Customer Service

We've entered a totally new age in customer service, due to solutions on-line, which can offer competent replies to customer problems in a manner that is much cheaper for the company, even less costly than e-mail or telephone assistance. The new era provides customers with the opportunity of seeking their own solutions, solving their own problems and, without the wait. So where's the money?

Customer Service Using the Internet

The number of customer questions posed on the Internet and answered through the self-service channels is growing so fast, that, according to recent research, it is estimated that it will reach about 1.8 billion, by 2007. Consequently, the providers of self-service systems will soon turn into an industry of $9.2 billion, all by itself.

Nevertheless, companies have to deal with providing low cost, but meaningful and high quality services, in order to keep the clients satisfied. Also, in order to attract more customers and turn them into regular customers, the company has to mind the customer service and offer a consistent number of options to its clients. Among the options companies normally offer, there are: e-mail, web navigation, phone support, self-service etc.

Self Service Customer Support

Companies tend to prefer self-service as it implies live support and provides the opportunity to costs reduction. One of the great things about self-service is the fact that it can offer replies to the most commonly asked questions and this way, the necessity of direct contact through telephone or e-mail, is considerably reduced, which has as a positive result important cost savings.

The possibility of providing the right answer is one of the main attributes to be taken into consideration when selecting a self-service solution. The selected search services must provide to the customers the possibility of focusing on only one answer, which is why there are lists with key topics and linguistics is used to generate single answers. In order to gain the customer confidence, the most recent technologies are designed in such precise manner that they can actually provide 98% accuracy of the answers.

Moreover, natural language understanding is also of great importance in self-service solutions. Thus, the solution must be ready to bear a dialog and to analyze queries in natural language, as usually, users respond better to natural language search and, consequently, they will use it more frequently.

Self Service Support the Right Way

It is always recommended for companies to elect the type of self-service solutions that works flawlessly from their websites and, at the same time, is able to lead the customer, by means of a transition from the main site to the adjunct self-service site. Technology has reached such a high level that, based only on the understanding of the question and of the subject matter, it can even transfer the client to an affiliate site.

Each company implementing a self-service solution should be able to use existing data. The automated solution should contain information like: videos, voice slips, web pages and files, suggested or related topics and manuals, because all these sources contain important data for the customer.

Nevertheless, every self-service solution should be able to establish when a question cannot receive a reply and escalate it to the right channel in order to provide a solution when necessary. There is no doubt that will always be questions that must be answered by a human, but utilizing the right help desk software considerably reduces the number of issues to be solved.