The contact centre landscape and the sphere of customer experience are two areas currently in a serious state of flux. Over the last few years, the connections between brands and their clients have changed dramatically. In fact, it wasn’t so long ago that the only way customers could contact a company was through an email, letter, or phone call.
Now, in an era that demands speed, self-service technology is one of the biggest solutions driving the transformation of the contact centre. Instead of calling businesses with every question they might have, today’s customers feel compelled to find the support they need elsewhere first. In fact, they’re willing to use just about any technology to avoid calling the contact centre, from customer forums to mobile apps and chatbots.
Designing a Customer Self-Service Strategy
In 2018, more companies are beginning to realise that their customers want immediate access to their questions. In fact, 70% of clients say that they expect a company website to include some form of self-service application.
There’s a positive side to this trend, by implementing a self-service strategy, today’s contact centres can avoid wasting valuable agent time on repetitive questions that could just as easily be answered by an FAQ sheet or a chatbot. By 2020 (only two years from now) Gartner believes that the relationship between a customer and an enterprise will be handled 85% of the time without human interaction. All you need to do is find a way to make self-service easy and appealing to your customer.
Acceleration in the Self-Service World
One important thing for today’s contact centres to remember is that just because customers are starting to prefer self-service options, doesn’t mean that they’ll never need the help of a human agent. When a self-service tool can’t help your client, they’ll need a quick and easy way to accelerate their problem to a live-agent, without having to worry about explaining their problem all over again.
AI systems can help with this process too, by allowing customers a “click-to-call” option when their questions haven’t been answered by a chatbot or virtual assistant. When clients decide to push their issue through to an agent, the AI can send relevant contextual data over to the agent handling the call, so that the experience feels seamless and efficient for everyone involved.
The Constant Battle for Better Customer Service
In the years to come, the key to a great self-service strategy will be optimisation and evolution. After a tool has been implemented, companies will need to constantly track their results to ensure that they’re delivering the right support to their users. Fortunately, the latest technology like AI and machine learning algorithms can make it much easier to gather the essential information a contact centre needs to continue building on their self-service strategy.
It’s clear that the face of customer service is changing. As technology continues to evolve, the companies that want to stay ahead of the curve will be forced to innovate with ever bigger and better ideas for customer support, starting with self-service.
