Think Like a Customer for Great Online Self-Service

Financial services institutions (FSIs) have done a great job leveraging e-channels so that customers can skip standing in line or hanging on the end of the phone. From ATMs to online banking, FSIs have been ahead of the curve in deploying automated self-service. But to do it right, self-service and one of its core enablers, knowledge management (KM), must deliver the service experience customers really want. From our work at major FSIs, we have identified four customer expectations that can make or break the online service experience and adoption of KM tools:

1. Know who I am;
2. Make sure I can talk to you;
3. Measure the value of your service from my point of view; and (increasingly important);
4. Let me contribute to knowledge sharing and even issue resolution.

"Know your customer" is just as important online as offline. While KM can drive more sophisticated dialogues online, if the end result is a one-size-fits-all experience, customers will abandon self-service, if not your company. Answers are most valued when delivered within the context of the customer’s relationship with your organization. Leveraging in real-time such factors as the customer’s profile, past interactions and areas of interest, you can interpret the intent of each inquiry to offer targeted and personalized advice.

Context awareness is also critical to the relevance of service and can make the difference between good and bad e-service. For example, the Wall Street Journal reports that as the use of proactive "Chat with us now" invitations has increased, so has customer annoyance with these pop-ups. Applying user preferences and then rules to interpret a customer’s actions in real time can allow you to be smart about when and how you proactively offer assistance. For example, a customer who has spent too long on an account-opening page can be offered help with the form. The goal is a tailored experience, across the most appropriate channel, at the right time.

Customers still want to talk. In the eyes of customers, self-service convenience is never a substitute for live interactions. It turns out that "I can talk to a person when I want to" is still the number-one factor in creating a positive experience with self-service. Customers must always be able to reach you with simple paths to live communication built into your self-service strategy.

One-click email escalation, a self-service session history that eliminates redundant problem discovery for escalated inquiries and service-level agreements (SLAs) that deliver answers within the same business day, build the perception that the company is always "there for me." Live chat and joint form-filling are even better for keeping customers engaged in the self-service interaction—and with your company—as agents guide customers through complex activities, such as completing an online loan application.

Measure value from the customer’s point of view. Do you really know if customers are satisfied with the answers they find? Is call deflection truly taking place or are customers just giving up and going to a competitor’s site? The value of your knowledge must be assessed and proven for its ability to answer customers’ questions. This can be as simple as the common "Did this help?" survey attached to a solution, or determined in a more sophisticated manner using advanced behavioral analytics. With the advent of Web 2.0, online forums can also be a useful tool to conduct virtual focus groups to find out what hot topics or issues are top of mind.

We have also found that a KM optimization process that starts by understanding user demand, such as top call drivers, creates a task-driven view of information (what content is needed to support the opening of a new brokerage account, for example), and is obsessively focused on what customers value most: accuracy, relevance and usability of answers. This can be the key to driving both adoption and effectiveness of an online knowledgebase.

Let customers contribute. As we enter the world of Web (and KM!) 2.0, communities and social networking offer an unprecedented opportunity to get at the heart of what all FSIs want customers to do—become advocates by referring friends and acquaintances. KM can be a key player in building customer advocacy with inclusive information sharing via support blogs, self-service chat rooms and even wikis. This requires an expanded definition of KM as not simply a process for capturing and delivering structured knowledge, but as a free flow of structured and ad-hoc, unstructured information in all directions—company-to-customer, customer-to-company and customer-to-customer.

The potential is unlimited when looking at the future of self-service and the possibilities for KM to support next-generation, highly interactive, high-value interactions between FSIs and their customers. McKinsey reports that four of the top five factors related to recommending a bank to others are customer-service related, including the perception that the bank is flexible when working with customers and "there for me" when problems occur. When self-service reflects the customer’s way of thinking, every FSI can demonstrate the company’s dedication to serving the individual for a higher standard of service that leads to greater customer loyalty, life-time value and advocacy.