The benefits of customer self-service portals and the features they offer have been among the most attractive trends in customer service. Businesses are seeking any chance to improve customer satisfaction and boost sales, and these portals seem like a great way to do so without a huge budget.
More businesses are becoming more aware of the digital world advantages, and more of them are lately aware of that after the coronavirus pandemic.
From revolutionary ways for communication with customers and offering them content to ways of selling them products and services in smarter ways, there are still many opportunities for businesses that need an edge over their competitors using digital technology, and customer self-service portals can always be a perfect choice.
The numbers also point to the fact that people are willing to serve themselves. According to a survey by Zendesk, 91% of the people who responded wanted to use a knowledge base to help themselves.
A report by Harvard Business Review also reveals that 81% of the researched customers try to serve themselves before reaching out to customer service. Also, 77% of Microsoft users have reportedly used a customer self-service portal.
What is a customer self-service portal?
A customer self-service portal is any website or application that helps customers or even partners and employees find answers to their questions, make orders, and buy products or services and serve themselves without human interference.
A customer self-service portal doesn’t need to be used solely as a support team can always exist to back it up at any time, but with fewer team members and improved service from the agents that will get much fewer requests and only answer complicated questions.
With customers navigating a self-service software themselves, there are many benefits that businesses can take advantage of.
Benefits of customer self-service portals
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Reducing costs
When customers, partners, or even employees serve themselves, it means much fewer agents are needed and the software that is developed one time will do most of the work.
With fewer agents, one of the biggest advantages is less costs due to the fewer number of employees. So as you invest in customer self-service software for one time, you will save much money quickly.
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Improving employee productivity
One of the greatest advantages of customer self-service portals is that they improve the productivity of customer service employees.
The employees will no longer need to answer repetitive questions and save time and will be more productive in answering more complex questions and helping the customers have a better experience.
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Boosting sales
Improving customer experience can definitely increase sales. A customer who is more impressed by the experience is more likely to come back to buy another product or service and can recommend the company to others all the time.
The positive impression left by customers with the automated portal will have a positive impact on your sales and reputation.
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Boosting social media interaction
Customer self-service software can help businesses direct their customers to their social media accounts easily and automatically leading to more interaction with these accounts.
Through social media, the business can then build stronger relationships with customers and partners and deliver updates, promotions, and assistance directly through time.
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Getting more powerful insights
As you offer a customer self-service portal, you will help customers get a better experience, and at the same time, you will be able to track their behavior better than ever and gather more insights.
The insights you gather about user behavior, questions, and problems will help you offer them a better customer experience and even learn what to improve about your product or service.
Make sure your customer self-service portal features an insight and tracking tool that is powerful enough.
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Increasing recommendations
Many customers, especially the younger ones, are going to be more impressed with self-service as that is what they are searching for.
Many of the younger users are even trying to use FAQ pages first to solve their problems before contacting customer service, which means they will totally love a self-service platform.
When these customers are impressed, they are more likely to even spread the word and recommend you to new customers.
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Improving content delivery
Through customer self-service portals, your business can deliver content in the form of videos and visuals more easily.
The portal can be a perfect place where customers or users are going to watch video guides you have invested in to interact more and understand what they need to understand freely and on-demand.
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Increasing website traffic
Businesses are sometimes wondering how to increase website traffic without paying too much for Google ads or Facebook ads. This is one way to do it.
Offering customers an automatic way to get their own knowledge can help you make them go to your website and see the content you are publishing, which would be a great step for building authority.
Do you think your business can take advantage of all of this? You can have a custom customer self-service portal that will enhance your business and help you sell more. Check some of our success stories with custom software and let us discuss more.
