In recent years self-service has become a popular strategy for many customer-facing operations. Several supermarket chains, financial institutions and restaurants have opted for this model to enhance efficiencies across their operations. According to Hubspot, Self-service simply means that customers must complete an action or task on their own without assistance from a company employee. Of course, self-service has several benefits associated with it including –
- Increased customer satisfaction;
- Efficiency and streamlined processes;
- Reduced costs and resources.
However, the human touch can never be eliminated entirely. In fact, Gartner says only 9% of Customers report solving their issues completely via self-service. Before fully diving into a self-service solution it’s important to keep in mind the benefit for the customer and the organisation alike. With this in mind, we are sharing some tips on the many ways that you can integrate a self-service model while continuing to place an emphasis on human interaction and customer satisfaction.
1. Examine your existing solution – From our experience, we suggest implementing a blended model of self-service and human interaction. To achieve this we recommend researching and examining your current model. To do so get a full breakdown of the types of queries your team typically deals with, this will enable you to work out which queries can easily be resolved by a self-service option and establish the more complex queries that require human intervention. Adopting this approach will help you increase your first contact resolution rates while making your team more engaged and interact with customers in a manner that leads to high satisfaction rates.
2. Be ready to resolve queries quickly if and when needed – To avoid frustrating your customers when using a self-service model it’s important to be able to quickly resolve queries. One of the most effective ways to manage this online is having a live chat feature available. According to statistics from Zendesk, live chat has the highest consumer satisfaction rate in resolving queries of any channel at 92%. Of course, giving customers what they want, when they want it, allows your brand to stand out from the competition.
3. Don’t abandon telephone as a support channel – While it’s great to have channels such as email and social media available to your customers, telephone is a channel that shouldn’t be overlooked when implementing a self-service support model. While many people find it easier to engage and follow written instructions other customers prefer to speak to a human agent to resolve queries. In particular, this is most important with more complex processes where a customer is likely to need reassurance and guidance such as setting up an account or product troubleshooting.
4. Proactively engage with customers on their self-service experience – We know that self-service is most definitely here to stay and will continue to evolve with Artificial Intelligence and automation paving the way. With this in mind, it’s important to engage with customers on a regular basis to explore and understand their self-service experience. Ways to gather feedback can include –
- Email surveys;
- Customer satisfaction calls;
- Collecting feedback via Social Media;
- Instore insights.
This feedback can be used to alter and amplify your customer’s self-service journey and allow you to establish common pain points faced by customers.
Self-service models are empowering customers and increasing satisfaction rates however, it’s important to keep in mind the power of human interaction. Unlike automated processes, human interaction is a vital ingredient in creating powerful connections with your customers. If you would like to find out more about how we can support your self-service model chat to us today – info@aremaconnect.com.
