Customer self-service can introduce massive efficiencies in your contact centre organisation, reducing agent workloads, and speeding up query resolution. 45% of companies offering self-service have managed to reduce telephonic queries significantly. Automated self-service also costs a lot lesser at around 25 cents per interaction vs $6-12 for a live agent.
Self-service Benefits Both the Customer and the Agent
It isn’t only the contact centre organisation that gains from self-service. It has a positive impact on the customer experience as well by:
- Shrinking resolution timelines for simple queries - Customers can find the information via FAQs or conversational bots. They can take common actions (like changing order details) through a self-service portal without having a full-fledged conversation
- Being more inclusive - Certain personality types may not be as comfortable with a live conversation as others, and would rather solve their queries in s self-sufficient manner. Also, customers without native English proficiency could hesitate before reaching out to a live agent
- Fostering a sense of empowerment - The customer conducts their own research, purchases/subscribes to the product and resolves their own queries with minimal intervention. This creates a sense of empowerment that will have them return to your company, enabling recurring revenues
- Being more convenient - You can embed self-service at strategic points of the CX – on your website, an order-tracking mobile app, an SMS system that is available offline, Google-searchable web pages, etc. This enhances the convenience factor for the customer.
In addition to this, your contact centre agents gain significantly:
- Reduced workloads
- Lower operational costs
- More data gathering opportunities at self-service portals
- Opportunity to specialise as opposed to answering generic queries
- Shorter call queues
- Automated upselling/cross-selling
For this reason, organisations are investing heavily in self-service contact centre technologies.
Top Self-Service Contact Centre Trends
Cisco’s 2020 report found that customers expect AI-based self-service options when interacting with a company. There are several ways to achieve this, from IVR systems that come with speech recognition to solve complex queries, to AI-powered virtual assistants or chatbots.
Right now, 48% of contact centres have invested in AI chatbots for self-service, and 70% of this group have unlocked a sizable reduction in call volumes as a result of this technology.