Why It's Time to Invest in Customer Self-Service

While there’s no substitute for your live support agents, customer self-service drives critical, high-demand improvements in the customer experience.

Consistency. Flexibility. Convenience. Speed. Customers want support experiences that meet these needs and are willing to abandon brands that don’t.

According to Salesforce, 71% of customers have switched brands in the last year. 48% of these customers cite better customer service as a main reason.

Image Created by writer — Data sourced from Salesforce

Customer self-service is a leading eCommerce trend that can give your small business a competitive edge.

This article will discuss the business-optimizing and loyalty-boosting benefits of self-service and the different types of self-service you can implement.

We’ll throw in a few best practices at the end, too.

What is Customer Self-Service?

Customer self-service enables customers to resolve problems independently.

Instead of waiting a long time to speak with a customer support agent, they can use self-service tools and resources such as chatbots, community forums, and online knowledge bases.

Finding the right balance between live agent support and customer self-service is the key to unlocking the benefits discussed below.

The Benefits of Customer Self-Service

Customer self-service is a win-win solution for customers and companies.

From faster resolution times to increased employee productivity and lower customer service costs, let’s look at the leading benefits of self-service.

24/7 availability for round-the-clock global support

Customer issues don’t stop once your agents clock out. By delivering self-service options to your customers, you can provide round-the-clock customer support — whether during the early morning hours or on a Sunday afternoon.

Always-on availability lowers customer churn and increases customer satisfaction. Customers can receive an immediate resolution to their issues regardless of their time zone or your company’s operating hours.

It also reduces the sky-high expenses of managing a 24/7 customer service team.

More cost savings

It’s simple—the fewer calls you have coming into your customer service team, the fewer agents you need to manage them. With 24/7 self-service support, you can reduce the expenses incurred by out-of-hours agents.

Self-service interactions are considerably cheaper than human interactions. If you’re a small business, this can significantly free up your budget. Why not use these extra funds to invest in training, better equipment, and other business-improving resources?

Faster resolution times to satisfy customers

Some customer service problems require skilled, meticulous human intervention. But for simpler issues, self-service delivers a quicker, more optimal customer experience.

66% of Millennials and 61% of Gen Z-ers prefer self-service to resolve simple problems. Why? Because they provide the immediacy that traditional support can’t.

*Image sourced from Salesforce *

Chatbots are well-suited to answering basic queries. Searchable online FAQs and knowledge bases can provide a wealth of answers and solutions.

Product tutorials can provide thorough visual demonstrations that facilitate self-service. And all of these options are much faster than receiving human support—especially during peak call periods.

Customers don't need to find your customer support number, wait to connect with an agent, explain the issue to the agent (sometimes repeatedly), and then work with the agent to resolve it. They can simply hop online and solve their problem in minutes.

Increased employee productivity for bottom-line growth

Eliminating the need for a 24/7 customer support team isn’t the only financial benefit of self-service. Increased efficiency and productivity are the real cost benefits you’re delivering to your agents.

Instead of managing a volume of tedious calls, agents can focus on customers with more complex issues.

The result? Employees can deliver more personalized, valuable experiences to customers in need.

With effective VoIP pricing, you can further optimize costs by leveraging VoIP to deliver IVR, improve call routing, and enable agents to answer calls from any location on any device. It boosts customer satisfaction, customer retention, and customer loyalty, which drive more conversions and revenue.

Better customer experiences

Salesforce found that 83% of customers expect an immediate response from your customer service agents. This finding has significant implications for various Salesforce roles, from front-line support to management.

Tools like the Salesforce Data Migration Tool also play a key role in ensuring that historical customer data is accurately transferred and accessible, giving service agents the context they need to respond quickly and effectively.

But when you have high call volumes, even the most competent customer service teams can struggle to meet this expectation. It can easily lead to increased missed calls, poorly handled calls, and frustrated, unhappy customers.

And by no coincidence, service agents say that dealing with unhappy customers is their biggest day-to-day challenge.

Unsurprisingly, this is followed by “not having enough time in the day” among high- and low-growth companies, at 43% and 51%, respectively.

Image sourced from Hubspot

Effective, streamlined self-service allows customers to enjoy flexible, convenient customer experiences. It frees them from long queues, fixed opening hours, and the frustrating back-and-forth (mis)communication that plagues live support.

If they need to contact an agent, they can experience shorter queues, higher agent engagement, and faster time-to-resolution—all thanks to self-service.

The Types of Customer Self-Service You Should Invest In

Different self-service options meet different needs. So, what are the main ones that you should consider investing in?

Chatbots

They are automated, AI-powered virtual assistants that simulate sales representatives and improve sales. You can program them to converse with customers and respond to common queries across web, mobile, and social media channels.

Through CRM integration, they can even use customer data to deliver personalized experiences.

This ever-increasing adoption is making so many waves that Gartner predicts chatbots will become the primary customer service channel for 25% of businesses by as early as 2027.

Online Knowledge Bases and Help Centers

A knowledge base, or Help Center, is essentially an online self-service library. It provides customers with informative resources, including in-depth articles, FAQs, product tutorials and manuals, company information, and more.

Here’s what the knowledge base looks like at POWR:

Screenshot taken by writer

You can significantly boost customer success with a knowledge base that is well-designed and comprehensive. To meet your customer’s needs, create a knowledge base that is accessible via your website, contains organized, logical categories and sub-categories, and includes a search function.

IVR Systems

An IVR system is a prime example of using self-service options to complement live customer support teams. Interactive voice response systems, or IVRs, are automated telephone technology that uses speech recognition to interact with incoming callers.

When customers call your support line, they will be presented with a menu to self-direct them to the appropriate department.

It can even direct customers to an alternative channel when phone lines are busy, improving resolution times.

Community forums

A community forum is an online platform where customers can answer each other’s questions and discuss your products and services.

Customers in need can post a question in the forum or review previous threads to find solutions to their problems.

Customers have a perspective that your agents don’t. It can make them an excellent resource as they can frame answers through the customer lens, leading to more precise, faster solutions.

If you’re a global business, consider hosting online community forums on localized domains. For example, if you have customers in Hong Kong, you’d use a .hk domain; if you have customers in the UK, you’d use a .uk domain.

FAQ pages

An FAQ page on your website answers all your most frequently asked questions.

They’re often the first touchpoint for customers with simple questions about your products and services, as they can provide solutions much faster than contacting customer support.

Although your FAQ page needn’t be as comprehensive as your knowledge base, it should still aim to answer as many questions as possible.

To improve the customer experience, organize your FAQs into categories and craft questions and answers clearly and concisely.

*Screenshot taken by writer *

Customer Self-Service Best Practices

There’s a right way and a wrong way to implement customer self-service. Here are some quick tips to help you automate customer service the right way:

• Ensure that your self-service options are easy to find and use.
• Don’t cut your customers off from live agents—they should be able to contact a live agent, preferably right from your self-service resource.
• Try to address as many common issues as you can.
• Regularly review and update self-service content.
• Collect KPIs to measure the effectiveness of your self-service channels.

Key Takeaways

Self-service is quickly becoming the preferred support approach for customers seeking fast resolutions to simple issues. Not only can they skip the queues and self-direct troubleshooting, but they can also access support 24/7 when needed.

But remember, effective customer self-service doesn’t replace live agent support—it complements it. And in doing so, it empowers agents to respond to complex problems faster and with greater attention.

With engaged, productive agents and lower customer service costs, you can deliver exceptional experiences that drive satisfaction, retention, loyalty, and accelerate bottom-line growth.

FAQ: Customer Self-Service