Customer service has always been a topic for people all over the world. It’s either you’ve read a viral excellent customer service you want to experience yourself or a bad customer service you want to avoid. The evaluation of customer service is based on a lot of factors like time of response, duration of the solution, quality of the customer service, and the overall experience with the customer service representative.

Moreover, customer service spells a huge effect on companies since this dictates their image to their existing and potential customers. That’s why the customer service industry has decided to open their options to self-service Support.

Self-service support has risen to the occasion because people have become more mobile and tech-savvy, and customers have grown high standards and expectations when it comes to customer service.

In the survey of Interactive Intelligence Group, speedy service tops their list, as customers want “short response time” at 75%. Next to it are “efficiency,” “knowledgeable agents,” and “professionalism.”

Self-service support is the elimination of human customer service representatives, as well as giving customers constant and immediate access to fixes to their common to advance service issues.

Here are the forms of self-service support:

1. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

As a company, you’ve probably formulated a list of questions that your customers will usually encounter when they have their transaction with you. You can already build a self-service support through a FAQs page. Through time, you can add a few more questions here as it fits your target customers.

2. Knowledge bases

Customers favor knowledge bases at 91%. This is a database full of information as a part of your company’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.

3. Self-checkout

A lot of e-commerce sites have implemented this in their system. Self-checkout allows customers to browse, select, purchase, and checkout on their own.

4. Interactive voice recognition

Although this allows a customer to talk to a representative, the difference is that this is an automated response. Customers can respond by using the touch-tone keypad selection and voice telephone input.

But, when do you exactly put your foot down and put a self-service support? If you think that your customer service team is currently experiencing a bottleneck in their waves of customer inquiries, then you should consider having a self-service support.

For fast-growing companies, in particular, there is an increasing influx of people every day, and having a self-service support will allow your representatives to focus on more pressing matters. A self-service support should handle repetitive questions.

Listed down are the benefits your company could get with a self-service support.

1. Avoiding overloaded support channels

Immediately, your support channels will be less tight if you provide a self-service support. If your team’s weak point is quickness in responses, they’ll experience an overload in their line causing calls to be stalled.

With a self-service support, however, you’ll know that when they call you, they haven’t found the answers on their own research.

2. Making yourself available

If your company caters to different time zones, then a 24/7 customer service support is a sure problem. The problems encountered by your customers don’t come in the regular business hours, so putting up a FAQs or knowledge database will handle these situations since these are available on the clock, along with easy access.

3. Rescuing support agents

In all honesty, being a customer service representative takes a lot of patience, tests your organization skills, and brings out your empathic side. At the end of the day, human resources will get burned out and be exhausted. Proving a self-service support will spare their health and well-being.

4. Cutting costs

A bundle of inquiries which will be handled by automated and prepared solutions will free up a huge chunk of your budget. A smaller team of customer service center will also reduce your cost per call.

5. Empowering customers

There’s a different kind of feeling when customers can solve their problems on their own. The millennial generation likes to be involved in problem-solving, which gives them a chance to build relationships and sense of community.

After setting up a self-support service, the next step is to check its quality and maintain a good image to your customers. You should identify customers’ needs to professionally separate novice and expert inquiries. After that, make them visible and functional. A well-prepared self-service support will be for naught if its intended user won’t utilize it. Lastly, keep on updating and always fine tune and monitor. Certain problems may arise along the way that is not a part of the initial usual problems and questions of your customers.

Overall, customer service in any form should uphold the disposition of your customers. Make use of self-service support to engage better with your customers.