Updated On: May 22, 2024
40 mins read
Self-service is the practice of serving oneself without the need for additional help. Common examples of self-service are using an ATM or a self-fueling service in many countries.
However, with the sudden boom of e-commerce and the growth of digital innovations, almost all digital companies are resorting to self-service solutions.
With a broadened horizon in the present times, all kinds of industries rely on self-service platforms and technology with the rise of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. Great self-service comes with loads of advantages, adding new dimensions to what is possible when boosting customer experience.
Self-service has become a necessity for organizations today. They can effectively carry out various tasks quickly and don’t require human supervision. Customers widely rate self-service platforms highly because of the comfort they bring. Implementing self-service platforms also brings multiple benefits to organizations
Customers appreciate it when they can find answers to their problems independently. This results in a low bandwidth for the support needed and decreases the overall expense. If a customer can solve a problem without needing in-person assistance, it’s bound to save costs for them.
Ordinarily, customers are dependent on support agents for guidance and clarification. However, in a self-service, the customers can take control and look for solutions before connecting to customer support services. Customers love and appreciate self-service as it eliminates human reliance and dependence.
With drastic reductions in repetitive queries, complaints, or client questions, the team can focus on more priority work. Agent productivity rates are bound to shoot up when customers are self-serving as it reduces ticket volume. Implementing self-service software also reduces time redundancy and offers quick resolution saving time for consumers.
It could immensely boost productivity if a consumer can fix his laptop issues sitting from home without needing to submit it at a service center through a customer self-service portal.
The site traffic is bound to increase as more customers come on board and search more on their queries. Customers will also keep returning to refer to the knowledge base created, increasing the brand’s visibility!
Customers would rather tend to visit a self-service platform and solve their problems more frequently than depend on in-person assistance.
The organization must use knowledge management systems for self-service software to show its magic. A solid knowledge base must be built to take the benefits of self-service. A Knowledge Base is a searchable directory built upon years and years of information and updates for different products or services.
A knowledge base is a detailed directory containing all information, common complaints, doubts, or queries about the product/service. A good knowledge base is paramount to great self-service.
Today, self-service is implemented countless ways; smartphones have become an essential self-service tools and have given corporations a great platform to experiment with the customer experience with greater accessibility and reach.
Our Omnichannel Knowledge Management Platform, Knowmax, offers self-service modules with great features to set up a support page, train chatbots, and enhance in-app support to deflect volumes at a contact center. Six benefits of using Knowmax as your organization’s self service software:
Knowmax creates a single source of information and differentiates a service bringing omnichannel consistency. Being consistent and reliable builds trust in customers.
Smart auto-tagging increases the discoverability of information and effectively reduces agent costs to index new information. It also provides faster and more accurate resolution.
Information presentation is developed with the idea of actively helping users. Knowmax self-service platform delivers consistent and correct information on the first contact with faster navigation resulting in quick decisions.
Knowmax allows onboarding advisors faster with efficient knowledge tools. Our use cases show effective agent assistance reduces average handle time by up to 20%.
The layout and visual appeal of traditional office-style documents are transformed with Knowmax, and you can convert your traditional information items to actionable answers.
Knowmax offers accurate and improved chatbot interactions. It increases the first-time resolution and enables your chatbots to answer correctly every time.
Let’s go through some of the most common self-service software we come across daily.
Customer self-service software easily acknowledges customers’ requests and queries around the clock and offers solutions without involving a live agent. Customers can get answers to their questions and explore the knowledge base for further details during non-operational hours. This also allows them to bypass the calling queue and get their answer from your end at their own time and pace.
Self-service software significantly decreases customer service costs and wait times!
Smartphones have become an essential part of our lives. A mobile app or mobile website can prove vital as a self-service tools. A user-friendly app offering a seamless customer service experience is appreciated by users worldwide, regardless of the industry.
Live chatbots offer a unique customer experience. With the help of AI and a sturdy Knowledge Base, chatbots can answer customer queries within seconds. They can also help customers by answering their questions, assisting them, and even helping them with bookings, sales, and cancellations. Chatbots are a great way to show care toward customers and CX.
A kiosk can be a perfect self-service system for short, specific tasks, such as creating a token, finding an item in a physical store, or checking the price. Self-checkout kiosks are also used to help customers with checkout and payment.
The type of self-service varies according to the communication channels. The concept of self-service has been around for some time, and the exponential rise of AI has reduced the involvement of humans to the bare minimum; having said this, there’s still scope for immense growth, and we are only going to see unique ways of self-service. American Express found that more than 60% of consumers in the US prefer using automated self-service options for simple customer services tasks, such as through a website or mobile app.
Let’s take a look at how self-service works on different channels today.
IVRs are a robust and influential self-service channel. They are used extensively for quick updates and information to customers like emergency notifications, account balances, outstanding amounts, booking confirmations, etc.
A thorough and well-designed Knowledge Base Software with comprehensive content significantly improves employee satisfaction.
It helps reduce costs by resolving customer issues by providing a one-stop solution. A good Knowledge base for self-service is widely regarded as an excellent way to improve customer satisfaction.
Bots have grown leaps and bounds in self-service. They are interactive, programmable, and customizable to understand and respond to simple queries or perform minor tasks.
Bots significantly reduce support costs by handling these simple tasks and are available round the clock. With the rapid rise of machine learning and Artificial Intelligence, bots are being designed to handle complex tasks and situations.
Blogs are a tried and tested way to implement a self-service platform. Blogs can help educate customers about a specific issue or topic.
Blogs can drive customer engagement while increasing SEO rankings.
More than 300 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Effectively communicating with your customers through videos is a fun and engaging way to address customer queries and issues.
Self-service for mobiles is transforming rapidly with the advent of smartphones. Companies are investing more in quality applications to help customers become self-dependent and less reliant on support agents.
The number of smartphone users will be close to 4 billion in 2021. The numbers are expected to rise steeply in the coming years with better and distant technologies being invented. Self-service on Mobiles has seen a remarkable transformation. Where 15 years ago, one could have hardly imagined that it would be possible to shop, order food and transfer money on a cellphone.
Ordering food, booking reservation tables, booking flights, raising complaint tickets, and even buying a house are seamlessly possible with a smartphone today. Self-service through mobile is expected to improve with continuously evolving Machine Learning and better bandwidth.
Self-service websites have been around for a while, but companies keep innovating and experimenting by adding unique customer experiences. The extensive use of chatbots now is an excellent example of it. There has also been a shift towards self-service on mobiles, with an exponential rise in cell phone users worldwide.
Web self-services are commonly hosted on a company’s domain. They are implemented to tackle several tasks ranging from raising tickets, solving complaints/queries, and taking down appointments and bookings. Web self-services are not just limited to these tasks today but are also the backbone for smartphone self-services. They help host cellular self-service apps, store customer data, and allow organizations to experiment with existing self-service ways.
Integrating a sturdy and well-defined knowledge base allows customers to solve their queries and common complaints quickly. With regularly updated and rich content, companies can ensure a high CX. Knowledge bases for self-services are growing in demand for the right reasons. They are convenient for both companies and customers.
Knowledge base saves crucial resource time by deflecting repetitive queries from agents who can devote time to more priority tasks. They are effective in the long run and help organizations save a lot of resources and money.
A great self-service for customers should be able to solve the majority of their concerns and queries. It should be built on a thorough knowledge base that is updated regularly with more information and clarity on existing problems and concerns.
A well-built knowledge base could drastically reduce customer calls as the knowledge base becomes the primary source of the solution rather than the call support by support agents.
There is countless self-service software in the market today but let’s take a sneak peek into the most commonly used self-service tools.
Knowmax is an Omnichannel Knowledge Management Platform For Enterprises. It is an enterprise-grade knowledge management platform that helps find actionable information from an ever-increasing ocean of information.
The Zendesk Support Suite allows businesses to have natural conversations with customers without letting them feel what’s going on behind the scenes.
Zoho Desk is a flexible, Cloud-based help desk support software with Contextual AI that allows companies to provide a quality customer support experience.
Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer service software that enables businesses of any size to deliver customer support.
LiveAgent boasts the fastest chat widget on the market and is the most reviewed and #1-rated live chat software for SMBs in 2021. They have companies like BMW, Yamaha, Huawei, and Oxford University onboard.
Intercom is a Conversational Relationship Platform (CRP) to build better customer relationships through personalized, messenger-based experiences across the customer journey.
Service Hub brings all your customer service data and channels together in one place and helps scale companies’ support through automation and self-service.
Salesforce Service Cloud helps small businesses scale & grow while building loyalty with every customer interaction. It helps deliver a smarter, more personal customer experience on a flexible, complete service platform.
TeamSupport is a post-sale award-winning customer support software company built specifically for the unique needs of B2B (business-to-business) technology-enabled companies within the computer software, hardware, information technology services, and telecom industries.
Helpshift is a mobile-first customer service platform. It delivers a great in-app help experience for many of the world’s top mobile apps and games.
We could run out of stats to show the growth and importance of self-service software, but here are ten stats you must be aware of:
Self-service is a great way to automate customer service and experience. It dramatically reduces the workload of the support teams and allows them to be more productive on essential tasks and tickets.
There are many ways to implement self-service, but as we saw, implementing a good Knowledge Base System could truly enhance and reform a self-service system. We already saw how high the numbers speak about the growing influence of self-service. It is here to stay and will only keep growing in the coming years.
