that can improve sales and customer service, both collectively and for every individual employee.

Here are a few reasons that this is an automated solution your frontline agents will be happy to get behind:

Your agents want: to not be blamed for failings that aren’t their fault

Winning as a team and losing as a team is a fine idea…when you’re in middle school and you took up softball just because the players go to Dairy Queen after every game. While your talented customer service employees undoubtedly want to see their departments and the organization as a whole flourish, all they can do is turn in their own stellar performance. When they’re doing so consistently, they shouldn’t have to sit through meeting after meeting about how the team is falling short. It’s a waste of time for the high-performing employees and managers alike.

How PMS helps: PMS effortlessly sifts through all that customer experience data and turns it into advanced analytics and reports right down to each individual employee. These insights give the employees themselves an up-to-date picture of their own performance while giving their supervisors and managers all the information they need to identify the root cause of a problem, to stay on top of emerging issues, and to see exactly who is pulling their weight, who isn’t, and why. Employees that don’t need extra attention or training won’t be subjected to it, while the employees who do need it can be the beneficiaries of a much more focused approach. Speaking of which…

Your agents want: coaching that actually improves their performance

No one likes to be criticized or told they could be doing better, but customer service and sales employees are uniquely positioned to profit from being made aware of their room for improvement. However, simply having their shortcomings pointed out or being told they need to shape up without any specifics attached to the message will probably only inspire an improved performance when it comes to eye-rolling.

How PMS helps: PMS has a two-fold effect on providing effective management. Firstly, goal-setting as well as development and management plans can be easily customized for each individual employee, taking into account their unique needs. Secondly, leading performance management systems will include automated coaching workflows and coaching tools that are tied to the organization’s specific key performance indicators, helping managers provide the most targeted and effective coaching possible. (Frontline agents will probably also appreciate all the coaching feedback PMS provides.)

Your agents want: to do the best possible job

Generally speaking, that is. There will always be people who are happy to slouch their way through life doing the bare minimum, but with sales and customer service being so performance-driven (and with paychecks often directly tied to performance) you won’t find many of those slackers amongst your frontline agents. So aside from the targeted coaching mentioned above, how do you go about coaxing those top performances out of your people?

How PMS helps: Performance management software is designed to engage employees and is therefore the perfect accompaniment to a performance-driven workplace. For some, simply having easy access to detailed reports on their own performance will be a motivator, but PMS rounds out its inspirational offerings by sharing best practices and encouraging collaboration and cooperation amongst agents as well as amongst departments. Leading performance management software will also recognize your employees’ achievements with gamification rewards, and with 69% of employees saying they would work harder if that harder work and effort were better recognized, this may be one of the most important factors of all.

The organization overall

It doesn’t take Artificial Intelligence to know that when your customer service and sales employees prosper, your organization prospers. Performance management software is designed to engage your employees, rewarding achievements while also quickly identifying issues and ensuring agents receive the best possible coaching that will lead to measurable (and rewardable) improvements.

About the Author

Debbie Fletcher is an enthusiastic, experienced writer who has written for a range of different magazines and news publications over the years. Graduating from City University London specialising in English Literature, Debbie’s passion for writing has since grown. She loves anything and everything technology, and exploring different cultures across the world. She’s currently looking towards starting her Masters in Comparative Literature in the next few years.

In a world driven by the customer experience, businesses have quickly come to accept that they are outnumbered and out-gunned.

Despite the use of CRM software and other platforms to help facilitate the customer experience, consumers are simply more informed, less patient, and generally more technologically savvy than those attempting to service them.

So why not simply let them help themselves? It’s better for business, right? Wrong.

DIY Customer Service?

As businesses seek to facilitate the ability to resolve ongoing customer inquiries and needs, the increasing over-reliance on self-service tools and platforms has created a false sense of comfort. Granted, one cannot deny the financial benefits and operational efficiencies an advanced CRM, IVR, or website FAQ page provides, but one must consider at what cost. While 67% of customers have stated a preference for self-service as opposed to speaking to a live representative [Zendesk – Building A Thriving Help Center], only 58% of consumers rate such services as satisfactory [Forrester -Understand Communication Channel Needs To Craft Your Customer Service Strategy]. Why?

From an operational perspective, many companies willingly admit do-it-yourself technologies facilitate the processing of customer needs, but in many cases do so at the expense of any human interaction. And yet, 73% [Oracle – Why The Secret Of Customer Loyalty Is Customer Experience] of consumers willingly admit that brand loyalty is primarily driven by prior interactions with friendly company employees or customer service representatives – not just by speed of service. In fact, despite the growth in multichannel communications (phone, email, chat, text, and social media), direct contact with company representatives still ranks as the most popular and successful service channel at 73% and 69% respectively [Forrester – Understand Communication Channel Needs To Craft Your Customer Service Strategy].

The rise of self-service software, tools, and technology certainly has a role in the delivery of high quality customer service. However, these approaches alone do not win customers and definitely do not replace the importance of maintaining the human element. In fact, though removing the human aspect has its advantages, it also replaces what could be a company’s greatest asset and opportunity to shine in what is otherwise a very competitive world.

Where Self-Service Falls Short

Customer Relationships: By 2020, customers are expected to manage 85% of the relationship with an enterprise without interacting with a human [Gartner – Customer 360]. But as efficient as it may be to empower consumers to drive the customer experience, long lasting and loyal relationships are unlikely to be built based solely on a business’ self-service tools. In fact, consumers are likely to resort to the tried-and-true approach of contacting a live service representative when the urgency or complexity of their needs perceivably exceeds the convenient capabilities of any self-service options. In short, while future consumers may only defer to contacting a business directly 15% of the time, the proportional importance of such interactions will likely be significantly greater. Customer relationships still, and will likely continue to, depend firmly on those instances where self-service tools fall short and live interactions excel, regardless of the chosen channel (phone, email, chat, text, or social media).

Customer Feedback: While today’s multichannel platforms offer various opportunities for customer surveys, the reality remains that any over-reliance on self-service tools can be at the detriment of getting to know one’s consumer base on a more personal note. And while customer empowerment certainly serves an important role, the ability to receive valuable feedback from the field is equally valuable, if not more so. In addition, given most clients will refrain from complaining and instead silently seek alternative options, the opportunity to keep the live channels of communication open should never take a back seat to operational convenience.

Competitive Advantages: Customers have become accustomed to many self-service tools, but the act of offering them is not a competitive advantage – it’s simply a necessity. Case in point, two different cable companies will likely have similar IVR menus, advanced CRM platforms, website FAQs, etc., and yet consumers are likely to favor one over the other (the difference between two well-known U.S. cable firms comes to mind). Any competitive advantage, beyond the underlying product, is likely to come from the quality of those representatives supporting the business. So while the importance of customer empowerment cannot be ignored, it should never be at the expense of those resources which actually drive customer loyalty and long-term customer value.

Customer empowerment is an important part of the overall customer experience. But while consumers may enjoy the freedom of addressing their own needs, it is precisely when they are unable to do so that businesses are given the opportunity to excel and justify future customer loyalty. So while advanced self-service tools are fast becoming the standard, the need to continue to support and provide the much needed resources to those representatives manning the frontlines of customer care should continue to be a priority.

About the Author

Robert Killory is Chief Customer Officer of 3CLogic and brings more than 25 years of experience in developing and implementing Contact Center solutions.