6 Ways To Optimize Self-service In Customer Service Companies

As users become more demanding when it comes to contacting a customer service center to resolve their doubts or make a query, companies must not only take into account the quality of service provided by their agents, but also the customer service options that they offer through self-service in this omnichannel era.

But how can organizations improve self-service? CCW Digital proposes 6 ways to optimize self-service in companies:

1. Mapping The Journey Of The Customer Experience

The different self-service channels must be intuitive so that customers can use them without problem. Therefore, companies must know where and why customers interact at specific times to understand their real objectives.

Using this information, organizations can implement self-service at the right times, ensuring that self-service help the client on his trip and his experience. Therefore, self-service should be part of a carefully designed strategy. For this, making a map of the client’s trip is essential.

2. Connect The Self-service To The General Function Of Contacting The Customer

It is important to integrate self-service in the general operation of contact with the client. Organizations understand the importance of connecting their live chat initiatives to their voice, social networking and email channels, as well as linking their marketing efforts with sales and service operations.

Whether from the perspective of workflow, performance measurement or data collection, organizations and their employees must have unfiltered visibility in their self-service environments. Therefore, all self-service tools must be fully integrated into the contact center in general.

3. Determine The Customer’s Expectations

Client-centric organizations want customers to use self-service. They want self-service platforms to become a conscious preference of the customer instead of a business imposition. To do this, the organization’s job is to educate clients about the value of self-service and how it can help them achieve their specific objectives.

4. Set Relevant Metrics

All self-service initiatives have objectives and, therefore, are expected to offer significant results. To track those results, organizations must implement a set of metrics specific to self-service interactions.

Organizations must understand how often (and why) customers abandon self-service. They must understand the effort associated with using a chat bot and identify the agreements associated with the transfer of a bot to a human agent. They should know the time associated with a self-service interaction and track factors such as “repetitions” or “incorrect menu problems” to determine if the experience is valuable.

Call center leaders would never allow voice conversations not to be monitored or measured. That same attitude should apply to self-service platforms, which play an equally important (and increasingly prominent) role in the journey of the customer experience.

5. Convert The Data Into A Priority

The data should drive all the self-service tools. In the current era, one in which the goal is to maximize value while decreasing the effort associated with each interaction, self-service tools must be dynamic and adaptive and, therefore, require a constant flow of data. To represent a valuable point of contact, each self-service tool must have access to customer-specific information, script optimizations, knowledge base updates, or clarity about the most common reasons customers relate.

The self-service tool should also be able to acquire and share ideas about each client and the overall experience trip. Whether for short-term authentication purposes or to optimize the long-term customer experience, the self-service tool must communicate what it “learns” from agents (and the company in general). In addition, the self-service tools must be connected to the CRM system, the knowledge base, the agent desktops, the routing system and the customer analysis tools.

6. Customize The Experience

To offer an excellent self-service experience, organizations must understand the importance of offering a human touch even in simple, non-conversational transactions. More importantly, they must incorporate an element of personalization.

The self-service tool must “recognize” the customer and be able to predict the probable reasons to call. To do this, organizations take advantage of artificial intelligence, implement self-service tools that can communicate organically with certain customers and offer solutions to significant problems.

On the other hand, companies can also offer self-service “portals” that represent a “CRM for customers”. In this way, customers could access these tools to understand their past interactions and determine the best way to use a product or get help to move forward.