Deliver the Self-Service Your Customers Really Want
We all want great self-service. Customers like it for convenience; companies like it because it can short-circuit expensive agent support. Unfortunately, great self-service is hard to find. Often it is a frustrating experience that drives customers back to the phone. There are four simple principles to help you eliminate customer frustration and deliver self-service that focuses on how customers want to do business with you.
Principle 1: Avoid Dumb Self-Service
While this principle seems obvious, it's dumb self-service that customers typically get. There is a simple reason for this. Too often, self-service is equated with Google-like searching where customers see every possible answer related to a search term. However, customers are not that interested in the search-hit smorgasbord—they want a qualified answer.
Self-service must do more than parse language with keyword and natural language searching. Intelligent self-service helps a customer define what is most important and uses this knowledge to recommend solutions tailored to the question. It offers multiple retrieval methodologies for finding appropriate answers in the shortest amount of time, such as clarifying questions, diagnostic scripts that change dynamically depending on response and results lists presented in an order determined by experts.
For example, intelligent self-service can refine results for a broad search on the word "retirement" with a series of clarifying questions: "What age do you want to retire? Is tax deferral important? Do you need guaranteed income?" Based on the answers, intelligent self-service filters the initial list of suggestions to recommend the most appropriate product.
Users can select and combine these methodologies to best suit their skill level, such as choosing a question from an FAQ list and then following a diagnostic script to troubleshoot a cell phone problem. For an even better self-service experience, intelligent self-service matches results to the individual. For a prospect interested in car insurance, intelligent self-service can automatically target the results list to show only those policies available in the prospect's state. In addition, knowledge of a customer's existing policies can be used to offer advice, such as suggesting a variety of tailored home and auto bundles that would provide more coverage at lower premiums.
Principle 2: Eliminate Dead-End Self-Service
In theory, self-service is perfect for getting answers to customers quickly and cost-effectively. In practice, self-service alone cannot deliver great customer service. Customers will always need agent assistance when they require further clarification. If self-service is a dead-end with no connection to the contact center, customers will skip it and head straight for the phone.
Self-service must be part of a larger service strategy that offers choice through multiple online channels, such as email and live chat. However, not all email and chat solutions are created equal. Those solutions that effectively complement self-service combine streamlined message handling with higher response accuracy and consistency. For example, chat should offer Web page co-browsing so that agents can walk self-service customers through online activities. Email management should provide content analysis to suggest responses automatically and minimize the time agents spend replying. Agents should be able to include links to self-service solutions in chat or email replies to keep customers within the self-service session and encourage use.
Principle 3: Don't Make the Customer Say It Again
A multi-channel strategy can increase self-service adoption because it offers the security that agent help is just a click away. Unfortunately, multiple channels can exacerbate the one thing we all hate—being asked to repeat information. Everybody's time gets wasted when email and chat messages ping-pong back and forth, or customers on the phone labor through the explanation once more.
Multiple channels must offer both choice and seamless interactions. Seamlessness is particularly crucial to self-service, because customers have invested time trying to find an answer. The last thing they want is to start over. When a self-service customer escalates an inquiry, the agent needs a complete customer history across all channels, right down to search terms entered, pages visited, solutions viewed and responses given. When multi-channel service is this seamless, agents can pick up at the exact point where a customer left off, pushing the resolution process forward immediately and eliminating annoying repetition.
Principle 4: Do It Right or Plan on More Calls
It takes only one bad self-service experience to turn a customer into a loyal phone user. You can offer intelligence, choice and channel seamlessness, but if implementation is wrong, customers will not trust or use it. There are several keys to successful implementation. First, work with a partner with a proven track record in successful self-service that can help you implement a self-service strategy that exceeds the quality of service customers expect. Second, consider implementing self-service in the contact center to fine-tune the experience with agents before offering it to customers. Third, select and tailor retrieval methodologies to support the level of sophistication your customers want. Finally, provide a convenient escalation channel for additional support.
Intelligent, connected, seamless and well-implemented self-service—it's not just the route to efficiency, but the key to satisfied customers who will reward your company with more business and long-term loyalty.
Anand Chopra brings 10 years of sales, marketing and consulting experience to KANA. As director of product marketing, Chopra is responsible for driving effective marketing programs and creating strategies for advancing the KANA eService Solutions in the marketplace. Prior to joining KANA in 2003, he held instrumental positions at leading companies such as Oracle, Commerce One and Ernst & Young, LLP.
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