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How complete self-service models improve CX, boost revenue per customer and deliver on personalization
With over 130 million live answers served and counting, Zoomin is trusted by many accomplished brands worldwide to deliver stellar product content experiences
As the internet becomes a more crowded place and customer service reps find themselves scrambling to meet the needs of consumers, businesses are faced with providing customer self-service options as a means to get customers the help they need. But what is customer self-service, and what is a self-service portal? As the term implies, customer self service is the process by which customers are able to seek and find answers on their own. A self-service portal, by extension, is a platform that allows customers to search for the answers and solutions they need.
In terms of how to create a customer portal, there are several options available. One of the most popular methods for creating customer self-service options is using a platform like Zoomin, which allows users to create data-driven intuitive product content experiences. Zoomin improves the customer experience for enterprise companies with complex products and empowers customers to not only resolve their questions independently, but discover new, valuable ways to use products, thereby establishing a new standard in enterprise user experience. With Zoomin’s platform, users can publish consistent information about their products, even as that information changes over time as their offerings evolve. Zoomin can also help analyze the current customer experience and improve the way customers learn about companies’ products to improve the overall customer experience.
With over 130 million live answers served and counting, Zoomin is trusted by many accomplished brands worldwide to deliver stellar product content experiences and more. Zoomin could make it more manageable for customers to adopt and resolve product issues on their own with personalized product answers available to them. This software is powered by actionable insights, enabling users to analyze their content performance to unveil blind spots in their customer journey and continuously improve how customers self-serve. With Zoomin, you can create exceptional content experiences, providing valuable self-service options to your customers, and enterprise-wide impact.
With the aid of customer self-service software, you can be well on your way to creating options for self-service online. Customers generally appreciate being given the tools to research their questions and find answers without having to sit through long lines—whether in person or virtual. A self-service software portal provides the means through which they can serve themselves and receive the help they need on their time and in their own way.
The best customer self-service software for your business depends on a number of factors. For example, you might have to consider: what is the size of your business? How many customers do you typically interact with on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis? How many live support agents do you employ, and what are your specific needs as far as self-service options? If your business is on the smaller side and you don’t typically get many customer service requests, you may not need the most elaborate self-service software.
If, on the other hand, you find that your support team always has their hands full, you might consider investing in a robust self-service system by which customers can find their own answers to questions. Thankfully, there are many different customer self-service software options to suit the needs of different kinds of businesses.
When designing a customer self-service portal, it’s important to keep in mind your must-have customer portal features. For example, you might include video tutorials demonstrating how to use a certain product. If your product is less complex, a few short resource guides may suffice. Ultimately, your customer service portal should seek to address whatever questions or concerns pop up most frequently among your customers. It should provide fast, easy access to the most common issues they encounter.
Self-service portals are great for helping customers in a more efficient way. However, they may not be a total substitute for live support. Oftentimes, the best customer portals are used in tandem with customer service agents. These portals can help customers with most issues, but you may still want to have personnel available to assist users with more complex problems. Ideally, customers should be directed to seek answers through the portal first, and then, if their question still hasn’t been answered, get in touch with a support agent who can provide personalized support. Of course, your portal should be easy to use—a portal that’s difficult to navigate can create further problems and an even more confusing situation for customers that are already likely confused about something.
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If you’re stumped on how to create a quality customer self-service system for your business, you can view customer self-service examples for ideas. There are many different types of customer self-service portal examples, and depending on what you’re hoping to achieve with your self-service tool, you may want to look into several. The best customer portal examples should provide a clear look at how the portal was created and how it was deployed to effectively serve customers. You might come across an example that you really like, but it isn’t quite compatible with your business model or software capabilities. In that case, you could tweak a few things in order to customize it according to your unique needs and preferences.
Zoomin has case studies and customer portal examples of multiple customers reducing documentation-related support tickets, or customers improving technical documentation to create useful content experiences. These are examples of results users were able to obtain by creating technical resource centers for their websites and promoting customer self-service with superior technical documentation. These are just a few examples of how Zoomin has been able to help businesses reach their customers and provide top-notch self-service support.
Digital self-service has become a popular choice for businesses looking to offer more efficient ways to serve their customers. While each self-service strategy is unique, and your company will likely want to test various methods, depending on the specifics of your business operations, the ultimate aim of this type of service is to help customers receive quality support, while freeing up hands on your end to perform other tasks. One of the best factors about digital self-service is that customers are generally able to help themselves wherever they are located in the world. As a result, there may be no need to travel to a physical location in order to get support. That said, the self-service customer relationship matters.
Fortunately, Zoomin offers a number of different tools to help companies create digital self-service solutions. Zoomin helps users align their content journey to the customer journey, reduce customer effort and eliminate frustration, and shine a light on friction points with data insights. The Zoomin platform works by connecting to the tools and formulas you already use to ingest all your company’s technical content. It proactively offers personalized product answers tailored to the unique needs of every customer.
The advantages of customer self-service are evident by the statistics that show it is an efficient way for businesses to deliver support. In fact, there are many customer self-service statistics that demonstrate the value of this type of service. Whether you’re looking for customer service statistics to get an idea of what good customer service looks like, or you’re conducting self-service research of your own, there are many different resources that prove the effectiveness of customer self-service.
For instance, Zoomin notes that 52% of support cases can be avoided through great content experiences, 90% would recommend a product after a good content experience, and 70% of traffic goes to product content. If you don’t work to fix and enhance your product content experience, the customer journey will remain perpetually broken. This is why it’s critical to dig into the customer experience statistics for yourself, see the value of self-service firsthand, and look for ways to implement these tools and resources into your business.
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