Customer Self-Service: What It Is, Importance & Best Practices

Your self-service channels are an important first line of defense in customer support. When a customer needs help recovering an online account or an update on their order status, they often turn to your help center, customer portal, or community before reaching out directly. And it’s been shown to help, solving an estimated 54% of customer issues, on average, at organizations that use self-service.

When it comes to setting up and maintaining customer self-service channels, here’s what every service leader needs to know, and how customer self-service software can help.

• What is customer self-service?
• Why is customer self-service important?
• Benefits of customer self-service
• Types of customer self-service channels and how to optimize them
• 8 customer self-service best practices
• Customer self-service examples
• How to measure success of your self-service program
• Use automation and AI for next-level customer self-service
• Why you should connect customer self–service to your CRM
• Create the best self-service channels
• FAQs

Customer self-service offers a fast and easy way for customers to find answers to simple questions about products, services, and policies on their own. Key self-service channels include your help center, customer portal, and customer community.

Self-service channels are a win-win for customers and companies. Customers like them because they provide convenience, flexibility, and always-on support. In fact, 61% of customers would rather use self-service channels for simple matters.

At the same time, customers don’t need to reach out through high-touch, high-cost channels, like your call center. On average, self-service channels solve an estimated 54% of customer issues at organizations that use it. That means agents get time back to focus on more strategic work.

Customer self-service is important because it lets customers find answers and resolve issues quickly and independently, leading to higher satisfaction and loyalty.

By reducing the need for direct support, self-service also helps businesses lower operational costs and free up support teams to focus on high-value cases.

Customer self-service offers numerous advantages for both businesses and customers.

For customers, it provides 24/7 access to information and support, ensuring they can get help whenever they need it. For businesses, it reduces support costs, improves efficiency, and enhances the overall customer experience by offering quick and convenient solutions. Additionally, self-service tools can gather valuable data on customer needs and behaviors, helping businesses refine their products and services.

Your help center, customer portal, and customer community all need a different strategy. Consider these best practices.

Help Center

A great start is to repurpose existing knowledge base articles for common requests. Topics may include how to update payment information or set up device verification. Update the language to put the steps into the customer’s perspective, rather than the service rep’s.

As you build up your knowledge base, go a step beyond and consider how it might be consumed by artificial intelligence technology, either now or in the future. Knowledge bases are among the best sources of information about your company and products. That makes your knowledge base articles great information for AI to cull from when answering customer questions.

In AI technology, using a particular set of documents or data as the foundation for the AI responses is called “grounding.” And grounding on your knowledge base makes AI-generated content more specific to your organization and more useful to your customers. AI agents built with Agentforce, for example, can provide accurate answers to questions from users based on information from relevant knowledge articles and uploaded files. If this is all quite new to you, we’ve got some simple tips you can follow to prepare your knowledge base for AI grounding.

You’ll also want to optimize your help center content for search to ensure that it gets enough traffic. Work with your search engine optimization (SEO) team to identify top keywords. For example, a local food delivery service may find that the phrase “how do food delivery services work?” is very popular. They then update relevant knowledge articles with this phrase to boost traffic.

Beyond SEO, make sure to tag your help center content for searchability on your site. Customers get frustrated when they type a query into your search bar only to come up with an error message.

While it’s common to keep some content public, there are benefits to authenticated help centers. Customers log in for more personalized support. You can use your data to share relevant resources. You can also gather more data about your customers based on the content they review. This will improve targeting and ensure customers receive a personalized experience.

It’s also important to stay ahead of the curve for future customer requests. Watch emerging search trends, like the value of setting up two-factor authentication on an online account. Review your contact center analytics to uncover new patterns and recurring requests across support channels as well.

Be sure to give your help center a spring cleaning. Retire outdated knowledge base articles and redirect them to more relevant, up-to-date resources.

Remember to apply AI agents to your help center for more support and to streamline service. Agents surface the right content to customers, deflecting cases and reducing service rep burnout in the process.

Customer Portal

Customer portals take self-service a step further. Authenticated customer portals use customer data for a more relevant and personalized experience. When customers log in, they gain access to personalized content to resolve issues and complete actions on their own terms, from anywhere.

For the best experience, keep personal information in a secure account page. This should only be accessible after the user has logged in. Enable multifactor authentication for an added layer of security. Use AI to analyze search behaviors to continuously tailor the experience for customers. Make it easy for customers to access a record of purchased products or services and display relevant articles and topics.

Be sure to clearly label and tag every piece of content. Add links to other support channels and include a “contact us” form in your portal’s footer.

Customer Community

Customer communities build camaraderie and collaboration. They are a place for customers to come together to discuss product capabilities and offer peer-to-peer support. Salesforce's Serviceblazer Community on Slack is a great way for service pros to collaborate on best practices and get their questions answered by peers in real-time.

One word is synonymous with successful customer communities: engagement. To make your customer community more engaging, gamify your approach. Incentivize customers to take part in discussions by showing a leaderboard. Customers receive points for answering questions. As points accumulate, the customer moves up the leaderboard. Alternatively, identify top contributors to your community. You might offer badges for accomplishments that customers can show off on their profiles. For example, if a customer answers five questions, they receive a badge. Trailhead is an example of how Salesforce has gamified product and skill learning for its customers and community.

Don’t keep your customer service team on the sidelines. Instead, have them contribute to the conversation. Encourage service reps to share expertise, ask questions, and join in on discussions. Track what customers are saying and jump in if there are issues. After all, communities help businesses surface trends and potential concerns.

Some brands may choose to have discussion threads publicly available for key topics. In these cases, add SEO keywords and tags so that search engines index your community.

1. Keep it simple: Ensure your self-service tools are easy to navigate and understand. Use clear, concise language and intuitive design.
2. Provide comprehensive content: Offer a wide range of resources, including FAQs, how-to guides, and video tutorials, to cover all common customer questions.
3. Integrate with CRM: Connect your self-service tools to your CRM to personalize the experience and provide consistent information.
4. Provide regular updates: Keep your self-service content up-to-date with the latest information and product changes.
5. Gather feedback: Regularly collect and act on customer feedback to improve the self-service experience.
6. Offer multiple channels: Provide various self-service options, such as AI agents, forums, and knowledge bases, to cater to different customer preferences.
7. Train your team: Ensure your support team is well-versed in the self-service tools so they can assist customers effectively if needed.
8. Monitor usage: Track how customers use self-service tools to identify popular topics and areas for improvement.

1. E-Commerce retailer: An online clothing store offers a self-service portal where customers can track their orders, view shipping statuses, and initiate returns. The portal also includes a chatbot that answers common questions about sizing, care instructions, and store policies, ensuring customers can find the information they need quickly and easily.
2. Telecom company: A telecommunications provider has an interactive troubleshooting guide on their website. Customers can follow step-by-step instructions to diagnose and fix common issues with their internet or phone service. The guide is complemented by a video tutorial series that demonstrates how to set up and use various devices, reducing the need for customer service calls.
3. Banking app: A mobile banking app includes a robust self-service feature that allows customers to check their balances, transfer funds, and pay bills without needing to visit a branch or call customer service. The app also has a built-in chatbot that can help with more complex tasks, such as setting up automatic payments or resolving account discrepancies.
4. Software company: A software company provides an extensive online knowledge base with detailed articles and FAQs. Customers can search for solutions to common technical issues, learn how to use different features, and access user guides. The company also has a community forum where users can share tips and best practices, fostering a collaborative environment and reducing the need for direct support.

To measure how successful your self-service program is, consider some of these key metrics:

• Customer satisfaction (CSAT): Use customer satisfaction surveys to gauge how satisfied customers are with your self-service tools.
• Resolution rate: Measure the percentage of issues that have been resolved through self-service, without the need for service rep intervention.
• First Contact Resolution (FCR): Monitor the rate at which issues are resolved on the first attempt, which can indicate how effective your self-service content is.
• Support ticket volume: Compare the volume of support tickets you receive before and after implementing self-service so you can see the reduction in workload.

Customer service automation software and AI make self-service channels more intuitive for customers. Automated workflows guide customers through step-by-step directions to complete an action. Service administrators can create these simple, customer service automated workflows to streamline time-consuming processes. On the back end, AI reveals key insights and recommendations, populates information, and triggers processes.

For example, if a customer wants to report a stolen credit card, the steps for doing so appear on the customer’s screen. The steps walk the customer through how to file a report and put a hold on their account.

To keep things simple, use the same automated workflows that service reps follow to help your customers. Be sure to update language so that the steps are from the customer’s perspective.

You can embed AI agents built with Agentforce into your self-service channels for customers to have an extra option for personalized support. More organizations are using them than ever before. In fact, 73% of service organizations now provide AI assistance. And 83% of service decision makers plan to increase AI investment next year.

AI agents offer a first line of communication with your customers. When an agent is unable to answer, it collects qualifying data to automatically escalate the case to a service rep within the guardrails your business has set.. The rep is able to jump into the same chat message and pick up where the agent left off to work one-on-one with the customer and resolve the issue.

While self-service channels are often the first step for customers, there’s always a chance customers might need more help. As they move to other channels, such as phone support, a connected experience is key. When data is available on a single screen, the service rep picks up where the customer left off. They can review past articles and chat history. This creates a seamless experience for the customer, who doesn’t have to repeat information.

To gain a complete view of your data, connect self-service channels with your customer relationship management (CRM) platform. This will give your teams a complete view of your customers across their interactions on various channels. Access to this data helps your team create consistent experiences, no matter how the customer reaches out. The benefit is that you nurture loyalty, from onboarding to support.

Another benefit is that you can incorporate knowledge articles and workflows into customer-facing materials on your self-service channels. This saves your team from having to create brand-new content and also saves on setup time and admin costs as you repurpose existing processes.

Self-service channels are also important to your organization’s broader business strategy. Data from your self-service channels can reveal patterns in recurring requests. If you use self-service channels well, you gain firsthand insight into what customers are saying about your product or service — data you can use to make improvements.

With self-service channels, customers get fast answers to their questions. Businesses deflect more cases while improving customer satisfaction. Service reps are able to stay focused on more strategic work rather than on routine requests. That’s the secret to delivering excellent customer service at scale, anytime, anywhere.

What is customer self-service software?

Customer self-service software is a digital tool that allows customers to find answers and resolve issues independently. It includes features like online knowledge bases, FAQs, and AI agents.

Why do customers like using self-service?

Customers prefer self-service because it offers convenience, speed, and control. They can get instant answers and handle issues privately.

Why should you connect customer self-service to your CRM?

Connecting self-service to your CRM ensures personalized and consistent support. It also provides valuable analytics and reduces the workload on support teams.