Self-Care: A Digital Approach to Customer Service
As we all learned recently, customer satisfaction has a big part in increasing brand equity. It was proven that investing in customer satisfaction will help promote the value of a brand, regardless of how small the marketing budget is.
In order to increase customer satisfaction, businesses focus on providing consumers with an experience. A big part of that experience is pre- and post-purchase customer service. Consumers expect to get fast, friendly, and efficient service that will make the purchase process easy and convenient. One of the solutions that are being implemented today to answer those expectations is self-service platforms.
A survey conducted by software company Amdocs reveals that 91% of consumers will choose to use a self-service platform rather than call or email the business. However, the authors do emphasize that the platform must be tailored to the consumers’ needs and include an extensive knowledge base in order for them to widely adopt it. All in all, consumers are looking to get an online or mobile one-stop-shop service experience.
A recent report written by consulting firm Booz and Company focuses on the driving forces of this customer service trend. Here are the main four trends that are relevant to SMEs:
Create high-performance operations: Unlike regular customer service, in which consumers express their needs in words, self-service solutions are predetermined and less dynamic. Therefore, before designing a self-care platform, businesses should analyze and understand what functions the solution should include to satisfy consumers. An implementation of a self-care platform can be an opportunity to rethink and remodel customer service in its entirety.
Leverage service for revenue growth: Rather than focusing on servicing one customer after another, online platforms provide businesses with the opportunity to increase the revenue generated from each customer. Self-service platforms should focus on engaging customers with the brand and allowing the business to proactively manage the relationship with them. The platforms can also be used to cross- and up-sell specific segments.
Innovate the customer interface: Self-care solutions should leverage technology to offer their customers a wide range of self-service options. With that said, they should also include a mix of advanced communication channels in order to offer consumers a balanced service solution that includes both automation and human interaction.
Drive customer centricity: Self-service platforms are a powerful tool that can be used to gather insight about consumer wants and needs. Furthermore, integration between self-care and sales platforms can enhance customer experience even more.
I hope this post gave you some idea of where customer service is going. Consumers have expectations from businesses to become more connected, just like the consumers are, and self-care solutions are the way to meet those expectations.
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