Although the global history of Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) dates to the 1950s and 1960s, a number of people still have vivid memories of the times before their popularization in their parts of the world. Long queues limited to bank working hours, teller services taking up significant cost of branch operations, resulting inconvenience in access to funds, shopping and consumption patterns, the list goes on. ATMs, much like other physical self-service structures such as self-serving supermarkets, airport check-in counters, gas stations, and transport ticketing machines depict the trajectory the retail and finance industry have undergone in designing systems that enable customers get optimal, efficient results through their own effort.
In a HBR article, Matthew Dixon, Lara Ponomareff, Scott Turner, and Rick DeLisi break down the simple but game-changing premise: “customers want results, not sympathy”. They present statistical evidence that 81% of all customers attempt to take care of matters themselves before reaching out to a live representative. These shed some light on the precursor to self-service, of customers’ preference to solve their needs or resolve issues in their way quickly and directly, where possible. This is not limited to post-purchase service complaints or support, rather it also comes into play pre-purchase and during purchase, thus is applicable to every step of the customer journey.
Unpacking the self-service economy in its early days, Steven Van Belleghem foreshadowed the extinction of an old customer service maxim – of 24 hour response time showing excellence – to be replaced by the need for speed, friendliness, one-off interaction, and transparency. In actuality, as much as these requirements are customer-friendly, they present huge operational advantages for organizations. They drive efficiency. Instead of increasing support staff count and going through the added layer of human resources training, organizations can invest in automated systems and knowledge production to empower customers to self-serve.
Zooming into a major contextual factor – the COVID-19 pandemic – and its imperatives for social distancing and remote systems, it is safe to assert that a neglect of self-service is a ticking time bomb. Looking at cost considerations, Gartner’s 2019 Customer Service and Support Leader poll revealed that while platforms such as phone, live chat and email averaged about $8.01 per contact, self-service platforms such as websites and mobile applications averaged about $0.10 per contact.
“While platforms such as phone, live chat and email averaged about $8.01 per contact, self-service platforms such as websites and mobile applications averaged about $0.10 per contact.”
While these speak to the necessity and growing prevalence of self-service, there is a need to address the steps organizations can take to establish and leverage self-service in their operations and customer experience strategies. Here is a deep-dive into self-service from the point-of-view of organizational systems that can be put in place to drive it:
1. Establish a knowledge base
Software advice reports that 73% of customers who have questions about products or services from an organization go to the internet first to find answers themselves. The length of time and the ease there is for the customer to find the answer they seek presents an actionable point for an organization looking to offer a good customer experience. This is where knowledge bases come in. They are typically web pages that respond to service questions, provide information to guide a customer through their decision making, and help customers resolve common roadblocks they might encounter. They should be organized, simple, easily navigable and action-oriented. They could include how-to posts, user guides, FAQs, troubleshooting tips, and more. Notably, knowledge bases are not one-off systems. They should stay updated when new features and new lines of queries apply, highlight the most demanded responses and information for better accessibility, and for the purpose of improvement, include rating systems to track their ongoing usefulness to customers.
2. Adopt tutorials and training
For products with complex processes and organizations with service-heavy products, tutorials and trainings for customers prove to be valuable. Just in the same light that service staff in organizations often undergo trainings around the 360-degree aspect of products, self-serving customers should receive applicable trainings as well. In fact, when generated and compiled, these trainings can be utilized by both employees and customers. Pre-recorded video trainings, sometimes substituted with screenshots, are effective additions to knowledge bases, and they can be separated into simple tutorials for unique tasks and features. They can be disseminated in a wide array of forms such as through onboarding emails, newsletters, articles and FAQs. The visual depiction these offer help speed up customer knowledge on how to self-serve. As systems evolve, they should be updated, tailored to customer requests and search activities, and optimized for both web and mobile.
3. Integrate automated and human solutions
Automation saves everyone time, customers, customer service agents all inclusive. The most prevalent automated system for customer support tends to be chatbots, although more traditional channels such as phones and emails can be automated, the former through interactive voice responses, for instance. As digital technologies advance, organizations have to improve their application of machine learning and sentiment analysis to create more flexible AI support. However, this does not automatically supplant human agent support, at least not for the time being. Instead, self-service support models where technology can be applied to save time and effort while seamless escalation to human agents for certain issues or queries is incorporated will be most effective. A 2019 Forrester report predicted an emergence of backlashes against chatbots; the main underpinning factor behind it being the lack of effective chat-bot to live-agent deployments for 60% of web chat sessions.
High-functioning organizations have taken on a new role, which improves their overall efficiency and helps them scale delivery: the role to help customers help themselves. With content unification and knowledge management, digital transformation, continuous improvement, and consistent relevance, organizations stand to benefit from the gains of self-service in their customer experience management. Even at this, the balance between humanization and digitization must be assured. As such, empathy and user-friendliness must remain non-negotiable.
