Completing the Self-Service Picture for High-Value Customers

Over the past several years, many service businesses have invested in Web self-service, FAQs, search and multi-channel CRM applications and services. Some have adopted e-commerce, e-billing and specialized content management solutions, and have developed portals for customers, partners and employees. Yet, many of these solutions have not kept up with evolving needs and expectations of customers. The state of search, knowledge management and content management tools has advanced, but these solutions are often more suited for serving casual buyers and "browsers," rather than existing customers trying to access or manage their accounts. This has left a solution gap within the current customer self-service technology market—a gap that has neglected some of the most valuable customers. These customers need high-quality account statements that provide them the ability to explore their personal information in a variety of ways.

For instance, high net-worth individuals need to review the status of numerous holdings on a single page, arranged as they want it, with information presented in charts, graphs, dashboards or interactive spreadsheets. They want to be able to drill down to transaction-level details. They need to be assured the information is current across their holdings, at any time. In this scenario, the statements represent the individual's personal net worth. Therefore, the reports must be highly professional to reflect this value.

When needs like this are not met, many users continue to rely on help desks and account teams instead of "helping themselves." In fact, after making an online purchase, half of all consumers tend to use the phone for customer service. It's not hard to see why. Information is often siloed, and a poor user experience can easily drive customers back to the phone—or to a competitor. At the same time, many self-service reporting systems have been traditionally slow and even unreliable.

Self-Service and Enterprise Reporting

World-class companies are deploying customer self-service solutions aimed to address some of these limitations by linking elements of business intelligence and enterprise reporting with CRM and self-service models. Like the CRM and self-service markets, the BI space has evolved significantly over the past several years. With the growth of Internet adoption and Web delivery options, end-user demand for data comes from all levels of the business, including partners and customers. There is synergy between the direction of enterprise reporting and self-service solutions focused on structured data such as account information.

The extension of enterprise reporting into customer self-service is appearing from two groups within the enterprise. Business intelligence and reporting groups within many firms have been delivering "BI for the masses," more comprehensive and real-time data to larger and larger groups of internal users, and in many cases have moved beyond the firewall to deliver enterprise reporting to partners and customers.

Meanwhile, groups responsible for self-service initiatives—who are looking to better serve existing customers, such as account holders or "members"—have recognized the key capabilities of enterprise reporting technologies, which include reach, efficiency and the ability to get all the data. They have begun to tap these enterprise reporting solutions to better serve customers.

There are unique challenges in delivering world-class customer self-service applications—especially where structured information access and delivery are essential. Specifically, some of the questions companies will need to answer include:

• How to give users control over the format and delivery of account information;
• How to reach 100% of users, 100% of the time via self-service models—and keep them using these lower cost channels; and
• How to enable seamless integration with back-end applications and data to allow users to access what they need for both informational (sometimes structured) and transactional (highly structured) self-service.

Having a solution for structured information delivery is clearly a critical, often missing piece in today's self-service solutions. To meet the needs of both increasingly sophisticated online customers as well as new users, companies must offer an intuitive experience with a range of presentation types, real-time access to data across any kind of customer system, and scalability to serve hundreds of thousands of users. For leading companies seeking to gain a competitive advantage, enterprise reporting will play a key role in enabling this type of next-generation customer self-service.

Enterprise Reporting Serves High-Value Customers

While search and content management systems have become key building blocks for many Web self-service applications, it is important to note that this "search-centric" model is most valuable when serving unknown users before they are customers. Much of the focus for next-generation customer self-service will be on serving known customers, who have one or more accounts—and specific needs, preferences and output formats.

These customers can represent major revenue streams and retaining them is critical to growing their business. As customers become increasingly more sophisticated and develop a higher expectation of their online experience, leading firms are rapidly deploying more advanced online reporting and analysis tools to meet demand. Account management and analysis functionality often used by internal business analysts are finding their way to the deployment roadmap for customer self-service channels. Tools that allow clients to:

• View multiple accounts graphically together;
• Manipulate graphics and charts;
• Create, schedule and run reports on-demand;
• Drill down to details and documentation behind the numbers;
• Leverage full-function Excel files;
• Select delivery methods including Web, email, fax, SMS, print, etc.; and
• Enjoy a rich, interactive Web 2.0 experience.