5 Ways Self Service Portal Improves Customer Experience

The revolution brought up by the digital transformation has caused businesses and customers to significantly change several working parameters. While there is an increasing number of customers, there is also an increase in the number of issues arriving at a company’s helpdesk. Because of this, customers have to face lengthy queues and call holds to get their concerned slots regarding an issue. Due to this, there are a significant fraction of customers wanting self-addressable and serviceable helpline portals. And it has been of huge success for businesses who were able to provide their customers with a strong self-service option. From any Helpdesk software having options of self-service, customers generally have high expectations regarding the quality and speed of service. And many factors affect the quality of service provided in your helpdesk. Let us see how Apptivo can help your business improve customer experience through self-service portals.

What is a self service portal?

A self service portal is a website that provides the information and resources that you need to help the users find the answers and to help resolve the issues. The two most common types of self service portals are customer self service and employee self service.

Importance of self service portal to improve customer experience

There are many reasons as to why the self service portal is important in order to improve the customer experience and to enhance the overall buying journey.

1.Enhanced productivity

Each brand should have a knowledge base that contains the resources that educate the customers to get started with the product/service. The Al driven chatbot is equally important as it helps to answer the customers queries irrespective of any day or any time. This will pave the way for reducing the need for employees, and they might concentrate on other important tasks. This further enhances the productivity of the team thereby promoting engagement and customer satisfaction.

2.Proactive support

Businesses find it difficult to staff employees for customer support 24*7, which at times is quite challenging and expensive. The support team should cater to the needs of the customers with different time zones and work schedules. There are many self service options available in order to provide round the clock support. Even if the agents are offline, customers can avail the information they need using the reliable source of knowledge resources available online.
The client portal can help deliver proactive support round the clock.

3.Provide personalized experiences

The customer self service portals give more time for the customer support agents to concentrate working one on one with the customers to solve complex problems. The attention given personally to the customers will make them feel special , which will further give them a personalized touch and will definitely enhance the overall customer experience.
Another modern way of enhancing the customer experience is by integrating the customer portal with the CRM and ticketing systems.

4.Increased customer satisfaction

Digital self service portals mostly eliminate the challenges that customers face while trying to gather support. The customers can simply go through the FAQ pages instead of surfing all over the web. Customers can always have access to the knowledge base or can consult a chatbot to get their issues resolved, which will thereby save a lot of time and effort. The customers will feel quite satisfied with the process.

5.Better engagement

The customer self service portals keep the customers and the agents as engaged as possible. The customers are provided with a lot of helpful information and resources such as Know-how tutorials, conceptual videos, knowledge base articles and much more which will drive in more engagement as it is an open space that talks and discusses about the company’s offerings.

6.Scalable support

The purpose and goal of any business is to grow over time. Growing the customer base actually means growing the business. The customer portals provide scalable solutions to the employees that removes the need for live agents and CSRs. Customer service portal is a self service functionality that is seen as the most robust and reliable resource for customers who are in need of assistance.

7.Security over the resources

Many digital self service portals offer a lot of security features that include encryption which makes it safe for the customers to upload and access files that contain sensitive information. Additional layer of security on top of the service portals will give the freedom to search for more information, download e-guides and access the tutorials with much ease.

Main Benefits of Self-Service Portals

Self-Service is Cost-Effective

When self-service portals function as an option for the customers to resolve their issues, it reduces the need for expert support from your side. It is because if the customers can solve their issues by themselves, then the number of tickets will decrease significantly and so does the amount of support needed. Therefore, self-service portals are cost-effective as they reduce the amount of support staff needed for a concerned category of customers that readily use self-service options and resolve their issues.

Self-Service Improves Agent Productivity

When most of the customers prefer using self-service portals and get their issues resolved by themselves, customers with greater issues are left with the expert agents and those agents have more time to solve their issues. In this way, agents get more time with their customers, understand bigger problems and solve the issues in less time. It yields better care for those who need it. Conclusively there is a significant improvement in the productivity of your expert staff.

Self-Service Increases Customer Skills

When solving any issue on a self-service portal of a helpdesk, a customer gets to know about a variety of tools. It increases their knowledge and skills regarding a certain issue. For this, portals also provide the necessary means and tools to a customer for tackling a certain issue. With its use, the clients’ knowledge and skills expand and they are made capable of solving future issues too. It is beneficial for the customers as for future references they would be able to get access to the other necessary tools for similar issues.

Self-Service Leverages Personalized Information

From saving time and helping clients locating relevant information, self-service portals also result in helping clients solve their issues effectively by using their past data and suggesting accurate tools and methods based on that. With the customers having the benefit of personalized accounts in the portal, they also get the experience of a managed record of the services and products they own and helpdesk features related to them.

Self-Service Increases Positive Customer Response

When customers get access to easy resolving of issues, necessary tools, and expert guidance, they are strengthened with it. And this experience yields a strong brand reputation by giving the customers the best of personalized services. Most of the qualities of a self-service portal that causes the customers to give positive responses include a consistent knowledge base, a simplified and user-friendly interface, and multiple contact channels.

Apart from this, there are several other benefits of self-service portals such as it boosts the site traffic and enriches social engagement of the platform. With Apptivo’s CRM & integrated helpdesk, you can give your customers improved experiences.

How Apptivo HelpDesk helps customers?

Apptivo HelpDesk lets you manage client requests and tickets, saving you a lot of time and provides a great experience to your customers. Along with that, it has a lot of other free benefits too and one of them is the customer portal. It provides utmost convenience to your clients by giving you the control to manage all your contact data in a single place. Using the customer portal, the customers get individual accounts assigned to them that helps in tracking the progress of their assignment or ticket. Customers can log in to their account and update the status of their ticket and give them access to the most relevant information based on their account data. It further results in the reduction of inbound support calls, messages, and emails. Apart from this, Apptivo customer portal also has other benefits such as:

• Provides Improvement in the visibility of customer information and easy access to real-time data
  Features online payment methods making it easier to make payments

• Removal of redundant data entry

• Improvement in customer experience levels

• Enhanced visibility of transactional information

• Reduced communication traffic

• Improved internal collaboration among employees

Apptivo’s HelpDesk is available for integration across all applications along with CRM software. Using our HelpDesk, you can give your customers the benefit of managing their data and tickets that results in significant improvement in customer experience.

Conclusion

The self-service option is the modern solution to the increased amounts of customer concerns and issues. It allows your agents to handle the customers having more urgent issues rather than coping with the customers having simple issues that can be resolved by themselves. In the conditions when the customers have small problems in which your agents don’t need to assist them, the self-service portal gives them the necessary means to solve them. Users login into the self-service portal and get the solution based on the information of their previous tickets. It also features a rather fast and effective fixing of customer issues. Hence, use the Customer Portal at Apptivo’s HelpDesk and make your customers solve their issues at the click of a button.