Learn More About Customer Self-Service Software
What is Customer Self-Service Software?
A complete customer service experience extends into all aspects of a business, from the sales team’s early phone calls to the follow-up emails after service usage. If a company has a physical store, customer interactions and even decorations play a hand in customer satisfaction. This also applies to a company’s live chat agents and website.
Ideally, with customer self-service software, a company could offer in-the-moment human solutions to inquiries into its business, such as answers to questions and product suggestions, across timezones and places. Not only is this software a scalable service, but it can also identify similar issues and handle them, reducing the demand on the company’s agents.
There is still no substitute for compassionate, well-informed service agents that help address customers’ most pressing issues. With that being said, customer support technologies such as web self-service tools are bringing brands and their customers closer together. These tools emulate a customer service agent’s interactions and empower visitors with the tools they need to learn, troubleshoot, and purchase the company’s offerings on their devices. Then, when it matters most, the contact center agents can get involved and elevate the customer experience.
What Types of Customer Self-Service Software Exist?
While functionally similar, different audiences require content catered to their level of expertise. Business clients require resources that can resolve technical issues that impact an entire business process or a department. Given the needs of different customer bases, self-service tools must be customizable to the client’s problems. The types of customer self-service software are:
Business-to-consumer (B2C) customer self-service software
B2C customer self-service software is the most common form of this solution. Its function is to provide accessible, comprehensive, instructive, and understandable content to empower customers to resolve problems without a customer support representative.
Business-to-business B2B customer self-service software
Business-to-business (B2B) facing customer self-service software helps businesses resolve issues that require much greater technical know-how. This requires the customer self-service tool’s resources to be tailored to a technically literate audience. The types of resources found in this service are FAQ pages, an online community, a ticketing system, getting started guides, instructional videos, tutorials, a knowledge base, user manuals, help documentation, error reporting, and a robust search function.
What are the Common Features of Customer Self-Service Software?
The applications in this category offer unique toolkits for developing and implementing self-service components into a company’s online operations. The following are some common customer self-service features and how they benefit a business:
Customer knowledge base: Predictive responses to customer queries are perhaps the core benefit of self-service channels. When a company’s website visitors want to inquire about product specifications or find how-to videos related to their purchase, the customer self-service software can direct them to the best solution. This may entail integrating the tool with the company’s existing knowledge management software or producing new knowledge base articles on common issues or queries. To curate the best answers for the customer self-service portal, the company can build a customer-facing knowledge base or import answers directly from their internal knowledge base. The user can modify their responses or redirect flows depending on the chosen product. This ensures only specified details are made available in the knowledge management process, or specific pages of the company’s knowledge management solutions are accessible to public visitors.
Support desk routing: The underlying goal of these guided customer portals is to reduce the need or demand for a live support team at different points in the customer journey. Customer service employees are irreplaceable for high-stakes sales moments or more urgent inquiries, like serious technical difficulties. Customer self-service tools can integrate with other customer support software, such as help desk software, so support agents can intervene when the situation calls for it or at least receive tickets that they respond to at their convenience. Companies can set up web self-service platforms to ping the correct employees at different experience points and properly route sessions to agents that can offer continued assistance.
Contextual guidance: With a customer self-service tool, a customer can get serviced without going to a physical location or getting support on the phone. This can include whether they want to upgrade to a new feature, change their contact information, or lodge a complaint about the service. A customer self-service tool can consist of quick links and commands that help visitors change their service or personal information with a few easy clicks. Once their settings are updated, users can continue shopping. Customer self-service software will often integrate with e-commerce platforms. The platform’s visitors can conveniently purchase additional goods or services from their devices once they have the information or correct details in their profile.
Analytics: Customer self-service tools not only assist customers faster but provides an overview of new customer interactions, behavior, and preferences. Reporting and analytics tools within these self-service tools can track this valuable data from all angles and provide high-level insights into the company’s website performance and customer relationships. Suppose specific questions are being asked far more often than others. It may mean that certain product features are confusing or the company is not being transparent enough about particular processes. In other cases, you may find that certain web pages generate more questions than others. These insights are an added benefit of this software and can translate to an optimized approach and increased return on investment (ROI).
What are the Benefits of Customer Self-Service Software?
Customer self-service software enhances a customer’s online journey with informational, interactive portals that visitors can navigate without assistance. Customer self-service software fills the gaps real-life employees can’t reach, giving people the details and results they are looking for when visiting a company’s website without human intervention.
Scalability: Traditional self-service portals are limited by the bandwidth of the server it is hosted on. Unlike traditional customer service methods, customer self-service software is not limited due to bandwidth nor the number of available customer service representatives (CSRs) and business hours.
Resource allocation: Readily available and easy-to-understand instructions can address most of the common questions customers would typically bring to customer support teams. With customers empowered to resolve their problems on their own, CSRs can focus on more complex technical issues.
Integration: This product complements existing software like live chat, help desk, etc., for optimal service and support. Self-service instruments fill service gaps with ease by providing real-time support.
Analytics: Customers that repeatedly use this service can provide insight into what kinds of issues different personas face. Based on behavior patterns, the software can help provide intelligent suggestions on products and content based on issues, history, or queries.
Support cost reduction: Companies can reduce headcount and improve workflow with many simple issues resolved through customer self-service software.
Who Uses Customer Self-Service Software?
All business types and sizes use customer self-service software. Since its primary goal is to empower customers to resolve their issues using self-service resources, companies purchase this software to downsize or streamline their customer service departments.
Customer service teams: Customer service departments use self-service software to complement or substitute their existing customer service infrastructure. Self-service resources like a knowledge base could efficiently address the simpler problems typically voiced to CSRs. Self-service software is often compatible with other support software (help desk and live chat) and is purchased to fill a void in their service infrastructure.
Sales teams: Sales teams can use customer self-service software analytics to discover pain points during the customer journey or onboarding process. Self-service tools can also supplement the sales process by allowing the customer to complete their purchase without involvement from a salesperson.
Product managers or engineers: Product managers and engineers are the best sources for knowledge base content about complex customer service problems because they are the subject matter experts. For B2B customer service, there is the risk of a significant error impacting the entire business. These professionals can take a proactive approach and create a robust knowledge base library to act as a preventative measure.
Challenges with Customer Self-Service Software
Customer self-service solutions can come with their own set of challenges, including:
Search engine optimization (SEO): Most customers indirectly come across self-service knowledge through an online search via google.com or bing.com. A knowledge base will not be as effective if customers can only find it through the company’s website.
Tagging: Self-service content needs to tag terms appropriately according to the user: a layperson or subject expert. Consumers will not be able to navigate the internal search engine if the content is mislabeled.
Information architecture: A robust library needs a knowledge base and an intuitively organized information structure. For example, the solution to a login problem can be a hyperlink on a webpage instead of being within the internal search engine. Having well-written instructions and how-to instructional videos are not helpful if they are sequestered on a hard-to-reach web page.
User experience: How the website is designed is equally important because a customer should be using existing knowledge to navigate a website instead of learning a new web page format and the desired solution to their issue.
How to Buy Customer Self-Service Software
When choosing the customer self-service software that is right for a business, companies need to consider their specific needs. First, buyers should evaluate the need for social customer self-service software and determine what functionality will most benefit their business.
Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Customer Self-Service Software
Businesses need to address some initial questions to determine the correct tool to meet their business needs. These include:
- Is the customer base B2C or B2B?
- Can the software’s data analytics help the company better understand its customers’ needs?
- Will the software be used for technical or service support?
- What customer service gap will this software fill?
- Will this software make the company’s department more efficient?
Compare Customer Self-Service Products
Create a long list
Evaluating customer self-service software vendors should start with a long list, which will help determine whether or not a given solution is a good fit. Businesses can create a broad list of tools that align with their goals with a long list. To level the playing field, the company needs to ask each seller the same set of questions.
Create a short list
The next step is to whittle down the long list. Through pointed questions, demos, and trials, buyers can go from a long list to a short one. Although this will differ for each business and use case, having three to five products on the short list is typically a good choice. With this list in hand, businesses can produce a matrix to compare the features and pricing of the various solutions.
Conduct demos
The user should demo each solution on the short list with the same use case and datasets to ensure the comparison is thoroughgoing. This will allow businesses to evaluate like for like and see how each vendor stacks up against the competition.
Selection of Customer Self-Service Software
Choose a selection team
Before getting started, it's crucial to create a winning team that will work together throughout the entire process, from identifying pain points to implementing the customer self-service tool. The software selection team should consist of organization members who have the right interest, skills, and time to participate in this process. A good starting point is to aim for three to five people who fill roles such as the primary decision maker, project manager, process owner, system owner, staffing subject matter expert, and a technical lead, IT administrator, or security administrator. The vendor selection team may be smaller in small-scale companies, with participants multitasking and taking on more responsibilities.
Negotiation
Before signing a contract, buyers should negotiate for the best price and ask about any discounts for which their business may qualify. This is also the time to discuss implementation and onboarding services and payment plans.
Final decision
After this stage, and before going all in, it is recommended to roll out a test run or pilot program to test adoption with a small sample size of users. If the tool is well used and received, the buyer can be confident that the selection was correct. If not, it might be time to go back to the drawing board.
Customer Self-Service Software Trends
The following technology trends are relevant to customer self-service software, with many products offering features or integrating with tools that fall into these categories.
Artificial intelligence (AI): AI pervades more industries year after year, and there is no end in sight to this technology’s influence or impact. It is a key component in the rising popularity of automated customer service and a central characteristic of several products in this category. With artificial intelligence software, support teams can cultivate smart response flows that place the most relevant content or product suggestions in front of customers based on historical data and predictions. With intelligent retail assistants and customer support tools, businesses can expect to see AI integrated into the in-person customer experience just as it has in mobile self-service solutions and other digital interactions. When researching customer self-service product options in this category, companies can watch for mentions of AI and read how this trend could benefit their support strategy.
Conversational support technology: This technology is tied to the rise of AI, helping brands identify and capitalize on sales opportunities without human involvement. Omnichannel support can be instrumentalized for an improved self-service experience.
Conversational marketing software monitors activity on company websites and social media profiles, launching conversations with visitors, including personalized product recommendations, answers to specific questions, and redirects to support agents or sales representatives on live chat for closing deals. The same technology that suggests content or products within web self-service platforms is used to initiate these conversations and provide valuable answers to customer questions at pivotal shopping moments.
Conversational support software is very similar in that it supports customer interactions by organizing communications into a unified conversation rather than disparate messages from multiple channels. Having all communications compiled into a single timeline of customer engagement can tailor the customer self-service experience based on their history. When integrated with AI technologies, customer self-service software can anticipate further customer needs based on how other similar customers have requested assistance.
Both conversational marketing software, conversational support software, and customer self-service software are related to chatbots software, which help automate conversations and redirect visitors at various points in the customer journey.
