Today’s customers are empowered by new technologies more than ever before. For 97% of customers, customer service has a major impact on the brands that they choose, according to the 2016 Microsoft State of Global Customer Service report. Another study reported that 75% of customers expect a self-service option. As a result, today’s customer service must be able to respond to the growing requirements of immediacy and autonomy.
Keeping customers happy isn’t the only advantage of self-service customer support solutions reduced costs to the call center is another important benefit. According to Forrester, automated customer support solutions like self-service can decrease the per interaction cost by up to 81%.
The key to providing an excellent automated customer support experience is a clear understanding of the customer’s request in their own words, however they describe it and a fully connected customer support information infrastructure to ensure accurate access to the information they need, across your knowledge bases.
Self-Service Customer Support Solutions: 3 Examples
Our customer, Vodafone needed to be able to manage a large amount of messages while also reducing costs. Thanks to the cognitive capabilities of Cogito, Vodafone could automatically handle 80% of the text messages sent to Vodafone’s 190 SMS service, which amounted to 250,000 requests per month. And, it did so with 90% accuracy This self-service customer support solution not only helped Vodafone manage more messages faster with lower costs, it also enhanced the user experience by providing prompt answers to customer’s requests.
We provided another self-service customer support solution to ING Direct. In this case, ING Direct wanted to simplify access to its online content for its visitors, while streamlining the work of call center operators. Expert System addressed the challenges of ING Direct by implementing an advanced semantic search engine for the company website, optimized to retrieve the specific information requested by users. As a result, it reduced call center requests by 46%. Thanks to the cognitive capabilities of Cogito, the search engine is able to understand users’ requests and provide customized suggestions for their research.
Finally, we can’t talk about self-service customer support solutions without talking about chatbots. 44% of customers said that they would prefer to use a chatbot for customer service, according to the 2016 Aspect Consumer Experience Index. Chatbots meet many of the new requirements for customer service: they are available 24/7, they make users feel understood and they provide them with the one-to-one support that today’s customers expect.
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These self-service customer support solutions are addressing the most important requirements for today’s modern customers: autonomous, always available support. Today’s customers demand freedom, and providing them the right tools to achieve it is every company’s duty.
