The internet revolution has brought with so many opportunities for small businesses, one being the opportunity to attract an international customer base. But with this opportunity comes the need for 24/7 technical support to meet global time zones. So what happens when a transaction fails? Or a customer can’t find the product or service they’re looking for?
With the need for 24/7 access comes the need for 24/7 technical support, which is where the introduction of self-service can help. Self-service makes sure customers, receive quick responses to any questions or technical difficulties they may be experiencing, without the need for 24/7 technical support customer service representatives.
There are countless self-service capabilities small businesses can implement, but here are some initiatives which we found to be a popular option for small businesses.
Self-help via access to FAQs and other helpful information
It might be “how-to” guides, workarounds for known problems, and even the use of YouTube videos for those that prefer visual rather than written assistance. Either way, by giving customers access to FAQs and information, users can solve the problems they’re experiencing in real time.
The Australian Taxation Office’s FAQ portal is a great example of a self-service initiative that has all the basic questions answered in one location, presented in a clear and easy to read manner.
Live-chat functions
Sometimes, human-to-human interactions are needed to help understanding or expedite matters. This can improve the response time for customers, as it can be a lot quicker than waiting in a telephone queue or for an email to be responded to, and the service desk agent can realise efficiencies by handling multiple chats simultaneously.
Live chat has become an extremely popular form of contact with customers, and with the development of artificial intelligence learning, we expect this channel to become a primary source of contact for businesses in the future.
Collaboration with other end users
Access to communal collaboration spaces such as communities, forums, wikis and other peer-support mechanisms can also be helpful for customers looking to resolve common issues or misunderstandings. By crowd-sourcing 24/7 technical support, customers not only resolve issues quickly, but administrators can also identify and rectify common problems that users are having.
Status checking for requests lodged
By giving users the ability to check service requests, small businesses can save their staff a lot of time. For example, a progress tracker can be used by the customer service department, allowing customers to check the progress of their request – whether the request about a refund, or a technical glitch.
On the IT side of things, self-checking the status of an incident or service request can save both the customer and service desk time.
Broadcast alerts and individual notifications
It seems like a given, but there are businesses that forget to inform customers about scheduled site maintenances, or that a service will be unavailable for some particular reason. This not only causes frustration for the customer, but also creates a backlog of support requests for staff to work through the next day.
By providing alerts to notify customers that a certain business service is going to be unavailable during a certain period, small businesses can prevent ticket request build ups, asking why a particular service is unavailable.
With majority of customer communications now taking place online, self-help options will be paramount to maintaining seamless operations in the future. Implementing self-help functions such as live-chat, FAQ pages and password reset capabilities, can help streamline the processes and ultimately create an efficient support system for both customers and small-business staff.
Sreelesh Pillai, General Manager, Freshdesk Australia
