Customer self-service alters how companies engage with their clients. Even though self-service is not a new concept, customer trends can call for more self-service options in new areas.
According to Harvard findings, 81% of clients prefer to take care of issues themselves before reaching out to live representatives.
This blog post will examine seven benefits of customer self-service in customer support and ways to improve self-service in your business.
What is self-service?
Self-service enables customers to find solutions to their problems, access information, and perform various tasks without directly interacting with a company representative.
Customer self-service is available through a variety of channels, including knowledge bases, FAQs, chatbots, how-to videos, and online portals.
Benefits of customer self-service in your organization
Here are the top seven significance of a customer self-service solution in your business.
1. Increases efficiency and productivity of the support team
Self-service customer service is available around the clock, allowing customers to find solutions to their issues anytime without needing any intervention from the support team.
As a result, the brand’s total effectiveness can be improved.
Additionally, the support team can be more productive and efficient with fewer support tickets and queries to manage.
They can spend more time on initiative-taking tasks, such as improving the knowledge base to continuously boost their support level.
2. Provides 24/7 support
If you want to succeed in the market, you must live up to the grand expectations of the modern consumer.
Customers want businesses to help whenever they need it, around the clock.
The availability of support services is increased because of customer self-service.
In this way, even if a consumer has a question at four in the morning, they may easily oversee it themselves.
Businesses can only offer human support to employees during specific hours and certain days of the week.
However, self-service is available around the clock and on holidays. Consumers no longer must wait for answers as a result.
3. Serves more customers at once
Support representatives can serve a finite number of clients. Customers have a speedier option that often satisfies everyone when using self-service options such as a knowledge base.
For example, businesses like restaurants may find that installing self-service booths results in more customers.
Self-service offers significant benefits to both the customer and the business. Some significance include:
- Customers can consult the latest information on websites and knowledge bases to obtain the same answer they would receive from support staff.
- Provide businesses with the opportunity to gather valuable information from clients for future marketing strategies.
4. It is cost-effective
Encouraging customer self-service is much less expensive than hiring a support team to manage client inquiries.
A significant percentage of a company’s money utilized in other areas can be saved.
With self-service, businesses need to spend less time and money on employee training since performing specific tasks is shifted to the customer.
This can lead to significant savings in training expenses.
5. Enhances the customer experience
Companies are aware that offering top-notch customer service is essential to their success.
Contacting the support team may cause consumers inconvenience in addition to a delay in assistance.
The research may find that customers prefer to oversee their difficulties instead of asking for help.
Using this information, customer self-service can become a trustworthy substitute for the support team in the company.
Customers will be more satisfied and have a better experience if they can solve their problems without assistance from support personnel.
6. Reduces the burden on support staff
Support staff strain must be reduced for businesses to maintain high productivity and customer happiness.
Implementing self-service alternatives in customer assistance is one method to do this. Customer assistance is crucially dependent on self-service for a few reasons:
- Reduced need for additional staff: With self-service options managing a huge portion of customer inquiries, organizations may not need additional support staff to manage the workload.
- Scalability: As an enterprise grows, so does the demand for customer support. Self-service options allow organizations to scale their support efforts without needing a proportional increase in support staff.
7. Provides insight into customers’ needs
Customer self-service provides insights into customers’ needs by enabling businesses to collect and analyze customer behavior, preferences, and feedback data.
This information can then improve products, services, and customer experiences.
Companies use a self-service solution to collect customer feedback and receive suggestions or related information.
These insights may be leveraged to develop consumer-focused offerings, enhance the self-service experience, and guarantee outstanding customer service to clients.
Tips for improving self-service
Companies looking to begin offering self-service to their clients have many choices. Here are five top techniques to consider.
Highlight the most popular FAQs
Building a FAQ page on your website is the quickest way to start offering self-service in customer support.
An FAQ page answers clients’ most frequent queries and is a more structured form of a knowledge base. Finding the subjects to include in your FAQ page is the challenge.
The best place to start curating topics for your FAQ is your support team reports. Use them to identify the questions and subjects that clients most frequently ask about.
Create a knowledge base
Creating knowledge bases continue to be a valuable source of information across all aspects of the customer support experience.
They are especially successful in flattening the learning curve for onboarding new clients.
However, you can do a few things to get the most out of a knowledge base and maximize your investment:
- Give it a prominent place on your website and incorporate links to it in customer emails and newsletters to ensure that people know it exists.
- Make sure the knowledge base articles are appropriately arranged. The software must include a search bar and be simple to navigate. Adding tags and labels to group materials into categories helps.
- Consider including images, graphics, videos, and other media types in your knowledge base material.
For more tips to create a knowledge base effectively, read the article.
Encourage community forums
Making a community forum is another valuable way for customers to help themselves. They can use this feature to ask questions and find solutions from other customers.
Additionally, they may find other customers with the same issue and work together to find a resolution.
A forum is an ideal setting for customers to exchange stories and offer helpful guidance.
Craft how-to videos
How-to videos are an excellent self-service option allowing users to learn and solve problems independently.
These videos provide step-by-step instructions on performing specific tasks, allowing users to gain knowledge and skills without needing direct assistance from customer support or a professional.
Some of the steps include:
- Identify the topics to determine the most common issues or questions your users have about your product, service, or subject matter.
- Creating a script where one writes a clear and concise script for each video, outlining each step in the process.
Finally, monitor engagement and feedback to regularly review comments and feedback on your how-to videos to identify any issues or areas of confusion.
Customer self-service examples
Customer self-service is an essential component of modern businesses, empowering customers to find answers and resolve issues independently.
Here are the major examples of effective customer self-service options:
Knowledge base
One of the most common and effective customer self-service options is a knowledge base.
A knowledge base is a central storage space for information about a particular subject.
It is commonly used to complement customer self-service as it allows users to find answers to their questions without contacting customer support directly.
According to research by Higher Logic, 92% of people indicated that they would opt for a self-service option through a knowledge base if one were available.
By providing a comprehensive knowledge base, companies can significantly reduce the volume of customer support tickets and empower customers to solve their own problems quickly and efficiently.
FAQ page
Many business websites have a frequently asked questions (FAQ) section where they provide answers to common questions that customers have.
An FAQ is often organized by topics and provides concise, straightforward answers, making it easy for customers to navigate and locate relevant information.
Question topics can range from product usage to payment methods, to product information, to troubleshooting steps.
Community forums
Community forums are online platforms where individuals with shared interests or concerns can gather to discuss topics, ask questions, share information, provide support, and connect with each other.
In a business setting, forums are often moderated by the company but rely on peer-to-peer support among customers.
They are organized around aspects of a business’s offering, such as product features and technical support.
Mobile apps
Mobile apps have become a popular and convenient platform for providing self-service options to users.
They offer self-service features that allow users to access information and troubleshoot issues without contacting support, like FAQs and knowledge bases.
And when a user is unable to solve a problem on their own, they can use the app to file a support ticket or initiate live chat support.
Video tutorials
Visual learners benefit from video tutorials that show them how to use a product or service.
Companies can create instructional videos on how to set up or use their products, which can be more engaging than text-based guides.
By taking advantage of these resources, users can enhance their skills, save time, and reduce the need for direct support.
Wrapping it up
Customer self-service offers a fantastic way for customers to identify solutions and address their issues independently, without the assistance of support staff.
Online community forums, knowledge bases, and FAQs are all examples of customer self-service.
Customer self-service can significantly enhance the productivity of an organization by empowering users and reducing support workload.
Schedule a live demo to experience how BoldDesk can encourage customer self-service. BoldDesk provides an incredible knowledge base software to empower your customers and agents.
To experience the value you can deliver to your support team and customers, sign up for a BoldDesk free trial. If you have any queries, contact the BoldDesk support team.
Related articles
Reasons why a knowledge base is important in an organization.
Best practices to improve your knowledge base.
Knowledge base article templates for great content creation.
