Knowledge crucial to self-service

Companies that want to drive the maximum return on investment from their customer self-service systems must be ready to educate customers.

So says the business development director at Consology, Kevin Meltzer, who notes that the success of a self-service project depends as much on the organisation success in persuading its customers to change their behaviour as it does on its technology.

He says companies should be open about their Web portal and to support customers as they change habits established over years.

Agreeing with this is David Coyle, research VP at Gartner, who says building a best-in-class self-service portal does not guarantee that end users will utilise it without being made aware of it.

He says understanding the adoption of self-service by end users is critical in developing a successful self-service strategy and most organisations will find that the first-year adoption rate can be very low.

“End-user utilisation is the primary objective; so the time and cost investments that are tied to building a world-class self-service portal will not yield favourable returns if end users are not inclined to log their own tickets or attempt to solve their own problems,” says Gartner.

Factors that can provide insight into this include an organisation's demographics; groups like engineers or young people may be able and willing to leverage self-service, but end users who are stuck in their ways or who are not sophisticated computer users may not be as willing, Gartner advises.

“Once they have rolled out a self-service Web portal, the job of getting customers to make the switch to the lower cost electronic platform will only be beginning,” it says.

Meltzer says: “Adoption marketing, assisted service and incentives are among the strategies organisations can use to entice customers to switch from channels such as the phone or the branch office to the Web.”

He adds that many organisations fail to conscientise customers that self-service options exist and how best to use them. “Adoption marketing is critical. You should market a new self-service platform just as you would market a new product or service and let customers know how it will benefit them,” he adds.

He suggests that businesses send mailers to clients by post or e-mail to let them know about their self-service platform.

“Online ads are also a great way of letting customers who are already using the Web know that they could be dealing with you online rather than through your call centre or stores.”

Call centre voice prompts are very effective for informing people what they could be doing online while on hold for a call centre agent to respond to their query, he says.

Meltzer also notes that businesses need a change management programme in place to encourage customers to move away from face-to-face and telephonic interactions towards using self-service systems.” Many clients might be intimidated by self-service and may need some hand-holding until they become used to the system.”

He goes on to say businesses must have some form of support in place for customers who are trying to use their system: dedicated call centre agents to talk them through the processes, detailed FAQs on your Web site, or employees at your store to demo self-service to customers.

“If customers battle to use self-service after they've been thrown in the deep end with no help, they'll quickly go back to using your physical branches or your call centre instead,” he advises.

Publisher Peter DeHaan warns companies of making the mistakes the dot-com boom in the 90s brought. He says companies presumed that customer service would not be an issue as they would offer self-service options on the Web that were likewise scalable.

“There would be no massive call centres to build and no agents to hire. Basically, there would be no people to help their customers; computers would do all that via the Internet. It didn't work!” he points out.

Meltzer says the younger and more tech-savvy customers might embrace self-service because they understand immediately that it is convenient and saves them time.

However, he says, many customers may be reluctant to make the switch. “Incentives such as lower transaction fees, discounted pricing or loyalty points can be used to entice them to use your lower cost channels instead of picking up the phone to make a routine query”.

Gartner says, of all service desk contact volume, as much as 40% could be solved through self-service, but only 5% of issues actually are solved by IT self-service.

“By 2015, the majority of IT organisations will have less than 10% of the contact volume managed by IT self-service,” it says.