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How do you get/influence your customers to understand which channels to use for which issues?
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5 Answers
Guy, the best way to influence customers to use different channels is to first assess what are the tasks customers can most successfully accomplish via each channel and who uses them (customer segments)
Example: You can spend a great deal to promote self-care channels but if they are not easy to use or do not match to what a customer needs and who is likely to use them, you are throwing good money after bad.
Assess what is successful now, direct customers to these paths through promotion and then work on a migration plan that includes process mapping and improving the UI and reducing the friction to complete a customer task. Over time you will be able to more cost effectively direct more customers to the lower cost channels when they are optimized experiences tailored to expectations.
Guy, when I read the question, I immediately think of my (Customer Support) clients who are forever trying to drive down the cost of service delivery, by getting more customers to use the Self Service Portals.
There are essentially two factors to consider:
1. Make it easy for the customer. (Thanks, Charles Miller!)
2. Make it valuable for the customer.
For details on making it easy, read Charles' response.
Making it valuable means making the Self Service Portal the "go-to" place for the customer - the default source for anything and everything that they might get from your company.
Example:
A software company client of mine wanted to increase the utilization of the Self Service Portal. So, in addition to Knowledge Base content and other support tools, they move software downloads, sales chat, and their customer forum to the portal. Weekly reports were previously delivered through email, but clients now could access their reports anytime, through the Portal (which was easier for the clients to manage).
By centralizing all customer-facing content to the Self Service Portal, by making it so much more than a Support channel, most customers began bookmarking the portal, or making it a "Favorite."
Within six months, the percentage of support requests initiated in the Portal increased from 12% to 69%, and the customers loved it!
So, by making Self Service (or any support channel) very easy to use, and by making it very useful for the customer (beyond simply support), you’ll likely generate more traffic.
(Funny, how customers always seem to respond favorably, when you deliver value!)
Thanks, for another great question, Guy.
Jim Watson
http://bit.ly/efrxOg
Guy, when I read the question, I immediately think of my (Customer Support) clients who are forever trying to drive down the cost of service delivery, by getting more customers to use the Self Service Portals.
There are essentially two factors to consider:
1. Make it easy for the customer. (Thanks, Charles Miller!)
2. Make it valuable for the customer.
For details on making it easy, read Charles' response.
Making it valuable means making the Self Service Portal the "go-to" place for the customer - the default source for anything and everything that they may want from your company.
EXAMPLE:
A software company client of mine wanted to increase the utilization of the Self Service Portal. So, in addition to Knowledge Base content and other support tools, they relocated software downloads, sales chat, and their customer forum to the portal.
Weekly reports were previously delivered through email, but clients now would access their reports anytime, through the Portal (which was easier for the clients to manage).
By centralizing all customer-facing content to the Self Service Portal, by making the Portal MUCH MORE VALUABLE than a Support channel, most customers began going there more often.
Within six months, the percentage of support requests initiated in the Portal increased from 12% to 69%, and the customers loved it (by the way, so did the support organization!)
So, by making Self Service (or any support channel) very easy to use, and by making it very useful for the customer (beyond simply support), you’ll likely generate more traffic.
(Funny, how customers always seem to respond favorably, when you deliver value!)
Thanks, for another great question, Guy.
Jim Watson
http://bit.ly/efrxOg
We believe that creating relationship with customers builds trust and in that space you can influence/educate them as to which channel would best suit their needs in any particular situation. The fact that self service is available 24/7 is a benefit to them should be made a plus--especially for simple transactions where a human is not necessary. Response time is also a benefit to the customer -- self service response time is immediate, compared to the lapse between emails or voicemails. Bottom line: show the customer how it would benefit and be valuable for them to get what they want/need when they want/need it by using various channels, many of which do not require a human so as to keep costs down.
The default approach is to hide the details of the contact centre and actively promote the website: FAQs, online accounts etc. The idea here is that if you make it hard for the customer to contact you then he/she will do less of that. It certainly works. Yesterday I got a bill from Sky and wanted to talk to someone about it. I didn't do that because there was no contact number and I could not be bothered to hunt around for it.
Getting back to your question I cannot help but think that your question shows that you are living in the CRM world: how do we get customers to do what we want them to. It didn't work out well as you know.
Perhaps a better question to ask is simply this: how can we quickly scale up and provide and staff up the interaction channels that our customers want to use. Better still go the Amazon route: what can we do to make sure that everything works first time and so customers just do not need to contact us.
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