Top Benefits Of Adopting Self-Service In Telecom Industry

Current Situation Of Self-service In Telecom 

If we talk about the current telecom customer satisfaction, there are a lot of improvements that can be made. As per an Index for customer satisfaction, ISPs are ranked lowest in customer satisfaction.

Many researchers believe the main reason for this could be the lack of competition compared to other markets.

But with the digital era, telecom companies can no longer ignore customer experience as it has become one of the key differentiators.

Apart from new consumer offerings and relevant content, there is a dire need to sustain the right channels of communication that will act as the key elements to market the offerings, enhancing customer experience.

Why is Self Service in Telecom more important than ever now?

The Covid-19 pandemic dramatically transformed the telecom industry with the massive shift towards virtual means of communication. The reliance on the internet and broadband has been rising since then.

The way work models have shifted, and newer ways of communication have emerged, the industry is expected to adapt to new customer behaviors.

The industry relies heavily on rapidly changing customer behaviors for its growth, and here is why self-service in the telecommunication industry is critical now.

1. Rising need for digital customer service 

Customers are shifting from field services to remote visual assistance to online support as their attention spans decline.

Telecom operators who cannot keep up with the rising need for digital customer experience would be left behind, and self-care telecom is the only way to future-proof customer service against the crisis. 

2. Rising need for multi-channel communication

Different customers use different channels for customer service. Even a single customer is not limited to a particular channel for communication. Instead, customers, today expect companies to be available at their preferred channel and expect consistent experiences as customers switch touchpoints.

To this end, self-care telecom should be powered with uniform and adequate information to gain customer trust with robust digital and assisted channels. 

Top 4 benefits of self-service in Telecom

Gone are the days when organizations used to win customers based on the price and quality of the product. Now successful organizations are the ones that provide a better customer experience. 

Over 85% of US customers expect companies to have an online self-service support portal. Below is a list of the top 4 benefits of self-service in telecom

1. Higher CSAT and NPS scores

• With an accessible online platform for self-service, customers need not spend time waiting for agents to connect with them and can solve issues much faster independently. This results in improved customer satisfaction and customers returning to the company’s services. 
• Good customer experiences stay with customers and extend to others through word of mouth. With a self-care telecom, customers can rely on their service providers for assistance at any time of the day. This results in increased brand loyalty and increased Net promoter score(NPS). 

2. Higher Operational excellence with reduced support costs

• Self-service empowers customers to help themselves with their basic queries, which directly reduces repetitive support tickets for agents. Support teams can take up more critical queries that need their skills, preventing monotony from answering repetitive questions and leading to improved agent engagement. 
• Effective self-service solutions mean that there is no need to hire extra contact center employees, resulting in less investment in new personnel and improved operational excellence with reduced support costs.

3. Omnichannel customer experience

• A customer might prefer one point of contact over the other. They might prefer a website over an app and may choose to switch between different customer service channels.
• Selfcare in the telecom industry increases customer satisfaction through omnichannel experience. Omnichannel experience means giving customers what they are looking for in the channel of their choice.

4. Higher First Contact Resolution(FCR)

• With well-prepared self-service guides, be it in the form of articles or FAQs, customers can find the relevant information faster to troubleshoot their problems. This results in increased first call resolution rates at contact centers.  
• With self-care telecom providing 24/7 customer support, a customer who was previously unwilling to call to solve issues can easily browse at their leisure to solve any query independently.

How can Knowmax help enable self-service in Telecom? 

A robust self-service strategy needs the backing of a unified and omnichannel Knowledge base to deliver high-quality customer service across touchpoints. A Knowledge management solution like Knowmax is a no-code DIY (do it yourself) platform that can help telecom operators create, curate, manage and disseminate knowledge for assisted and self-service channels.

Learn how Knowmax capabilities can help enable self-service in Telecom.

1. An intuitive platform to create self-help articles and FAQs

• Reading an article guide or FAQ is preferable to customers than getting on a call with agents. While creating a customer service Knowledge base articles and FAQs is a good start, it is vital to ensure that the right information is accessible to the customers at the right time. 
• With an intuitive Knowledge Management platform like Knowmax, customers can access the relevant information from an information pool with the help of natural language processing(NLP) that understands the search intent to deliver relevant results. 
• With the Knowmax Knowledge management solution, different versions of the articles can be created and disseminated to assisted and digital channels simultaneously, helping keep self-care telecom content updated and relevant.    

2. Guided workflows to power chatbots

• Some issues cannot be resolved with text articles alone, and customers require guided instructions to arrive at the solution. For such situations, a decision tree workflow helps customers troubleshoot problems independently with the help of step-by-step instructions. 
• With Knowmax decision tree software, cognitive decision trees can be created from scratch without the need for any code and can be integrated with backend Application Programming Interface(APIs) to personalize customer experiences and help them reach faster to the resolution stage.
• These decision trees can be disseminated to power chatbots and help customers with convenient clickable options to fix issues instantly and with accuracy.

3. Visual guides for accurate troubleshooting 

• Helping customers with visual aids avoid confusion and help them to identify the root cause of the problems. 
• With the Knowmax KM solution, visual device guides can be created as a standalone module to enable self-service in telecom. Relevant visuals can also be attached to the articles and workflows. 
• With an in-built ready repository of 18000+ visual guides for Telecom, Knowmax help
• s enable telecom operators to supercharge customer service through efficient self-service.  

4. Micro-segmented analytics to measure the engagement 

• To enable efficient self-service in Telecom, it is vital to ensure the accuracy and relevance of content in time as the number of new information increases.
• Knowmax helps enable efficient self-care telecom with the help of micro-segmented analytics to track and measure the engagement and gain actionable insights on how customers engage with content through self-service channels. This helps optimize the customer service knowledge base to keep self-service content updated and relevant. 

Conclusion

Self-service is one way of providing power and options to customers to solve their problems on their own in less time. Thus, it can help offer better and faster service to customers while reducing operational costs.

To provide digital support at all times without hiring additional agents, self-service becomes a great user-friendly tool. Self-service acts as the new customer agent, and it can serve not only the customers but also the employees.