Self-service has been a trend in businesses for a couple of years now. In the wake of the pandemic and economic changes, self-service becomes more than just a strategy. You know you need to get into action mode. This provides your customers with a timely and efficient manner to get questions answered and a process for repeat activities. This provides you with a competitive edge and also a reduction of call center costs.
What is self-service and why should I execute this for my business?
Self Service is an online mechanism (web or phone) that allows end-users the ability to use technology to access information and perform routine tasks without requiring the assistance of a live customer service representative.
This provides 24/7 customer support from anywhere in the world which results in faster and convenient options for your customers. With everyone, so busy and multitasking, 70% of organizations expect a self-service model.
What exactly is a self-service mechanism?
- Bot Technology can be embedded on your website and help with such things as:
- Customer inquiries
- Post-sales customer service needs
- Consistent, reliable responses to commonly asked questions
- A knowledge repository can be built and managed for easy access to your customers
- Commonly asked customer questions/FAQs
- Best-practice downloads
- Directions or customizations of products
- Data Collection and Reporting
- Machine Learning/AI – To prepare for the future and build a proper Customer Service experience
- Gain insight on what works with Bots and Knowledge and make further improvements to customer experience
- Communities
- Enhances your customer’s experience
- Power of Crowd Sourced Solutions
- Gamification of Support
What are the benefits of self-service for our business?
In the current time it is important now more than ever to focus on activities that can change how we work and provide a hard return on investment. Budgets are tight so prioritize things that have a direct impact on saving you money, generating you money, or bringing efficiency to your business.
Self-service will….
- Reduce cycle time, generate dynamic status updates, and provide activity routing to the right team for quicker customer service action
- Provide bots that will standardize common activities and questions for professionals not replace them. This frees employees to engage at a high level of value with your customers instead of being an order taker or data presenter
- Provide bot business process automation that will improve self-service for customers and reduce expenses for vendor inquiries
- Provide less room for error by increasing the accuracy of the translation as the customer is in control instead of an agent replying to information through the service worker chain. The customer can be specific as possible
How can I bring self-service to our business?
There are numerous self-service cloud solutions out there that you can use to optimize your business including Salesforce and ServiceNow. Each platform varies in offerings so it is important to first identify areas within your business that need help and do research to see which platform will be the best fit.
Working with a business consulting firm like 5P will lead you in the process to identify those areas and use our expertise to implement them. We are experienced professionals able to quickly detect areas within your business processes that can benefit from a self-service platform. We will work with you and identify the best tool to meet your needs.
I know right now many of us have limited budgets and teams, so let us use this as an opportunity to optimize your business today and ensure you are pivoting for the long-term ups and downs of the economy. We will provide you a free assessment with recommendations.
Reach out to me or a member of our team today: [email protected]