Customer Self-Service is a system that helps users to access information and perform mundane tasks without requiring the assistance of a customer support representative. You may not realize it, but every time you track a package on your favorite e-commerce store, change your password, or pay a bill without calling the company for assistance, you are performing a self-service task. With the advent of Covid-19, due to lack of workforce, it has become imperative for many businesses to have self-service options. Self-service is often done through a Support Center or a Knowledge Base software.
How does self-service help your omnichannel strategy?
With an Omnichannel approach comes the difficulty to manage, unify and scale different support channels like email, phone, live chat, social media, etc. It is challenging to make them available 24/7 and serve customers real-time.
The ideal solution to fill this gap is to incorporate self-service methods into your omnichannel customer service strategy by creating a knowledge repository and capturing the best practices and know-how. That is why businesses today opt for a help desk software platform that connects the dots between regular support touch points with Self-Service channels.
This post talks about various self-service options that can be integrated into your omnichannel support strategy to yield great results.
1. Knowledge Base
One of the most important Self-Service channels is Knowledge Base, where you get to educate your customers about your product and services through Articles and easy to follow manuals on various FAQs. Today the customers are smart enough to handle simple hiccups themselves and get instant help. A well-equipped knowledge base that gets improvised by regular feedback from the customers can go a long way to deflect tickets so you can focus on more complex customer problems. Having an omnichannel approach helps your service agents to relate common questions posed by the customers across various channels and build a better Knowledge Base.
2. AI Chatbots
AI and Machine learning technologies have enabled smart Self-Serve features like Chatbots, conversational IVRs, and virtual agents that interact with your customers with intelligence. AI Chatbots are present 24/7 to look after your customers. In-app chatbots can pop up to say hello, suggest new features in live chat, or trigger helpful messages when a customer seems stuck. These are some of the many ways through which chatbots can help you provide proactive omnichannel support.
Chatbots work with the following mechanism:
- Data Collection & Classification – To build chatbots, you need data. Chatbots need to be trained. A good source for training chatbots is your knowledge base and FAQ sections.
- Resolution – Providing a solution to the customer if the information about the query is already accessible by the bot leading to customer satisfaction
- Routing – Never let the customer get frustrated by the lack of human interaction on certain questions that a bot can’t handle. An intelligent bot would route the issue at the right time with full context for live agents to work on.
- Feedback – Well built Chatbots always incorporate feedback from the customers. There is no good self-service without continuous feedback.
For a chatbot to fit into your omnichannel support process, it needs to be integrated effectively with other human supported channels and route questions to agents with all the context, wherever the bot confidence percentage is low.
3. Customer Self Service Portal
Customer Portal is another important but less talked about Self-Service Channel, which lets customers log in and track the complaints or issues raised by them in a very organized way. Imagine a situation where a customer reaches out to you via email or initiates a chat just to enquire about the progress on his previous request. This fails the very idea of effective omnichannel support. The Customer Portal is a vital piece of the Omnichannel Self-Service puzzle.
4. Community Forums
Sometimes it’s the customer who gets to utilize your product better for their business use-case. They become product experts over a period of time and also suggest feature improvements to the product. This brings us to the need for the next Self-Service Channel called Community Forums. This channel enables customers or your agents to interact and answer questions posted by other customers. Community Forums can facilitate good learning for businesses and give them insights on how to improve the product and address some common issues.
Having understood various Self-Service channels in detail, you now need a software that can provide you all of these as a single integrated setup. HappyFox help desk lets you build your complete Self-Service Support Center with Knowledge Base, Customer Portal, Community Forum, and integrate with Chatbots all within a single interface. Book a one-on-one demo with our product expert now.
