SELF-SERVICE IS ABOUT EMPOWERMENT

Today's Self-Service Is About Empowerment — Not Compromise

BY|| TAKER

MONDAY 20TH JULY 

Self-service used to be about saving money by accepting a worse experience. You’d pump your own gas and leave with smelly hands and a still-dirty windshield, but at least you had saved a dollar or two. Instead of having a waitperson describe your options and guide you to the right choice, you’d push your tray through a cafeteria pointing at what you could only hope would fit your taste.

The whole philosophy was based on spartan virtue: You make do with less, pay less and settle for adequacy rather than true satisfaction. It’s time to rethink that mindset. Self-service can be the best experience a customer can get — and it should be.

Digital consumers want to get things done quickly and easily. Whether they’re purchasing a product, applying for a loan or checking their health insurance coverage, their ideal experience is one in which they get the information they need, when they need it, to make the right choice and get clear next steps. The last thing they want is to tie up a morning or afternoon in a phone queue.

American Express reports that more than 60% of Americans ”say that their go-to channel for simple inquiries is a digital self-serve tool such as a website (24%), mobile app (14%), voice response system (13%) or online chat (12%).” According to Forrester, two-thirds of customers say that the most important thing a company can do to provide good service is to value their time such as through easy and effective self-service. Similarly, Gartner, Inc. finds that customer effort is the strongest driver of customer loyalty — a full 40% more accurate as a predictor than customer satisfaction.

Digital technology now makes it possible to meet that expectation. We can deliver exceptional self-service experiences designed around empowerment and convenience, not compromise and settling for less. In fact, as Covid-19 has increased the focus on digital channels, it seems like organizations have made more progress in transforming self-service over the last 10 weeks than in the previous 10 years — and there’s no turning back now. Customers have discovered how easier things can be with a modern approach to self-service. By continuing to drive innovation, companies can keep saving people not only time but also stress and aggravation.

Begin your self-service transformation now.

Once you’ve embraced the concept of a more customer-centric self-service experience, making the evolution can be relatively simple. Start with what you know. Most companies understand that there are points of customer struggle or hesitation in their customer journey — that’s where you should focus your initial efforts. You can find low-hanging fruit by asking agents the top 10 types of calls they get in the contact center. Ask your web analytics teams the top abandonment and drop points in your website and mobile experiences.

Now that you’ve identified the places where assistance could be most useful, you can start introducing proactive digital guidance. Start with a single journey flow, addressing no more than six guidance points. Make sure they’re spread across the funnel—for example, two at the top of the funnel to engage customers when they first arrive, two at the middle to nudge them through the selection process and two at the bottom to help ensure a smooth checkout or submission. Measure the results you’ve achieved and then start transforming another journey flow.

To make customer-centric self-service an efficient and scalable part of your digital strategy, make sure the contextual guidance technology you’re using allows business users to tweak and iterate without IT or coding expertise. It’s important to stay on top of your metrics so you can recognize and address new struggle points as they emerge. Keep analyzing your results to see what’s working best, and use these learnings to drive continuous improvement.

As you make this transformation, it’s important to understand the changing role of self-service in the “new normal” and its implications for the kind of experiences you provide. In the past, self-service was typically optional; people could choose whether or not to use the available digital tools. A tech-savvy banking customer might feel comfortable handling many tasks on a mobile app, but others could always go into a branch for assistance from a teller. Now, far more people have been forced into the digital channel, and in many cases, their level of technological expertise might be significantly lower. That makes it especially important for your self-service experience to be simple and intuitive enough for anyone to use.

Ultimately, the goal should be for the term “self-service” is to become obsolete. Customers shouldn’t perceive digital tools as an option for those willing to settle for less; they should experience it as the most natural, simple and efficient way to complete their business. It’s not a compromise — it’s just a better way of doing things.

Guide — don’t hide — for a better customer experience.

You can’t improve a customer’s experience by pushing them away and hiding behind a self-service wall. Instead, get out in front. Anticipate their needs, empower them with relevant information and guide them to success.

Traditionally, self-service experiences have burdened customers with the kinds of tasks they once had help with — finding information, comparing options, navigating processes for applications and purchases and so on. Meanwhile, representatives become harder and harder to access, often buried in menus or phone trees. This one-two punch of a higher-friction experience with less assistance is hardly going to win customer loyalty.

However, the right kinds of digital technology can make self-service feel empowering, not burdensome, and remove friction rather than increasing it. For example, digital guidance can be used to offer the right kind of help before people need to ask for it, powered by data analytics that provides insight into each step of the customer’s experience. Are they searching for information? Comparing items? Hesitating on the checkout page? By understanding the nature of the customer’s confusion, indecision or friction, you can proactively offer information to help them understand sizing, features, assembly, shipping or whatever else is holding them up.