A winning strategy isn't simply "help yourself." It's "let me help you help yourself."
by Rick Quinones
Self-service Web sites are fast becoming accepted as part of most companies' overall service strategy. By offering customers Web-based, post-sale support, businesses are recognizing the importance of a multichannel approach to customer service.
Self-service technology can lead to improved customer service, empowered customers and employees, and increased efficiency. Where many corporations are missing the boat, however, is how they apply technology to solve problems. Without considerable forethought and planning, you might bypass simple and technologically easy-to-implement approaches for expensive, complex, and unhelpful applications.
A brief history of self-service
A consumer's first experience with self-service may have been with the automated teller machine (ATM) or the self-service gas station. In either case, whether customers used the self-service option again depended almost entirely on the level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction experienced the first time. While positive first experiences resulted in increased use of self-service, negative ones led to unhappy customers who chose more expensive service options. To make matters worse, disincentives (such as charging more for branch transactions that could be handled by an ATM) to divert traffic to the preferred (less expensive) self-service alternative tended to create dissatisfied—and angry—customers.
In many ways, the effort to eliminate or deflect phone calls with Web-based self-support software is similar to the early efforts to deflect calls with interactive voice response (IVR). The risk of alienating customers is also the same.
Companies that were sloppy in their IVR deployment ended up with more complaints about service, increased talk time, closed accounts, and lost customers. On the other hand, companies were rewarded with improved customer satisfaction and enhanced cost dynamics when they identified the most frequent call types, and thoughtfully constructed questions and voice response scripts.
Search engine obstacles
Like self-service gas stations, ATMs, and IVR, simply applying search engine technology to troubleshooting may be misguided. Imagine customers are having problems using your product, and they visit your Web site for the first time to find a solution. Your Web site is armed with the latest knowledge base, powered by a sophisticated search engine. To find a solution, customers must first enter a query. So without much concern about phrases or keywords (your self-service Web site employs a knowledge base tool that uses natural language), the users dutifully attempt to enter a phrase that accurately represents their problem. They then click on a button to begin the search process, and answers instantly appear -- lots and lots of answers. Sometimes pages and pages of answers.
Therein lies the problem. The search engine is designed to find all relevant answers. Your customers are seeking the right answer. It's as if your Web site is saying, "Here are all the possible answers to your questions. You find the right one. And by the way, if it's not here, it's probably because you didn't ask the right question the right way."
Some customers might relish the challenge of clicking through pages of relevant answers to find the right one, but those customers are the minority. In addition, the query-based user interface assumes that all users are at the same level of knowledge and comfort with the Web. Knowledge bases with search engines offer customers a one-size-fits-all solution.
A smarter approach is to identify those questions/problems that dominate your contact center resources. As many as 80 percent of customer calls (and other contacts) result from as few as 20 percent of problems customers encounter; common sense tells you that most of your calls derive from many users experiencing the same problems. Instead of trying to provide all the answers, why not supply your customers with a simple interface to solve those problems they face most often?
Not only is it impossible to anticipate every question or problem on your self-service Web site; it's faulty strategy to even try. There are times you want to talk to the customer live, perhaps for cross-selling or account retention.
The future
In today's Web-based customer service environment, satisfaction is measured through instant gratification. And when given options, customers generally choose the path of least frustration.
In the final analysis, successful delivery of service through the Web requires leveraging what you already know about your products and your customers. No amount of technology can overcome a poorly designed solution or a service strategy that transparently sends the message "help yourself" rather than "let me help you help yourself."
As these principles are reflected in next-generation self-service technology, the old search-engine/knowledge-based system will rapidly become a dinosaur, replaced by easy-to-use, flexible self-service solutions.
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Patents pending. "TroubleTree" is a Service Mark of CCT Group, Inc.