Customer Self-service Portal – The Path to Increased Customer Satisfaction

These days, the world is changing at a breakneck pace. People’s thinking, planning, and working styles have all changed as a result of these changes. Every day, new disruptive technologies emerge, transforming the way businesses function. As a result, firms must adapt to changing times to avoid going out of business. This includes not only the technological developments but also various external factors that alter the business operations. Businesses must stay current with the newest customer self-service strategy, which is developing at a rapid pace. One of the important consumer behaviors that have emerged as a result of the COVID-19 dilemma is that individuals are still connected online even if they are physically separated.

These conditions have, as a Study reveals, resulted in around 91% of the customers and respondents preferring using self-service options to cater to their needs. This demonstrates that the self-service resources’ dependability and applicability are critical qualities. This is also a signal that client self-service may become a need shortly. In this blog, we will explore the benefits of customer self-service portal for businesses and how Apptivo can empower your business with the best customer self-service portal to improve customer satisfaction.

Customer self-service and its importance for businesses

Customer self-service facility is encouraged by businesses across the globe. Most of the organizations recommend their support teams to make the customers more aware of their products and services. By this, customers will have better product information and will be equipped to work around the product on their own. This also solves the waiting time of customers while dealing with the smallest tasks. In this section, we will walk through the basics of customer self-service and how implementing self-service in customer service will benefit your business productivity.

What is self-service customer service?

Customer self-service is any activity a consumer (or potential buyer) takes to handle problems or answer inquiries without the aid of a CSA or other brand employee. Static website pages, AI/automated chatbots, and online customer forums are examples of self-service customer care channels. Here, customers do not rely on a company customer service, customer service representatives, or any other support agent to complete their tasks. Rather, they utilize the several self-service options available to get the task done by themselves.

Why is customer self-service important?

Self-service is a critical component of a company’s goal-setting and competitive performance. Because of the benefits of deploying high-quality self-service, customer support channels boost brand reputation, build customer loyalty, and drive revenue development. Customer experience is about catering to customers’ needs and wants, not only offering channels for consumers to seek assistance if they have questions or encounter a problem with a product or service. The best aspect of consumer self-service is that it also helps a company’s financial line. With that said, let’s get into the benefits of a self-service portal for businesses.

Customers prefer self-service so you are catering to their needs

Self-service customer assistance is preferred by customers. This is because self-service customer assistance is frequently more convenient, quicker, and flexible in terms of the time, energy, and resources available to consumers. As a result, compared to other channels provided by the Helpdesk app, consumer self-service channels demand significantly less consumer effort. Customers’ proven behavior nearly always favors the service choice that requires the least amount of effort. So, it has a direct impact on your business reliability.

Picture this: You have a customer who has been using your service for the past 5 years. He has come across an issue where he would like to switch to the next plan from the current plan. Since he has not done this before, he has raised a ticket and he has been informed that his ticket is in the queue where a support agent will reach out to him at the earliest. But, the setback is he has to wait till he gets a response from that agent. In contrast, if there is an exclusive FAQ section or knowledge base from where he could easily get a solution for this, then he can upgrade his account instantly without any time delay. The latter is a better option and utilizing the self customer service format helps to achieve this.

Self-service is more likely to be used when compared to other channels

Most customers expect great functionality from business websites and are likely to use a good knowledge source available on the website for solving their issues. They rely on solving their issues by themselves rather than getting help from a customer support assistant. And as long as their expectations are met, they’ll be using the same self-service options instead of opting for any other support channel of an online helpdesk ticketing system. So, this improves their experience as they are getting what they want.

It results in increased website traffic and business performance

Self-service channels increase business performance as web traffic is significantly increased upon the adoption of self-service channels. Due to this, customers are satisfied with your service and this could improve the retention rate, and result in increased conversion. As a result, existing customers are more likely to make new purchases and new customers are likely to become your brand advocates. Furthermore, the availability of such a knowledge base and information channel in a website increases the authenticity of your products and services. Websites is the primary pillar of identity in the digital ecosystem. Hence, transparency in information is appreciated and ensures a quicker purchase from the customer end.

It gives the customers a choice of service channels

To be effective, Omni- and multi-channel customer support platforms must include consumer self-service. As a consequence, clients have greater control over their service journey and can find and obtain what they want from the company more quickly. This generates a service environment that fosters pleasant, long-term relationships, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty. Customer service is further enhanced and this helps customer service to be delivered according to the customer’s choice. Here, the customer does not have to worry about the communication medium as they are communicating through a channel that is reliable and trustworthy. Businesses must also provide customer service where the customer has the right to choose their communication channel.

It costs less than a customer support agent

Individual self-service customer support events cost less than $0.25 per client-driven resolution, but B2B live customer service interactions cost more than $13. As a result, established businesses that add self-service customer support choices to their current customer care teams may expect to save $1 million to $3 million each year on customer support. Customers who use self-service portals have the provision to communicate directly with the concerned authority rather than going through a number of call forwarding or queues. Customers feel comfortable communicating with the associated service agent directly instead of talking to other support agents.

It reduces the number of support tickets

Reduced customer support ticket volume accounts for a portion of the projected decrease in customer service department personnel expenditures. Self-service customer support channels being easily accessible can result in efficient resolution of two-thirds of customer support tickets leaving the least amount of tickets for support agents to be solved. When the incoming tickets are less in number, the support agent can focus more on the priority task that has to be handled immediately. This in turn increases the quality of service delivered to the customers. Customers, on the other hand, need not wait in a queue to find information on the smallest queries.

It results in more efficient use of human resources

Support agents’ availability for higher-order issues improves as the quantity of low-level customer support ticket submissions drops. As a result, agents may focus on solving issues that would otherwise be unsolvable, restoring customer relationships, and contributing to employee-driven knowledge base material and dialogues. This concludes with more efficient use of human resources in the organization. The management can also invest more in developing resources that add value to the knowledge base, improve the quality of content, enhance the technology, and offer instant solutions to the customers. This will reduce the customer churn in the long run for the organization.

Apptivo CRM helps you in bringing self-service to your support channels by providing you with integrated CRM solutions and giving access to the Integrated HelpDesk that automates the ticketing system giving you better performance with customer support. Customer requests are automatically routed to assigned individuals and with the centralized customer portal, your customers can easily get their issues resolved by themselves in just a couple of minutes.

Conclusion

Customers now are not the same as customers in the past. They prefer self-service portals to conventional customer assistance channels, thus they want the business to offer them. According to research, 55 percent of clients found self-service portals difficult to use. Companies should bear in mind while creating client self-service portals that they are only helpful if they are simple to use. Thus, with Apptivo, empower your customer support channels by adding up an integrated CRM Solutions & HelpDesk software to it.

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