Modern-aged consumers expect a lot from every facet of the support and service chain, their expectations and standards are as high as the Andes. Customers require convenience and productive assistance, and only they can help themselves. Helping your customers resolve problems themselves brings out the best in any business. 

While it had always been confusion around approaching customers with such resolutions, currently, self-service customer support has made it a reality. The self-service resources incorporate video tutorials, chatbots, FAQs, and more. Proposing a collection of available self-service support helps consumers to find solutions to their queries all by themselves.    

Digital adoption platforms help consumers use the software as its UI was expected to function, post-deployment. Digital adoption platforms are your first step towards digital life and take minimal onboarding, making self-service customer support a better part of the transformation journey. 

Now, let's get a deeper insight into self-service customer support to know how to get started and how it will help your business. 

Step by step guide to building an efficient self-service strategy 

Nothing less than a well-planned strategy will work, so don't settle for less. If you go for a poorly done strategy, you will probably lose your client. By that time, the consumer gets exhausted with the unresponsive agent and switches for a more reliable option. 

So, here is an essential strategy to build an effective self-service strategy and help you retain your consumer base.  

1. Establish your Goals

Without a principal goal, it's like a journey to nowhere land. Find your objective and where you want to reach by the end of the business year. It is essential to find a metric to measure the success rate; otherwise, there are high chances of losing focus. 

Consider the current support system and ask for the agent's feedback. Support agents can have significant inputs as they know every knick of that thing. No matter what your target is, make sure to track the success rate before and after the implementation.  

2. Build a Strategy 

Following the goals, we have an action plan to take charge. Curate a strategy to get to the process so that self-service starts running and schedules resource completion. While planning includes the feedbacks of support agents, it also discovers which subjects and queries pop up the most. This allows you to have an obvious initial step and will structurize the whole process after that. 

Strategizing the process will help analyze the overhead costs and set a record ROI to see when you are achieving.

3. Look onto Right Support Channels

While thinking about which self-service support you should deliver, take notes from your consumer. Consumers are your biggest critic and support; take inspiration from them. See what the requirements of the consumers are and which resources will help them in finding a solution. 

• Public knowledge base- This is a broad version of Frequently Asked Questions. If you deal with technical products, then a public knowledge base can make a huge difference in self-service support. Providing self-service support in the form of a centralized knowledge base will help consumers get their solution whenever they want. 

• Chatbots- Interactive chatbots can help consumers find solutions for basic queries. Chatbots can answer general queries either directly or by backlinking an article from the centralized knowledge base. 

• IVR or Interactive Voice Recognition- Many businesses follow this suit for offering solutions without waiting for support agents. These businesses use an automated voice system that comprehends in the native language. Consumers can use IVR for checking their warranty period or subscription renewal date or even to check appointments for in-house support. 

7 Reasons why consumer prefer self-service support

1. Lowers the Cost of Service

One of the added advantages of self-service support is it lowers overall support expenses and contact volumes. When customers can get the answers to their desired queries in no time and that too on their own, they will get inclined to the support service but will lower the number of contacts.

2. Saves a lot of time

Self-service not only boosts consumer experience but also promotes employees' experience too. It helps in resolving recurring queries and issues in less time frame. When consumers have a self-reliant support service, the repetitive issues do not consume time.

3. It is a personalized service. 

It is possible to personalize self-service support according to your business requirements. A tailored consumer self-service can offer related solutions, scaling options, and processes entirely based on your customers. 

4. It can be accessed anytime, anywhere

Self-service support is opened 24*7 in consumer interest. Anytime the customers need to solve any issues or need knowledge about products, they can easily access it. With this self-reliant service, customers don't have to wait for long hours, and every piece of information is just a fingertip away. 

5. It rises with your business.

Self-service is a dynamic system; it reads up collective data and analytics to keep itself updated. It constantly advances with the product, business requirements, and consumer needs. As your business expands, the contact costs rise exponentially. However, with self-service support, it increases at a much slower rate. 

6. Boosts efficiency   

Helping consumers with self-service supports boosts organization efficiency. Leveraging consumers to self-serve their queries augments support agents' productivity. Other departments like sales and marketing will be liberated to keep their focus on the sole objective instead of interacting with consumers' issues.   

7. A centralized knowledge base works as an asset.

Building a centralized knowledge base from scratch might be daunting. However, investing in this will make it one of the strongest assets of your business. It can centralize the entire team's knowledge onto one forum, helping consumers and partners know the product. 

Conclusion