The Significance of Customer Self-Service in the Digital Age

Customers in general aren’t the bedrock of your business – but happy customers are. They stay with you longer and bring profitable opportunities.

Your marketing should mainly focus on delighting your customers. It attracts new customers who keep buying your products and services again, and most importantly, they spread the word through referrals and social media.

Looking at recent marketing statistics, the major expectation of customers from any business is getting a quicker response to their queries and questions. Hence, fast response rate remains at the helm for a curated customer experience.

More about customer self-service

The ability to answer all the queries may seem like a daunting task at times. That’s why formulating a one-stop destination that solves all customer queries and problems is important. It can be in the form of a knowledge-base, FAQs, online discussion forums, or a self-service customer portal.

In fact, 70% of customers now expect a self-service application from a business.

Customer expectations

Zendesk published an infographic highlighting the results from a global consumer survey focusing on self-service options. Here are some of them:

• 75% of survey respondents said self-service is a convenient way to address customer service issues
• 67% of respondents said they preferred self-service over speaking to a company representative
• 91% of respondents said they would use an online knowledge base if it were available and tailored to their needs

The takeaway?

Customers want a frictionless experience in finding their answers. When you empower customers with the tools and resources to solve issues on their own, they feel liberated. Hosting a SuiteCRM Customer Portal will include key assets you want to provide.

For example:

• FAQs: This is the collection of obvious questions and queries to your product or service. They are available in an easily digestible format.
• Knowledge-base: A database of useful information, usually part of your CRM that you can present through the portal.
• Interactive Voice Recognition Assistant: Customers interact with an automated voice system tailored to answer their queries.

How self-service provides cost savings

When a business makes it difficult to find answers or contact an agent, users may feel unwanted. Whereas, the always-on, 24/7 nature of self-service will enable users to receive support at any time, and not just during company work hours. This reduces the need for a 24/7 support center.

When you provide the resources, it portrays that you are willing to help by going the extra mile. You should empower your users and not just collect their capital and forget about them. Providing self-service customer support eliminates the need for hiring new agents. And your existing ones can focus on more important tasks. This results in a substantial number of agents requiring training as well. Hence, it adds up to your savings indirectly.

A study by Forrester Research and Oracle, says that customer support options can reduce the cost of interaction as much as $11 per call.

Self-service doesn’t mean getting settled

Assuming that your self-service options can set you free from that role is not the right way to look at this solution. Because outdated self-service support can also ruin your brand reputation.

Keep up with change

When your products or services evolve and grow, your self-service options also need to have that updated information. Whenever your product or solution gets an update, be sure to make the changes in your self-service database as well. Otherwise, the information will grow stale and useless after a certain time.

Moderate your community forums

Via community forums, customers can come together and discuss things and solve issues. This platform can be useful for users who have very specific or obscure issues, that they were not able to solve by knowledge-base or FAQs. When you moderate forums, make sure that you remove inappropriate or unrelated submissions, recognize common issues, and update databases with the fresh information.

The bottom line

Providing an omnichannel and connected experience for customers is important as their expectations are getting higher. The most important aspect is that customers want support, but they want it without any hurdles.

When you adopt self-service tools like SuiteCRM Customer Portal, make sure you are enabling your customers to solve their issues without too much effort. Today, when customer experience is a critical aspect to get your business widespread in the market, it is important to empower your customers with information and resources they will need on a daily basis.