Every month, customer service representatives at the average enterprise's contact centres and branch offices field massive volumes of calls from customers asking routine questions about the company's products and services, or about their accounts held with the organisation.
If these customers could go online and answer their questions themselves, the business could achieve significant cost-savings and boost customer satisfaction. That's why the research component of self-service can provide companies that are implementing self-service systems with quick wins off a relatively low investment.
Most companies already have the basic foundations of a research offering for their self-service systems in place, in the form of their company Web sites. These sites already provide a wealth of company information to their clients and other stakeholders.
DIY
But, the research component of an enterprise-class self-service system allows customers to drill deeper into their account data and company information to answer complex questions they might have needed to call the contact centre for in the past.
Let's look at some of the research features one would expect to find in a robust self-service system:
* Reporting and analytics
The reporting and analytics tools in a high-end self-service system give customers the ability to drill down into their own account information to understand their account activity, all without needing help from a company representative.
Most companies already have the basic foundations of a research offering for their self-service systems in place, in the form of their company Web sites.
Kevin Meltzer is business development director at Consology.
In the past, they may have needed to collect paper accounts and other documents themselves, and then input account data into a calculator or spreadsheet before they could even start analysing their account activity. A self-service system cannot only put this information online and at their fingertips, but also do the number crunching and present the data in a format that is easy to understand.
Some examples of reporting and analytics tools in a good self-service system are as follows:
* Trend analysis tools that allow users to review data within the current billing period and across financial periods so they can understand and manage expenses by department, category or sub-account.
* Service and plan analysis tools that allow users to compare their historical usage and trends to other packages and services that the company can offer.
* Data download functions that allow users to capture data for further analysis in spreadsheets, accounting systems or personal finance programmes.
By giving customers access to this sort of rich data, coupled with the tools to analyse it, a company can increase their loyalty and make it more difficult for them to switch to a new supplier or service provider.
* Inquiry handling
A contact centre makes it simple for a customer to ask a representative any question about the company's products and services. Self-service systems can offer a compelling alternative using natural language search (NLS) capabilities. An NLS search engine supports keywords, phrases and full sentences, allowing customers to pose questions that allow them to get to key resources and specific answers quickly.
Users can answer their own questions by accessing online FAQs, knowledge bases, Web site content and PDF forms. They could search for information or ask, for example: "What tariff schemes are available for small businesses?" or "How do I apply for a gold credit card." They can also ask specific questions about their own accounts, such as "What reduced bank charges can I qualify for with my account history?"
Helping customers to spend less time on the phone to get answers to their queries is an excellent way to reduce the organisation's operational costs while boosting customer satisfaction.
Well-informed customers who feel they have visibility into their accounts are more likely to be loyal and content. Research is a vital part of any self-service deployment for that reason.
* Subsequent Industry Insights in this “self-service building blocks” series will look more closely at the manage, transact and interact components of an effective self-service system.
* Kevin Meltzer is business development director at Consology.
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