What have you found to be the best approaches for web self-service?

As the old adage goes, “if you want to get something done right, do it yourself.” I think that as a customer, many of us still live by that saying when trying to find answers to questions or problems. With today’s ultra-connected internet usage it’s sometimes easier to search and find exactly what you need, when you need it. No need to pick up the phone, attempt to traverse lengthy IVR prompts, only to still wait on hold. I’d rather multi-task and find information than have to replay the IVR prompts because I was easily distracted while loosely listening on the phone. But successful self-service requires diligence and planning. Here are some key ideas that an organization should investigate when supporting a self-service experience for its customers.

* Intuitive – the user interface needs to be simple to navigate, easy to understand, and provide as few clicks as possible to get your customer to the end goal, i.e. whatever he/she is looking for
* Relevant – the information being pushed to your customer must be up-to-date, meaningful, and easy to interpret
* Alternative – If something cannot easily be discerned or discovered, provide a proactive means to redirect your customer to another channel for fast resolution – a frustrated customer will only end up as an angry phone call

Listen to your customers and invest the resources. Your self-service strategy can and should evolve over time just like they do. Well, since irate customers really haven’t evolved all that much over the years though, perhaps it’s just easiest to keep them happy!

It's important to get the knowledge base to the customer and allow them multiple channels of interaction. Self Help and brand impression go hand in hand. Deploying strategies with support teams that get them focused on creating content as a goal, it makes the self help portal creation all the easier.

Yahoo just launched a new self help portal for Yahoo Messenger based on KCS(knowledge centered support) methods/ best practices. KCS is a great way to go because it focuses on creating content for the customer.

Take a look at Yahoo's Portal
http://help.yahoo.com/kb/index?page=product&y=PROD_MSNG

Brad Smith (@YahooThurry) praised Stone Cobra for their work.
Stone Cobra (@stonecobra) leads in solutions based on KCS best practices. So consider contacting them if you like the Yahoo portal.

The best approach: make it simple for your target audience and personalize the environment for each target segment.

Paul, Facing same questions from many SAP B2B companies. Old order entry sitess no longer fit the bill. They are asking for full fledged customer relationship and social web capabilities - Not just easy product searches and simplified order entry/statuses. But also critical components 360 degree view of all their interactions with the companies, Transactions, Collaboration - messaging (offline as well as live chat) with relevant customer service, technical support, credit/collections, shipping/order mgmt personnel. Web self service for B2B needs a true Social CRM where you have groupd of people working/collaborating over a common objective of buying and selling to meet the market needs. Fantastic SCRM opportunity.

Neil, great point on a customer record over time. In fact, I would note more specifically that companies need to use predictive and adaptive analytics to understand customer behaviors, and automatically provide them with personalized offers that meet their needs. This should be done on the Web, and consistently carried across all channels.

Sandeep, also valid point. Transparency, visibility, and collaboration are important in B2B. Perhaps even more important in the Web self service experience is allowing customers to interact in any channels they choose, when they want, and have that work routed seamlessly across the providing company and allow them to resolve service issues quickly and efficiently.

As a matter of fact, great Web self service and SCRM can all be achieved under the covers by a smart process-based approach to CRM using business process management (BPM).

Thanks for the insights Patrick. Maybe you can help me with this one. Do you know of any tools or plugins that I can use to develop these analytics? Preferably something that is connected to our database and can change with trends in our database. We have all of the data, we just need a tool to slice and dice it to give us some answers.

Hi Neil,

To respond to your specific question "Do you know of any tools or plugins that I can use to develop these analytics?". Pegasystems recently acquired Chordiant SW which provides companies with the ability to easily model past customer behavior data and provide smart recommendations and offers to customers in real time. eService is only a small part of the equation. To truly deliver self service you need strong configurable processes and integration across all areas. For example, self service in healthcare, insurance, etc. are not just about looking at info it is also about fulfilling needs which includes the coordinating of updating bills, changing service, etc. without calling someone to do it. It's all about end-to-end Web self service from information gathering all the way to fulfillment. Contact me on Twitter @ptripp or go to www.pega.com or http://www.pega.com/content/summary.asp?ci=618 for more info.

Patrick is correct. You can't do self-service analytics properly unless you can leverage configurable processes and integration across all areas. "All areas" include voice (speech analytics, phone, IVR) and the way the customer was routed within the enterprise. You need to leverage all of the great data gathered during the entire self-service process so you don't frustrate the customer by asking repeat questions. Last I checked Pega/Chordiant doesn't cross all of those channels.

To Neil's question about modeling tools: there are quite a few products that can develop predictions e.g. KXEN, SPSS, even SAS. The challenge is integrating them with the point-of-contact systems. This is why products like Chordiant end up owned by companies like Pegasystems (although I believe Chordiant is in fact capable of cross-channel deployment). You might look at thinkAnalytics, which I feel is particularly good at cross-channel recommendations.

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. I will start looking at some of these options.

Thanks for the note, Neil. To clarify, Pega leverages data across all channels providing for an intent-led experience. We have some great stories around this, contact me for more details.

About 2 years ago I deployed a web self-service solution for the customer base of a wireless company. We spent significant time reviewing software, process, function, reporting, tracking, etc. However, the lesson learned was the proper review of the information we were making available. We attempted to use internal resources, our Subject Matter Experts, to review/create the knowledge base. We didn't put as much structure, timelines, and management around the creation of the KB and ultimately this delayed the realized wins on the project. I would highly recommend that while your team is focusing on the selection of the solution (for which I would recommend you look at RightNow Technologies) you also have a team working to create/review your knowledge base. You can have all the tools in place to understand the effectiveness of your solution, but if the content is lacking you will only incur an additional cost in terms of systems and time, while your call volume continues at pre-launch levels. As Brad states above, be sure you get your customer experience people (probably a selection of call center agents, supervisors, and product people) to help create/review content. They are your frontline with the customer.

The customer wants to be in control, but they still want to contact you.

Make your contact page easy to find and easy to use.
The contact page needs to have emails and phone numbers. Answer promptly.

Make About Us, easy to find and read. The customer wants to know who you are, they are buying you more than the product.

I also agree with few clicks on the website, don't let the customer leave the website. Point all clicks back to your site or have a back button or home button on each page.
I have visited so many pages that once I clicked on an option I could no longer find the company I originally searched for or had to start over -- I lose interest here.

Here is a much simpler approach coming from the consumer in me.

Make it easy to find on your website - products, FAQ & a contact email and phone number to contact you.

When I do contact you have a trained CSR to answer my questions

I don't have a lot of time so save the 2 minute sales pitch and ask, have you ever tired X, would you like to know more?

The same is true for the 30+ second operator introduction. When a consumer is in a hurry or angry over a company issue the last thing I want to do is listen to a live commercial or company/employee account profile. KISS the calls Keep It Short & Simple.

Quality over quantity will generate quantity.

www.DailyCustomerService.info

Bring answers to your customers, rather than making them dig for answers. FAQs and Knowledge Bases are typically bad, so people just ignore them. But if you bring answers to them, they will read 'em. Our data has shown that documentation surfaced while a customer is typing a support message can actually help up to 40% of customers: http://ar.gy/o3w. On our account, we're personally seeing about 37% of customers being helped by this.

Join us in the lounge for more chat on this topic and a short podcast!
http://forums.pega.com/forums/crm-customer-experience/are-you-empowering-your...

Hi Gentlemen,
I have enjoyed reading your answers and would like to chime in with some direction for you. Self-Service is the flagship of our offerings; dating back 12 years ago. Working with B2C and B2B companies to provide the right tools and the best practices to provide a better customer experience, gather customer insights and interact in their preferred channel. If you visit our home page you will see that Gartner has ranked us as the far visionary leader for eService, Contact Center and most recently for social offerings. The client success cases speak to personalized offerings across all channels (web, chat, social, mobile, phone, email, etc) Please visit our site at www.rightnow.com ~ Sonya