What You Can Do In 1 Hour To Enhance Your Customer Self-Service

Customers have always preferred their interactions with service to be seamless and on their terms. But today, 63% of agents say it’s difficult to balance speed and quality with customer service. Customers are visiting FAQ pages more frequently, signing into customer portals regularly, and reaching out across all channels to navigate uncertainty during these times.

As your team works to make your customers feel supported and cared for, your customer self-service channels play a big role in handling a high contact volume.

Self-service is a powerful tool for customers at any time as they look for quick answers to common questions. According to our State of Service report, 78% of service pros say customers have increased their use of self-service in this new economy. To ensure your customer self-service channels make the biggest impact, what can you do quickly — even in just one hour — before your day begins?

Address frequently asked questions

Enabling your customers to help themselves increases value and decreases costs. Taking a few minutes to connect with your team will help you understand the most common customer questions to address in your help center.

1. Host a daily standup

Every week there may be new questions being asked by your customers. Round up your team and gather commonly asked customer questions and how they resolve them.

2. Create a collaboration document

Encourage agents to use simple collaboration tools they can update on the fly with frequent customer requests. With a single source of truth, agents can record how they resolve issues to help colleagues with similar cases.

3. Update your help center

Use your list of frequently asked questions to create content in your help center, such as updates on delayed orders or refund information for a service. If it makes sense for your organization, consider a dedicated section on your help center with featured articles specific to their issue. For example, Pearson updated its home page with information about delays due to COVID-19, directing people to the company’s self-service options.

Make simple updates to your messaging

Reviewing and updating messaging on your customer self-service channels assures customers your organization is sensitive to what they are going through.

1. Put relevant customer support information front and center

Consider creating a banner that appears at the top of your home page with specific instructions or with a direct link to your help center. Services like DoorDash have a clear message to let customers know their health and safety practices under COVID-19. If you have a customer portal, personalize the banner message at the top of the page as well.

And, offer the option for customers to easily opt-in to receive real-time notifications or updates, such as the timing of a late delivery or payment. For example, DoorDash offers customers to opt in for no-contact delivery.

2. Update your chatbot’s welcome message

Re-evaluate your chatbot’s welcome message with relevant support information. Consider updating or adding empathic words and address common requests, such as how to receive updates related to their orders. See how Sun Basket, a meal delivery service, uses automation to handle surges in its case volume.

3. Create an all-encompassing knowledge article

Keep agents aware of new and existing safety protocols and other internal changes with a knowledge article. Develop an external-facing version, as well, to keep customers informed.

Find ways to streamline workflows

Simplifying processes by making it easier to find information goes a long way for customers, increases efficiency and frees up agents from high-volume cases.

1. Create a support channel menu on your site

Regardless if it’s a crisis or not, customers don’t typically want to take time to search for support. With a simple widget or code snippet, you can integrate a fixed channel menu on your help center or website. This surfaces all available support channels to customers, or it can direct them to a web-to-case input form, a community, or a knowledge base.

2. Route cases with chatbots

Review your chatbot data to find specific keywords for easy answers, and be sure to have an FAQ database the chatbot can use to answer questions. For more sensitive topics, set up your chatbot to transfer to an agent. You can also integrate autonomous customer service, which uses emerging AI technology to interpret and understand customer questions and respond using natural language. This enables your chatbot to continuously enhance its performance through self-learning without human intervention.

3. Create guided processes

In your customer portal, you can automate specific processes for customers and free agents from high-volume calls. By integrating a workflow on your end, such as canceling an order, the automation process appears on their screen and walks customers through each step. This not only saves on cost, it increases productivity and efficiency. 

With just a few simple updates, you can ensure your customer self-service channels are working hard to help your customers find the answers they need quickly.