Online self-service to rocket

South African companies are increasingly embracing self-service as a strategic priority rather than treating it as an emerging technology.

This is according to business development director at Consology, Kevin Meltzer, who says this is a trend that is expected to accelerate sharply during 2011.

“We are likely to see more sophisticated online self-service strategies from large customer-carrying organisations such as banks, telecommunications companies, insurers and retailers as they try to manage their growing client bases and spiralling customer support costs during the year ahead,” he points out.

During 2010, he says, Consology conducted our third self-service survey in partnership with World Wide Worx.

“In the 2010 survey, we see clear evidence that companies no longer see self-service as nice to have but as a ticket to play in a world where clients are more demanding than ever before.”

He reckons one sign of this is the fact that companies in the 2003 and 2007 surveys saw self-service as a benefit mainly for their customers.

“They now overwhelmingly see it as much of a benefit to themselves. In the 2007 study, half of all respondents said they would charge for self-service.” In 2010, not a single respondent intended charging for self-service,” he adds.

Meltzer says this new understanding of self-service has taken root in an economy where support costs are rising and companies are desperate to save money where they can.

Shifting customers away from branch and call centres to cheaper electronic channels is becoming essential for companies managing millions of customers, he points out.

Another sign of the strategic importance of self-service, he says lies in the fact that it is no longer left in the hands of the CIO and the IT department. Respondents to the survey indicated that they now see it as a customer care function rather than a technology function.

According to Meltzer, compared to 2007, double the proportion of respondents saw self-service as a strategic, board-level issue rather than a tactical and operational concern. “This is encouraging, since it means companies are seeing self-service as being more about customers and a channel to market rather than just a technology solution.”

There are a number of important reasons Meltzer shows why self-service will matter more than ever before in 2011.

The first of these is that SA's online population has, in time, grown into a significant chunk of the average company's addressable market.

“With broadband costs expected to continue to fall in the year ahead, even more people will be moving online,” Consology says.

The company states the business model for self-service is now a proven one. Banks have trail-blazed for online self-service with online banking and other industries are also keen to get in on the action, it says.

Self-service also grows in importance in a tight and uncertain economy when companies must drive down their costs of doing business to remain competitive and sustainable, according to Consology.

“Online self-service solutions are among the few tools they have to cut cost out of their businesses while enhancing rather than hurting customer service.”

Meltzer says: “In our survey, we saw some signs that companies have still not fully got to grips with self-service. The respondents agreed that the cost of Web-based transactions was fairly low, but this goes up as soon as e-mail and voice calls are involved.”

He points out that only a single respondent was able to give the cost of servicing customers through self-service, and a quarter said their own employees were not familiar with their companies' self-service initiatives.

“This indicates that the next phase of self-service in SA should see companies really wrestle with the costs of customer service - perhaps by benchmarking costs and transaction times across channels so that they can invest with their eyes open. This is one trend to watch for in 2011.”

The other challenge, Meltzer reckons, South African companies still face is to align their self-service offerings with other channels and to integrate them into their customer care approach in a strategic manner.

“We still see a great deal of fragmentation between the channels that companies are using to market in SA. We expect to see this picture start to change, as companies make a concerted drive to push millions of customers towards self-service in the year to come.”

Companies will also leverage social networks as a way of enhancing customer care and communications, he predicts.

On the whole, Meltzer surmises, self-service “has come a long way in the short space of seven years since our first market survey”.

Online self-service is now thought about as seriously and strategically as call centres, branches and other channels by customer-facing companies, he adds.

“The benefits for both customers and companies will continue to grow as usage of Self-Service channels increases in 2011 and beyond.”