Best Practices For Online Self-Service

BY SEAN FORBES

Today, almost everyone understands the business case for using the Web as a self-service support channel. Each time a customer finds an answer to his or her own question on your Web site rather than e-mailing you or calling you, your company can save somewhere between $5 and $30 -- depending on your per-incident operational costs. Multiply that by hundreds or thousands of incidents per month, and you can see why even relatively small companies have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars annually by transforming their Web sites into powerful self-service resources.

Plus, customers like finding their own answers online. With the Web, they can get the information they need immediately, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They don't have to waste their time on hold and they don't have to deal with the uncertainty of waiting for an e-mail reply that they're never quite sure will come.

Unfortunately, poor execution has caused some companies to miss out on the benefits of Web-based self-service (also known as "e-service"). Because these companies make a few very basic mistakes, their customers continue to use the phone and e-mail rather than the Web. As a result, customers still have to wait for answers from a service rep. And, the full potential savings of e-service are never realized by the company.

BEST PRACTICES FOR SUCCESSFUL E-SERVICE
The good news is that no one has to make these same mistakes. The lessons learned by thousands of early e-service adopters point clearly to several best practices that can ensure success and maximize benefits. These principles are broadly applicable to Web sites in virtually any industry. And many of them cost little or nothing to implement.

By following these best practices, companies are experiencing self-service rates of 90 percent and higher. That means nine out of ten customers are finding immediate answers for themselves online, without having to involve a customer service rep at all. Here are some of the best practices that characterize the most successful e-service implementations:

Make sure that self-service content addresses customers' most-frequently asked questions. Successful e-service implementers don't worry about building the perfect knowledgebase. Instead, they start with a relatively small number of knowledge items, and build from there. More important than quantity is quality. A very large percentage of customers can usually be helped with a relatively small number of knowledge items -- if those items answer the questions that customers ask most. This requirement can be fulfilled by tracking the items customers click on most frequently and monitoring the keywords they use in their searches.

Automate the creation and maintenance of the self-service knowledgebase. If people in your company have to spend a lot of time building and maintaining the self-service knowledgebase, it will become a big bother. Soon, it will be neglected and become out of date. That's why automation is critical. The right software can streamline the process of creating and updating knowledgebase items, allowing service reps and others to quickly post information as they're dealing with live customers.

Don't put a toll-free number or e-mail form before self-service content. This is a simple, but critical, issue. If you present customers with an 800 number or a "Contact Us" page with e-mail addresses before they even try to find an answer to their own question, then that's what they'll use. It's much smarter to direct customers to your self-service content first, and then give them another way to contact you if they can't find what they need. This encourages them to make an initial attempt at helping themselves and, over time, gets them in the habit of using the Web site as their primary service and support resource.

Get customers the answers they need in a single click. This concept goes hand-in-hand with the preceding one. If customers don't see a phone number or e-mail address right away, they better see some helpful content. After all, it doesn't matter how well-stocked your knowledgebase is if your customers can't quickly find the specific piece of information they need. Logical hierarchical organization, good text search functions, and premier positioning of the most important items are all essential to pleasing customers and realizing the full cost-saving potential of self-service.

Use graphics and interactive content. Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. So instead of just answering frequently asked questions with text, it's often a good idea to use diagrams, photos, or even streaming media. Many successful e-service implementers also use interactive content with pull-down menus and/or decision trees that help customers quickly drill their way down to the specific information they seek.

Leverage your knowledgebase across all support channels. While self-service has been proven to answer anywhere from 75 to 95 percent of customers' questions (depending on how well it has been implemented), it's still important to have a good strategy in place for dealing with the remaining questions. One useful component of such a strategy is to apply the e-service knowledgebase to other communications channels, such as e-mail and phone. E-mails, for example, can be automatically scanned for keywords to enable an automatic reply with a knowledgebase item. And customer service reps can become more productive by browsing knowledgebase items themselves as they help customers. This leveraging of the self-service knowledgebase is especially valuable in helping new employees and trainees become more productive more quickly -- a key consideration in the high-turnover world of the call center.

Track performance. You can't improve what you don't measure. To ensure that customers are happy with self-service content -- and to pinpoint any necessary changes in e-service offerings -- companies should use online surveys as part of their overall Web service strategy. Other statistical data, such as the number of e-mails coming from your Web site and call center volume, can also indicate how well your online self-service initiative is going.

Have a champion. The most successful e-service initiatives are those with a strong internal champion. E-service typically requires buy-in from across the organization: product management teams to provide technical knowledge items, marketing managers to make the necessary changes to the Web site, customer service staff to apply best practices on a daily basis, and so on. This can only happen if there is someone to effectively champion the initial implementation and maintain a focus on continuous improvement over time.

CONCLUSION
Perhaps the most important best practice for implementing self-service on the Web is one that is implicit in all those listed above. E-service excellence requires more than just the right technology. It requires the right processes, techniques, and teamwork. So, in addition to deploying effective e-service software, companies that want to be successful at answering customers' questions via the Web should also stay close to a good source of e-service expertise and experience. This combination of the right tools and the right practices can lead to tremendous increases in customer satisfaction while achieving significant reductions in the cost of providing superior service -- a major competitive differentiator at a time when customer satisfaction is crucial and budgets are tighter than ever.

Sean Forbes is vice president of marketing and business development at RightNow Technologies, an e-service solutions provider. RightNow's eService suite includes Web-based self-service, e-mail response management, live chat and collaboration, and service analytics. Their customer list includes the likes of Ben & Jerry's, Black & Decker, British Airways, Cisco, Lufthansa, Motorola, Pitney Bowes, Sanyo, the Social Security Administration, and more than 1,100 organizations in total.