Historically, customer self-service – despite its proven effectiveness – has a bad reputation. Almost everyone can recall an experience where they’ve tried to resolve a problem through self-service, which has left them frustrated, says Henry McCracken, regional sales director, Africa – Aspect Software.
Time spent trying to resolve a query, being directed to wrong departments, or even just trying to find out something that self-service doesn’t understand, are the most common reasons for its bad reputation.
The primary aim of self-service is to deflect calls and interactions that would come into the contact centre, thus freeing up resources so companies can focus on higher-value tasks. It should be cheap to run and deal with common queries.
Today’s consumers will typically go looking to solve a query for themselves first, as they believe it’s quicker, easier, and cheaper than waiting for a live response. Although simple strategies such as the interactive voice response (IVR) technology cut costs, customers can become frustrated if solving their problem becomes a lengthy process; simple strategies don’t have the capacity to handle complex problems. As self-service technology progresses, there seems to be a fledgling trend and concerted effort by some brands to bring self-service into the 21st century – through ‘omni-channel’ automation.
Omni-channel is about the true continuity of experience; it’s the ability to seamlessly continue a single conversation or transaction through whichever channel is used, be it voice, SMS, mobile web, applications or social media. For those organisations grasping today’s mobile and multi-channel savvy consumers, omni-channel’s complex automation engages customers with self-service interactions that enhance their overall experience.
With more people than ever online, consumers expect to be able to engage with organisations through any channel they desire, and self-service must fall in line with this. Self-service should be designed to reach a quick and satisfactory resolution for the customer, and deliver an exceptional experience that drives profitability, customer loyalty, and the creation of brand advocates. Call-backs are good, but there is better: a relationship between smartphones – social media, mobile web, SMS, applications – and the live advisors. This will ensure customers feel confident that the problem will easily be resolved; otherwise they will simply switch providers.
Contact centres must deliver a consistent experience for each and every touch point throughout a conversation with a customer, regardless of when and where it occurs (often creating additional challenges with the likes of social media, most of which is publicly visible).
Further, because self-service often sits in a silo, integrating and coping with the explosion of self-service channels – IVR, web, mobile web, SMS, mobile applications, FAQ, social media – is exacerbating the integration cost. Omni-channel is an approach that works because it uses the same applications, integration, and reporting across all channels. It is one application that is designed and built once, and available via any channel or device to seamlessly integrate the customer journey across all channels.
These mobile channels – SMS and social media in particular – enables a ‘contextual handoff’ to live advisors when self-service can’t resolve queries, because it’s a good way of ‘pre-populating’ the initial information required to enter into the query resolution stage. Automating these channels can generate intelligent responses much faster than a human can. When a human touch is required to take over, the system can then handover any channel to the relevant person, by providing live SMS support via chat with an advisor, offering a call-back, or linking to web collaboration. This process is part of a true omni-channel experience.
In some instances, the customer may never need to speak to an advisor even if they need to change something about their account. Smarter social media and SMS applications for contact centres, which integrate customer data in the same way as described previously, is more relevant to the modern consumer. Additionally, it offers far greater capabilities to automate and personalise automated transactions.
A good example of social media integration is during an IVR call session. Rather than rely on speech recognition for complex inputs (the familiar, “sorry I didn’t understand that”, comes to mind), the automation can leverage other means – “I’ve just sent you a text message, please reply with your [postcode/email address, etc.] and I will process your request”. The SMS response links to the mobile web and, with the combination of identifying the customer’s phone number and geo-location, it enables the automated self-service to personalise the response: “The nearest store to you is on Cross Street, we can process your return there if you would drop off your purchase.”
Essentially, if a company wants to better build relationships and derive value from customers, they need to anticipate customer needs and adapt to consumer behavioural changes. Self-service, adopted by a customer services department as a cost saving measure, should not disregard the customer experience since you can easily achieve both, as demonstrated here. Customers can be encouraged to self-service in order to manage costs, but it should absolutely be presented with a clear customer value benefit. The omni-channel opportunity offers compelling capabilities to drive greater customer acceptance of enhanced self-service.
