Today’s consumers are more empowered than ever.
As the generations in the buyer market continue to evolve, most companies are dealing with digital natives. These savvy customers use tech to find answers to their problems and solve issues without human interaction. It’s no wonder that the demand for self-service is growing.
According to some studies, around 40% of consumers say they prefer self-service to human contact. Further research conducted by Dimension data also finds that 73% of consumers prefer to use a brand’s website to help themselves.
So, who’s really demanding more self-service in the contact centre?
New Customers Love Self-Service
One thing that stays the same from one generation to the next, is the continued demand for convenience in service and support. People like quick and simple solutions to their problems. In the digital age, where most consumers can find answers faster by looking for them online than calling a contact centre, self-service just makes sense.
The rise of artificial intelligence and conversational bots means that we even have innovative assistants to help us in our search for answers. Chatbots on websites can answer queries in seconds. Smart assistants can respond to a client’s voice with instant information. Self-service offers speed for customers who don’t have time to sit around waiting for results.
The demand for self-service is particularly strong among younger consumers who are used to spending a significant amount of time on digital devices already. Gen Z and Millennial consumers are comfortable searching for information themselves, but they don’t feel nearly as comfortable when calling a contact centre. A self-service environment just adds to the range of solutions your customers want to help them solve issues today.
Agents Benefit from Self-Service Too
While the most obvious answer to “who wants self-service in the contact centre” is modern consumers, agents can benefit from the right implementations too. Today’s customers aren’t just more empowered, they’re also more demanding. Contact centres are dealing with huge numbers of requests and calls every day. Yet 45% of companies offering self-service showed a reduction in phone enquiries, accompanied by happier agents.
Digital self-service solutions support today’s teams in delivering faster solutions to consumer problems. What’s more, these tools can filter through some of the more repetitive questions that clients have about products or services. When repetitive and simple questions are handled by the bots in your contact centre, this saves time for your employees to focus on more complicated issues.
The key to success is remembering that self-service solutions are only effective when they’re accessed correctly. Consumers won’t want to solve their own issues all the time – particularly when they’re dealing with more complicated issues. There needs to be the correct combination of self-service, AI, and agent support available from each business.
What’s more, remember that the best self-service solutions should learn and improve with time. As you continue to gather information about your customers and their preferences, you should be implementing these lessons into the self-service solutions available.
