Why Introduce Self-Service?

With so many benefits not only to the customer, but also to your Support Team, the question should really be ‘Why not introduce Self-Service’. Self-Service is not a new initiative, but certainly one that is catching the attention of many people we speak too these days and for good reason. Perhaps this is due to living in a world filled with opportunities for Self-Service or perhaps we are now ready to introduce Self-Service as we are confident in our Service and are looking for added value to the customer.

How does IT self-service help?

Whatever your reason, now is the time to consider how introducing Self-Service could benefit you …

One of the most popular benefits to introducing Self-Service is to reduce the number of phone calls to the Customer Support Desk…but why does this help you? … By reducing the number of phone calls, technicians can be freed up to focus on actually fixing the incidents and are therefore more productive. The telephone can be introduced as an emergency only line, meaning that customers in real need of your help are always attended to promptly and efficiently.

Customers can also check on their history and update their incidents and personal information – further reducing calls to your desk and improving security on customer personal information. Not to mention, giving customers access to a Knowledge Base within Self-Service may actually allow a customer to self-resolve their incident,increasing their satisfaction.

You can also keep your customers up to date by publishing major Incidents and Problems on the Self-Service portal, so that customers are aware of the issues you are experiencing. This may reduce the amount of calls you receive as customers are informed on current issues they may also be experiencing and can be kept up to date via the portal.

Another great benefit will be happier customers that can log their incident with you 24/7 on a device that suits them and are potentially able to self-resolve their incident 24 hours a day. Customers can keep themselves updated and provide feedback without the need for lengthy phone calls via a familiar company branded portal. Customers of course will always have the option to use the phone, but the choice to use Self-Service – perhaps due to an uplift in Service Level Agreement means that only customers who prefer the personal engagement or have a P1 issue will call the desk. This in turn will benefit you with improved customer surveys and word of mouth reputation between customers.

Where would any great initiative be without cost saving and this is no exception…Less calls to the desk means less technicians required to take the calls, thereby proving to management that more can be done with less. This also presents the opportunity to reallocate resources that have historically been taking the calls and put these resources to better use.

Why Self-Service and the bigger picture for Customer Satisfaction …

The peak-end rule suggests that customers judge their experiences largely based on their most recent impression – therefore if a customer’s last experience of you is largely positive from using Self-Service – this will be how you are remembered. The same will be said if the experience is negative …

Next week we bring you more on this topic and introduce ideas on how to improve your customer experience with effective Self-Service.