Getting ROI from your digital self-service

Customers’ use of digital channels has been increasing for many years and the recent pandemic has only accelerated this growth.  With this greater use of digital channels customers are becoming more demanding and want faster answers to their queries. This has firmly put the spotlight on customers being able to self-serve.  As customers become more tech savvy they are more comfortable using this channel to find any information they need and to solve routine queries. However the channel does need to these services with the speed and effectiveness that they are looking for.

Effective self-service, implemented and run correctly, can generate ROI from self-service whilst also improving the customer experience. However, if the service fails to meet customer needs they won’t use it or will abandon their queries part way through and switch to other channels.

The secret to self-service success

To ensure that you deploy digital self-service successfully, achieve a good ROI and improve customer satisfaction, there are four key areas to focus on:

1. Deliver up-to-date, accessible knowledge

Part of the foundation for an effective self-service system is a comprehensive, accessible knowledge base. This knowledge base needs to understand the questions customers ask, however the questions are phrased.   Only the relevant information should be delivered as a response to ensure customers do not need to scroll through pages of inappropriate results. It is not just about building this database with the right information but also ensuring that it is always up-to-date.  A good self-service system will also learn from the questions it is asked enriching current responses and creating new ones when new queries arise.  

2. Ease of use

If self-service isn’t easy to use then customers will choose to switch to other channels such as the phone, which as well as being more expensive for you, could leave your customers feeling frustrated having wasted their time on the self-service channel.  After deployment the self-service system, should be monitored to identify where people drop out of self-service, so that these issues can be remedied.

3. An omnichannel approach

Self-service doesn’t work for every interaction, and not every customer wants to embrace self-service, so it needs to be part of an omnichannel approach.  Agents will still be required to handle more complex queries or those that require additional empathy. Your self-service system should be focussed where it delivers most value.  This can be established by identifying the customer journeys that are both important and high volume.   Ensure that is it easy for someone to transfer away from self-service if it’s not providing them with a satisfactory response.  

4. Focus on continual improvement, not just cutting costs

Self-service can reduce the cost to service a single customer, whilst this can be good for the bottom line it also provides an opportunity to reinvest in other customer service channels, such as upskilling agents or improving your knowledge base.  This enables you to improve the service a customer receives through all your channels not just self service.

Monitoring the data from self-service as well as other channels may allow you to provider further improvements, such as providing further information to prevent a customer needing to be transferred to an agent, or identifying a need to transfer to an agent sooner in certain instances.  An organisations aim should be to continuously improve and ensure self-service keeps delivering value.

Therefore a relevant, easy-to-use information and an omnichannel approach with continual improvement should help you make the most of your self-service system.

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Source information provided by Enghouse Interactive:  https://enghouseinteractive.co.uk/blog/