Today’s digitally-savvy and empowered consumers don’t want to talk to sales and service reps whenever they can help it. Increasingly, your clients prefer to solve their problems whenever they can. Self-service is becoming the go-to option for issue resolution.
Around 70% of customers now expect a company’s website to include a self-service application, and countless consumers use FAQs, chatbots, and similar tools to streamline service daily. The global technology market for self-service solutions is already accelerating towards a value of around $46.03 billion by 2027.
Consumers demand more freedom to solve their own problems in a world of automated systems, intelligent bots, and transformational technology. Here are some reasons why your company should invest in self-service solutions (if you’re not already).
1. Happier, More Empowered Customers
40% of customers say they prefer self-service over human contact, and the number of DIY problem-solvers is always growing. Today’s consumers are used to seeking out information online, chatting to bots on your website, and using other methods to minimize their need to contact customer service teams. As a result, demand for self-service is growing.
Implementing self-service solutions is a great way to delight your customers when they’re demanding a more comprehensive range of service options. Around 75% of customers even agree that self-service is a more convenient to solve service issues.
If you want to stay ahead of the curve with your service strategy, supporting your customers on all of the channels they prefer is a great way to do that.
2. Gain Useful Insights
Self-service solutions can even help you to collect helpful information about your audience and their preferences, needs, and pain points. Whenever you use an Intelligent Voice Assistant or chatbot on your website to help manage customer conversations, those tools can collect data from the discussions to implement into your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools.
The information gathered from your bots, combined with other data from customers using self-service FAQs on your website, or accessing service portals, can provide you with a clearer view of where customers face the most problems with your company.
The insights you gather can help you develop better self-service strategies for customers and ensure you deliver a better customer experience overall.
3. Improve Team Productivity
Implementing self-service applications in your business doesn’t just give your customers more power, it can empower your employees too. When customers have ways to solve their issues, they don’t need to reach out to your service team. This means your agents spend less time handling common problems and more time dealing with issues that need their expertise.
Self-service solutions will free up your employees to focus on more productive and vital tasks while helping your business grow. According to some studies, companies adopting self-service technologies can achieve up to 28% reductions in support tickets and 62% improvements in first response time.
You can even implement self-service solutions specifically designed for your employees. For instance, chatbots can help agents find information faster, while self-service troubleshooting systems can assist hybrid and remote employees in solving problems.