While voice remains the number one channel for interaction between businesses and their customers, modern customers are more inclined to solve basic customer service issues by themselves. For that reason, businesses today are adding self-service to their customer service channels. Self-service options for customers save time, boost customer experience, and drive customer loyalty.
A business can introduce five types of Self-Service Options for Customers to Boost Customer Experience
1. Customer Self-service Portals
If you have customers around the clock, you must have a team of customer service representatives who can give support 24/7 support around the world. If you do not have such facility and operate limited hours, a large section of your customers will have a hard time reaching you. Also, the younger tech-savvy crowd will definitely look for their answers online even before reaching your customer service.
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Rather than leaving your customer without support from your end, you can invest in a customer self-service portal that contains answers to the most common queries, instruction for basic fixes and a few others that a customer can easily resolve.
Using this portal, a customer can get answers to their basic queries and explore the knowledge base for further details during the non-operational hours. This also allows them to bypass the calling queue and get their answer from your end at their own time and pace.
An additional perk? The self-service portal can significantly decrease your customer service costs!
2. Mobile
Today, most people browse the internet from their smartphone. Scratch that, people today do almost everything on their smartphone – it’s easy, it’s convenient and a powerful tool that fits in your pocket.
A mobile app or mobile version of your site can be beneficial as a self-service tool. However, make sure to make the mobile version of site user-friendly so that your customers can easily navigate through the site to find the answers they are looking for.
You can also build a user-friendly app that offers push notifications and features that help you keep customers updated on the company and its service updates.
3. Chatbots and AI
Live chatbots can offer a great customer experience. With the help of AI, chatbots can answer customer queries in a matter of seconds. Chatbots can help customers by answering their queries, assisting them, and even helping them with booking and sales. With live chatbots, finding answers to your queries have become easier than ever.
Live chatbots are a great way to help confused customers. Many company sites offer a popup chat window that appears after a certain period of time spent on the website. These bots can guide the customer to the answers they are looking for. Even when they do not have answers, they can point the customers in the right direction. These chatbots are also a great way to show that your company cares for its customers and CX.
4. Kiosks
A kiosk can be useful for short, specific tasks, such as finding an item in a physical store or checking the price. Self-checkout kiosks can also help customers with checkout and payment.
5. Functional Automated Phone Systems
While the phone remains the preferred business interaction channel for many customers, the younger generation sees it as the last resort. You can find a middle ground and offer them the option to speak to a representative or resolve the issue by following an automated menu system and accomplishing the task quickly without needing an agent.
These five self-service options for customers guide them to quickly find the answer to their queries without needing an agent and boost their customer experience.
