These days, customers expect the availability of self-service options, 24/7.  Airline passengers can print boarding passes at home, the cruise ships offer kiosk concierges to help vacationers find their way back to their rooms, the smartphone provides access to information from a clinic while a patient is waiting for a doctor to arrive, and the Web offers unlimited help to customers. 

To be customer-friendly, self-service needs to have an effective customer service design. Follow these design principles by Alister & Pain for creating successful customer self-service:

Build Anticipatory Self-Service Options: Hospitality companies like The Ritz-Carlton anticipate even the unexpressed wishes of their customers. This is what Alister & Pain call “anticipatory customer service,” where a desire is anticipated and then fulfilled with no customer effort. Self-service should be anticipatory due to its ability to accept customized input from the customers.

The best implemented self-service helps suggest choices and behaviors in an intelligent manner. Alister & Pain used Siri as an example of successful interactive voice response (IVR) self-service. They wrote, “Yesterday I confided to Siri: ‘My teeth are bothering me. Siri responded: I found a number of dentists. 23 are fairly close to you.’”

Another example is Gmail that warns users that they are sending out an email without an attachment, as well as Gmail’s “mail goggles” which prevents drunk-emailing that users may regret later. Also, Amazon.com (News - Alert) lets customers know which items they are likely to end up purchasing based on interests. Even IBM’s technology in dressing rooms suggests complementary ties based on the sportswear customers try on.

Respect Usability: Usability must be respected as reinventing the wheel is self-defeating behavior. The search bar should be smack dab at the top of a web page, where your customers expect it.

So, why do customers despise IVRs? Alister & Pain suggest it is because companies ignore or try end-runs around the rules of usability for such systems. For example, most people can’t retain in memory more than thirty seconds of information at a time, so an IVR with more than thirty seconds of options or information will confuse customers.

There are similar rules about how many menu items a customer can remember, yet some companies mangle their application of this rule by loading up each option with sub options: ‘‘For Office A, Office B, or Office C, press 1.’’ That one single sub option demands that the customer remember four things: three departments and the menu number.

Build an Escape Route: Build in escape routes for customers that take them directly to humans who can help when they’re stuck.  If you ask, “Did this answer your question?’’ at the end of your FAQs, consider what should happen if the customer’s response is ‘‘No, it didn’t answer my question.’’ Alister & Pain suggest an answer of, ‘‘I’m so sorry, we obviously have room for improvement; click here and a live human being will assist you.’’