According to a Zendesk study, 91% of customers prefer using a knowledge base to resolve their issues rather than asking for support. However, users are unlikely to be 100% self-sufficient owing to a mix of limited resources, and lack of expertise on all possible scenarios.
To make self-support accessible for your users, you need to provide historically helpful experiences. Following these best practices will help you implement self-service support that improves customer relationships, having a long-term positive impact on your business.
What Is Self-Service Support?
Self-service support tools assist users in resolving issues for themselves quickly and easily. With the right resources and tools, users can proactively solve their problems without directly interacting with customer service representatives.
Why Is Self-Service Support Important?
Self-service support lets users take ownership of your brand. They want to solve their problems by exploring your resources and tools as they help clients resolve their queries swiftly, and conveniently. This approach also helps keep a lean customer support team. Here are some advantages of self-service support:
- Enhances Customer Satisfaction: Self-service support offers a variety of answers that empower customers to solve routine matters on their own. 67% of customers prefer self-service solutions to speaking to a representative.
- Reduces Support Costs: Resources like a knowledge base and FAQs decrease the number of simple, repetitive questions your support staff handles, easing the demand on your customer service team.
- 24/7 Support: Self-service does not require any teams to be present and online at all times, it can be availed during off hours, weekends, or even public holidays, it is always available.
- Scales Support Capabilities: Self-service resources can be scaled up without needing to increase support staff. This allows your business to grow without taking on additional costs in hiring and maintaining more support staff.
- Builds Customer Loyalty: By providing customers the means to help themselves, they will likely extend their support to other users outside your support channels and even serve as brand ambassadors.
9 Self Service Best Practices
The best approach to self-service is one that is tried and tested. Here are nine best practices for creating and maintaining an efficient self-service support system:
1. Develop a Comprehensive Knowledge Base
Create a searchable repository that addresses most customer inquiries and provides solutions to common issues. Regularly update and expand content based on customer feedback and support trends.
2. Implement an Intuitive Search Function
Along with a well-structured knowledge base, an intuitive search function is essential for helping customers find answers quickly. Use natural language processing to understand customer queries, incorporate auto-suggest features, and continuously refine search algorithms to improve accuracy based on user behavior.
3. Offer Multiple Self-Service Channels
Rather than relying solely on one medium, offer a variety of self-service support channels. These could include FAQs, video tutorials, guides with step-by-step instructions, community forums, and social media.
Using different formats accommodates diverse learning and communication preferences. AI-powered chatbots can also provide a way to get quick responses.
4. Personalize the Self-Service Experience
Build, and analyze a history of customer interactions, issues faced, and solutions viewed. Then, recommend relevant content based on their needs. Offer contextual help aligned with what are customers trying to accomplish and provide better guidance. Personalization makes customers feel valued.
5. Design for Mobile Accessibility
There are over 7 billion smartphone users around the world. Catering to this demographic is a necessity as it helps customers find resolutions with as little friction as possible, so developing your platform to be responsive and easy on a smartphone will make it easier to find solutions on any device.
6. Integrate Self-Service with Human Support
Give users the option to escalate issues that cannot be resolved through self-service to human support. You could use AI to route complex inquiries to qualified agents and implement co-browsing for smooth transitions from self-help to live support so that issues are not left unresolved.
7. Continuously Collect and Integrate Feedback
Gathering feedback on your self-service support is essential for improving the experience for your customers. Include feedback mechanisms directly within your self-service tools so customers can provide their opinions, and also conduct independent surveys and questionnaires. Also, collect analytics and heatmaps to better understand how users navigate your resources.
8. Employ AI and Machine Learning
Leverage AI and machine learning to give recommendations that help users resolve their issues faster. Integrating solutions like Boomi’s AI Agents simplifies self-service tools, enhancing the efficiency as well as the perceived intelligence of your support services.
9. Ensure Data Quality and Consistency
Information must be kept up-to-date and precise across all channels. Regularly reviewing information quality will help keep your support resources accessible.
Learn how to unlock Gen AI’s potential by strengthening data and organizational readiness.
Leverage Boomi to Optimize Self-Service Support
Self-service support is an ongoing process that requires continuous refinement as technology and customer preferences change. Your business needs integration solutions enabling consistent improvement through personalized, efficient experiences to stay ahead.
Boomi is a comprehensive integration platform empowering you to build accessible self-service options for customers. Its AI capabilities and ability to connect diverse systems and data sources are crucial for delivering uniform, customized support. The integration platform offers these benefits and features for your business:
- Unified Data Integration: Boomi connects disparate systems, ensuring consistent, up-to-date information across all self-service channels.
- AI Agents and Boomi AI-Driven Insights: The Boomi Enterprise Platform uses machine learning to understand patterns in how your customers interact with support resources. It then continuously refines relevant content recommendations, helping customers find answers more quickly. Boomi’s AI agents also provide self-service for Boomi customers.
- Scalable Architecture: Boomi supports growing self-service needs through a cloud-native platform architecture that allows horizontal scaling on demand.
- Personalization Capabilities: Integrating customer data from diverse sources through Boomi DataHub allows for customized self-service experiences for each user. This level of personalization strengthens the support your business provides.
- Real-Time Updates: Smooth, real-time data synchronization through Boomi keeps self-service tools updated with the latest information from your operations.
- Omnichannel Support: Boomi’s API management capabilities enable consistent self-service across different access points, such as mobile apps and websites. Thus, customers can get help through their preferred channels.
- Advanced Analytics: Deeper insights into performance empower your business to continuously enhance support and better satisfy your customers over time through ongoing improvement.
- Security and Compliance: Boomi ensures data protection and adherence to regulations, which is essential for building customer trust in self-service resources.
Learn more about how to ensure your organization is AI-ready and implement a cross-functional strategy to ensure successful AI integration.