Be proactive and help your users out before they need to ask for help. How? By using self-service.
With most of elevio’s customers being SaaS companies, it seems obvious that self-service is a big need especially for digital businesses. When interactions take place online there’s an underlying expectation to always be able to get help and talk to someone, since it’s generally easy to connect with someone on the web.
However, especially for small companies it can be impossible to offer live support 24/7, so you need to make sure your customers can still get the help they need when and where they need it.
This is where self-service comes in.
Self-service allows you to provide outstanding customer service on a large scale, while keeping the cost much lower than compared to every other direct way of support.
According to a study by Forrester Research, 72% of customers actually prefer self-service to help solve their issues over picking up the phone or sending an email.
It’s likely that new customers aren’t quite ready to get in touch with a person yet, since they’re new to the service or product you’re offering and might just be confused about something or looking to set something up by themselves. Offering a self-service option allows them to go through the issue in their own time, as well as serves the keen DIY crowd.
While an FAQ page solves part of this need, it draws customer off-page, distracting them from what they were originally trying to do, and leading them away from your core offering.
Having a knowledge base that sits on-site, which can serve customers with the exact help they need at the exact time they need it will lead to happier customers that are more likely to stick around for longer. The key here is to provide relevant contextual information.
Being able to provide targeted and on-point advice and help will result in your customers being positively surprised and not having to reach out to your support team as much. For your team this means less time spent sending support emails, freeing up more time to focus on other tasks. So overall there will be less support expenses and more engagement.
Perhaps you’re wondering how self-service works for other companies?
We’ve put together a whole list of businesses that offer self-service alongside personal support, some of which we have interviewed here.
While it’s important to be proactive and help your customers help themselves, this doesn’t replace actual human support. Personal connections and relationships still make the best companies and gain the most trust, and therefore long-term customers.
What’s your experience with self-service? Have you tried elevio to help with offering relevant contextual help? You can sign up for a free trial here and get in touch anytime (yes, with a real person) if you want to have a chat.