Improve customer service
Provide faster gratification to your customer
Educate your customer
Enable users to get more familiar with the product
Reduce personnel strain and costs
Free agents to solve more unique issues
Self service allows businesses to improve their customer service while reducing cost and strain on support personnel. A self-service portal is a website that offers self-service resources in the form of a searchable database. Thus users can find their own answers while still having the opportunity to reach out for further support, for example, via an AI chatbot or contacting live support.
Even though self-service exists in the world for quite some time, usual solutions are often spread in different channels and/or are outdated. ServiceNow with its all-in-one platform principle offers a great opportunity to build an effective service portal, be it for customers equipping them with knowledge-base articles, FAQs, chat services, tutorials, community and forums or employees with all the same resources, but also an option to manage their payroll, access the employee handbook, review benefits, read up on policies, update personal information and more.
Have a look at some of ServiceNow self-service capabilities:
- Service portal - a customised central location for users to locate solutions and track their requests. Powered by workflows all steps of the process are monitored, analysed and completely transparent.
- Virtual agent - a more personalised, intuitive experience than static resources.The best virtual agents even use natural language to respond to customer requests. Another bonus is the integration of Virtual Agent with Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and LINE to provide self-service in these channels.
- Knowledge management - an effective database of relevant resources with advanced search and personalization features.
- Communities - a safe place for users to work out solutions together, using the online forums or social communities. Combining the experience of users and the knowledge of support can give users more insights to a particular problem. Unsolved issues can still be assigned to agents.
- Service catalogue - an application that allows customers to request solutions directly from relevant departments, be it IT products or other corporate services.
Takeaway
Self-service provides faster, more effective and more cost-effective support for a customer that they can access at any time and from anywhere. Provide detailed helpful resources, make your portals easy to search and navigate, and do not forget to optimise them for desktop and mobile use. With these factors in place, your customers will benefit—and so will your business.