Customer Service: A Perfect Storm Has Been Brewing

If you have been keeping up with customer service in the online and mobile era, you know that an increasing percentage of customers and potential customers are relying on self-service options, when it comes to online actions.

Customers have begun to expect to be empowered to help themselves online, without the need to wait for customer service assistance. By and large, studies have shown that customers are indeed willing to help themselves if they are given the tools to do so. For example, research by Convergys has shown that the percentage of consumers preferring automated self-service has doubled in the last five years.[1]

We are still in a transition stage, however. While it may sound paradoxical, online self-service requires online guidance. I’m not talking about customer service agents (though real-time live chat and social support options are helpful, without question) jumping to the rescue. Online guidance platforms are tools already incorporated into a website’s or software’s UI which helps increase self-service adoption in two main ways. First, it drives users to action by making self-service options visible and intuitive, assisting the user before he/she would even ask for help. Furthermore, through its ease of use and step-by-step "GPS like" guidance, it makes choosing the self-service option much less frightening and much more approachable and simple.

Self-Service is Taking Over

What used to be commonplace is beginning to make its way back into the lives of many people. Self-service options are becoming more popular and, in all reality, customers prefer the option. Customers benefit from self-service because they are able to help themselves and often at a faster rate than they may receive by contacting a company, and waiting assistance.

In the offline world, one of the best examples of self-service is the self-checkout line at the supermarket. You are able to ring up and bag your own items. You do not need to stand in line waiting for the people ahead of you or the slow cashier who never seems to bag your items properly.

In addition, customers have evolved over time and no longer need their hands to be held when it comes to doing things. You will find that customers are relying less on travel agents and booking their own vacations and conducting their own banking instead of visiting their local branches in person.

Self-Service in the Online World

In the online world, businesses are noticing that customers not only enjoy and appreciate the ability to self-serve but see it as a necessity. The absence of a self-service option might result in them switching to a competitor.

We find ourselves right now in a transition period, in which a delicate balance is needed to maintain high customer loyalty and satisfaction. On the one hand, there needs to remain the option of a human face in terms of customer service, if needed. This might be in a more traditional format of calling the customer service phone number, or, as we’ve seen in the past few years, in the real-time onscreen option of live chat with customer support agents (see a service like LivePersonas an example).

From the other side, self-service adoption has increased in recent years, and will perhaps grow substantially in 2014. The key to self-service adoption is that the options be easily visible onscreen, simple to use, that they provide comprehensive and step-by-step assistance (as opposed to listing the necessary steps at the start and then leaving the user to his lonesome), and that are approachable in a way that will not scare users away. Online guidance options like WalkMehelp to provide that type of step-by-step guidance, empowering users and customers to perform any task online, even the most complex. Moreover, online guidance reduces customers’ frustration of waiting for assistance, and eliminates the need to follow video tutorials or dig through tedious Q&A pages.

With both the self-service and live chat options online, the level of customer engagement is critical. While engagement is often a hard term to define, the customer has to feel a combination of ease-of-use, approachability and access, timeliness, and a level of personalized support.

If businesses are able to adapt to this level of personalization and customer empowerment through self-service, they will succeed. They have to always stay ahead of the game though. As technology changes, and the world becomes more and more about speed, mobility, and access, self-service is really the perfect storm that is disrupting the world of customer service as we know it.

Amy Clark is the lead author and editor of two customer service blogs – I Want It Now, which examines the era of instant gratification, and Self Service Central, which provides her thoughts on how best to help customers assist themselves online . She also serves as Customer Success Director at WalkMe.