Customer self-service is gradually taking center stage in the customer service planning of many companies. When a business successfully implements it, customers have fewer hurdles to jump through to resolve issues without waiting for a response from the customer service team.

Do you understand what is important for the growth of your business? Your customers. But not just customers. Your company’s success rests on the shoulders of satisfied customers. Customer loyalty grows when they are satisfied. Profitability is directly related to the level of customer satisfaction.

According to the Harvard Business Review, when people have a problem, 81% of them want to avoid calling customer service. Some of them are just born to figure out how things work, and they get great satisfaction from finding the root of a problem on their own. Others prefer not to involve a company representative in situations where they feel they can handle the problem on their own.

Customer service takes a lot of time, even if customers are ready to contact you. No one wants to wait, so it makes sense that they want to get help right away. And the sooner you reach out to them, the more likely they are to stay with you.

Fortunately, self-service capabilities can help you retain customers and meet their expectations in any of the above scenarios. In most cases, people only contact the help desk when they have already found answers to their questions using a self-service strategy.

So, what do you really need to know about customer self-service? In this article, we’ll provide you with everything you need to know about customer self-service, including examples, best practices, and tips to improve your own customer support strategies.

What is customer self-service?

The term “customer self-service” refers to an approach to customer service in which customers can easily access and manage their accounts, products and services on their own, without the assistance of customer service representatives.

According to a Microsoft study, 77% of consumers report having used a customer self-service portal. Creating such a portal for your business is a win-win for both the company and the consumer, as it simplifies the management of customer transactions and gives customers more control over the services they use.

Benefits of customer self-service software

Customer self-service is rapidly replacing traditional customer support methods. This is because people can find answers to their own problems faster and more conveniently using self-service customer tools. They can use your company’s resources to resolve issues without picking up the phone and waiting on hold.

Below are some of the many benefits companies love about customer self-service software:

• Lower maintenance costs
  With this solution, companies can help more customers for less money. The self-service model reduces the need for round-the-clock support representatives, so your business can save money. Spend less money on a smaller online support team that can handle unusual and complex customer issues, while customer self-service helps with routine tasks. Users can always refer to your self-service content to solve common and recurring problems.
• Availability 24/7/365
  With self-service tools, you can provide customers with answers to their questions and meet their needs faster. Your customer prefers to save time by using the company’s self-service resources rather than contacting and waiting for a response from support agents. In addition, your company’s support representatives may be available for phone calls only at certain times and days, while self-service channels will be available 24/7.
• The highest quality of service
  Resolving customer issues as soon as possible is crucial to maintaining a high quality of service. Clients prefer prompt solutions to their difficulties. The Holy Grail of customer service is self-service tools.
• As a result, sales are growing
  You have to provide your customers with a flawless customer experience. Most people would rather give up and find another service or product than wait for a response from a customer service agent. A whopping 53% of American adult online shoppers will give up and go elsewhere if they don’t find an immediate answer to their question.
• Happier and more productive support staff
  Not only do self-service portals make support work more fun and free up customer service teams to handle more complex requests, but they also reduce the number of repetitive questions in your queue, ensuring proactive customer service.

Why is customer self-service important?

People no longer have to rely on just a phone contact with a company’s support team to get a straight answer; those days are long gone. Most of your customers will look for answers on your website before contacting you for help. They don’t want to call customer service, stand in a long line, or ask the same question several times.

Self-service options usually meet modern customer service challenges. Modern customer service problems are usually solved with self-service capabilities. Dimension Data has found that the vast majority of customers (73%) prefer to contact a business through a self-service system rather than through social media, SMS, or chat. Companies have changed their tactics to meet the growing customer demand for self-service portals.

At the same time, it is not surprising that customers get frustrated when they cannot immediately find answers to their questions. Microsoft’s research showed that this problem is widespread: 74% of respondents said they get frustrated when looking for answers on their own.

Based on these findings, it is clear that businesses should make the self-service channel for customers a priority.

Effective tips for successful customer self-service

1. Pay attention to the most frequently asked questions

Identifying the top reasons why customers contact your support representative is one of the most important steps you can take to turn your self-service portal into a useful resource.

Do your customers experience problems when “logging in” or “shopping online”?

Do they contact customer support to get more information about payment methods?

Your self-service system should make it easy for customers to find answers to these questions. Add frequently asked questions to the main customer self-service page to make them easier to find.

2. Use screenshots, video, and audio whenever possible

Customer satisfaction is crucial for business. That’s why you should do everything you can to create a great self-service experience for your customers. And here’s one of the best self-service solutions you can use:

While detailed instructions are useful when assembling furniture, they can become a problem if the consumer has to constantly switch between the self-service portal and the product or application.

As the old saying goes, it’s better to see once than hear a hundred times. And yes, this is exactly the case.

Use a screenshot to illustrate to the consumer where they should click or how they can change the settings.

To take it a step further, you can create a video or webcast that explains the customer’s solution in detail and allows them to play it as much as they want.

3. Creating chatbots

A chatbot is an electronic support system with artificial intelligence designed to simulate a human-customer dialog. Answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs) about products or services are provided automatically in chat, and users can interact via websites, smartphone apps, or messengers such as Telegram, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, etc.

Thanks to machine learning algorithms, AI-powered chatbots allow customers to quickly find answers to their questions and live a happy life without having to communicate with support agents.

4. Community forums are a great help

A community forum where people can gather online to talk about anything, learn from each other, and make friends is another way to facilitate self-service. Many customers find this way of finding help to be preferable to constantly trying to call the help desk or contact a support agent.

Potential and current customers can get answers to their questions about a company’s or brand’s products and services in a lively and useful community forum.

Creating community forums that allow users to quickly find solutions is a self-service strategy aimed at improving customer experience and engagement. Branded community forums and community groups on social media are two examples of popular online discussion centers.

5. Knowledge base

Customers seeking to improve their customer experience with a particular product or service have convenient access to a self-service knowledge base. In addition to FAQs, the comprehensive knowledge base includes live chat help, tutorials, movies, and other learning materials. Using the articles in the knowledge base, customers can find answers to their questions without waiting for a live representative, allowing them to find their own solutions.

Companies can significantly reduce customer support costs and increase customer satisfaction by providing easy access to a self-service knowledge base.

6. Automatic call answering system

In the digital age, customer experience is paramount, and phone calls, along with the technology that supports them, continue to be vital.

A self-service scenario is when a customer contacts the support team, but does not speak to a live support representative. IVR technology, or interactive voice response, provides this form of independent customer assistance. By combining automated voice menus with IVR, frequently asked questions (FAQs) such as “What is your mailing address?” and “What is the status of my order?” can be answered with pre-recorded answers.

Building an exceptional customer self-service strategy

Finding a self-service area should be easy

Customer self-service options will be ineffective if users find it difficult to find and engage in self-service interactions. Customers are more likely to get frustrated and impatiently use other real-time support channels when they can’t find the information they need.

You can take the following steps to increase the visibility of your customer self-service feature:

Place your customer self-service portal prominently on the home page of your website. Depending on the graphical interface of your website, it can be located in the header, menu, or footer.

To improve customer self-service, increase the convenience, accessibility, and efficiency of user interaction with your website. You’ll need to do more research on the information you want them to see and understand at different stages of navigation.

Optimize your self-service customer support resources with search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. Some of your customers may be looking for self-service options on popular search engines like Google and Bing. When this happens, search engine optimization tactics help users find your resources in search results, making self-service solutions more accessible and contributing to increased customer satisfaction.

Leveraging customer search behavior is the key to success

If you want customers to use your self-service portal, it needs to be easy to navigate once they find it. It’s common sense, isn’t it?

It seems that this is not the case. In fact, even the most self-sufficient customers often complain about the search bar of self-service portals.

This is not so much due to the search bar itself as to the search results. Consumers are not interested in searching for solutions on dozens of pages. They are very picky. They need a quick response. So how do you make sure your customers don’t get angry?

Using tags to add keywords to pages is a great solution. Use “password” or “password reset” as tags for the password reset FAQ page. Thus, when a user enters “password reset” in the search bar, the corresponding result will be provided immediately, which will improve the self-service capabilities of your portal.

The information provided must always be up-to-date

All of your self-service resources, including FAQs, knowledge bases, and how-to videos, should provide accurate information from relevant resources to ensure excellent customer service.

The work on your self-service materials is never done. As a business owner, you’ll need to keep improving your customer self-service portal until it adequately meets their needs. Customers are more likely to stay with you if they receive excellent service.

Self-service materials should be constantly updated to reflect any changes made to product features or service offerings. If you do this, you won’t have to worry about customers getting lost or frustrated trying to find the information they need.

Clarity is important

Both the client and your business will benefit greatly if you learn to communicate effectively with your target audience in a language they understand.

Customers prefer self-service and are likely to become less informed and more frustrated if the articles in your knowledge base are filled with business jargon and unfamiliar phrases. To avoid misunderstandings and ensure optimal accessibility, use clear language at a reading level of at least 8th grade.

To help customers find the answers they need quickly and easily, without being overwhelmed by too much information, artificial intelligence can be a great tool for writing texts. To engage customers and improve their understanding of your products, create a well-structured knowledge base using everyday language.

Use eye-catching visuals

Interesting training materials are a great example of how to ensure a great customer experience and long-term product usage.

Users expect to receive an interesting, useful, and personalized experience when they seek support, as it makes the session interesting and keeps users engaged. Given customer behavior, data shows that information is better processed and retained when it is presented in an aesthetically pleasing way. So, making the user experience more enjoyable is crucial to sharing information that goes beyond product specifications.

A stronger user relationship with your product or service is the result of a well-written and engaging knowledge base that can help you retain customers for the long haul.

Create a customer self-service system with FuseBase

Customer self-service is revolutionizing the way businesses interact with their customers, and FuseBase (formerly Nimbus) is at the forefront of this transformative trend. With FuseBase, customers are able to find answers to their questions and solve problems on their own, without having to contact traditional customer support channels.

Instead of sending long emails to your support team, your customers can use the convenient self-service portal on FuseBase (formerly Nimbus).

With FuseBase (formerly Nimbus), you can create a comprehensive knowledge base and FAQ section to help your customers easily find answers to any questions they may have. You can also post all the information about your project on the FuseBase portal (all important documentation, project settings, and agreements) and make it easily accessible to your clients.

With just one link, your customer can access your well-structured self-service portal. Best of all, your customers don’t have to be FuseBase users to access your self-service portal. All they need is one link, which they can get from you.

What’s more, working with FuseBase (formerly Nimbus) is extremely beneficial for your team as our portal provides you with all the important analytics such as user activity on self-service portals, most visited FAQ sections, and more. All this information will help you make customer self-service even more efficient.

Conclusion.

It is important to understand that our customers often prefer self-service to more traditional channels of assistance. And we can understand them – high-quality self-service empowers customers and improves customer experience.

You, as well as your customers, will benefit greatly from this technology as it allows you to continue to work together and create an effective customer self-service strategy. Frequently asked questions (FAQs), online discussion forums, and knowledge bases are all examples of customer self-service. But don’t forget that its effectiveness depends on the clarity and ease of navigation.

Properly designed self-service support allows customers to easily solve their own problems, which makes your support team’s job easier and your customers happier.