The global customer self-service market is booming, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.4%. In other words? Self-service is taking over and becoming a key player in the customer service market, and both companies and consumers should take notice. Here’s everything you need to know.
The AI Self-Service Category is Growing
Self-Service: The Basics
First: what are we talking about when we discuss AI self-service? Well, according to Data Bridge Market Research, self-service is, “giving [customers] the access to the information [and] eliminating the need for customer representatives.” This can take many forms.
At AnswerDash, in particular, it exists as AI-powered Q&A and predictive self-service that’s overlaid throughout a website, directly at a customer’s point of need.
That said, it looks slightly different for each of the self-service players profiled in the investigation, which include AnswerDash, Aspect Software Inc., Avaya Inc., BMC Software Inc., Creative Virtual Ltd., eGain, Microsoft, Nuance Communications Inc., Oracle, SAP SE, Salesforce.com Inc., Verint, and Zendesk.
What is the overarching goal of the self-service that these companies offer?
Increase reach to customers and provide them with around the clock support when they need it
Satisfy and retain modern customers today
Allow customers to take the fastest services across various channels of information
Help with employee relationship management and customer relationship management
Help increase revenue by cutting down major expenses and cost
Why Self-Service Matters - And What’s Been the Holdup?
Today, this is really necessary for the modern technological climate. Tech-savvy customers expect instant satisfaction, and they want to find the information they’re looking for when they want it, at their point of need. To them, this is a non-negotiable.
In fact, according to a Salesforce report, a whopping 80% of customers said that the experience a company provides is as important as its products, and 67% said that their standards for those experiences are higher than ever. What’s more, when they don’t receive the experience they’re looking for - aka speed, personalization, and relevance - substantial numbers defect after just one bad experience.
In this increasingly demanding context, customer representatives become expensive, inefficient, and largely ineffective. Of course, this isn’t always the case - for the 20% of questions that are complex, personalized, high-value interactions, customer representatives are great. But that’s not the case 80% of the time, and that’s where a switch to AI self-service is really necessary.
Up until this point, though, it has been widely considered by many companies as a nice-to-have, not a must-have. This resistance, in large part, has to do with market restraints. These include:
High cost in maintaining and developing the technology will restrict the market growth
Less adoption of CSS technologies among organizations and lack of awareness among the customers may restrict the growth of the market
Increasing deployment of CSS tools is decreasing the personal engagement and interaction of companies with customers is restraining the market growth
It makes sense, to a certain extent: these technologies can be costly, complicated, and confusing - both for businesses and for consumers. But these hurdles are being overcome, and the pros are certainly outweighing the cons.
The Growth of Self-Service Moving Forward
Now, we see that the Global Customer Self-Service Software Market is set to witness a healthy CAGR of 18.4% in the forecast period of 2019 to 2026. The report contains data of the base year 2018 and historic year 2017.
So what’s changed and what has prompted this growth? Well, there were some general market drivers:
Rising penetration of web self-service solutions is driving the customer self-service market
Increasing needs to develop a better customer relationship will propel the market growth
Growing numbers of developers to have ventured into the area of specialty software products in the past few years is boosting the market
Increase in productivity and reduction of operational costs is a driver for this market
There were also some key specific developments:
In March 2018, Mulesoft was acquired by Salesforce which was a major step towards the growth. It enabled customers to access their Mulesoft accounts and apps, which enabled them to make faster decisions. This resulted in good overall customer experiences - plus, now they can work with more productivity due to fast availability of data
In October 2017, Healthx Inc. promulgates its association with Oracle. Healthx Inc., a giant in cloud-based digital engagement solution in the market. These solutions consist of various end-to-end solutions such as enrollment, membership management authorizations, value based payments, claims adjudication, digital self-service, digital payer/provider/patient collaboration which are all core administration capabilities of an organization which leads to increase their work productivity
Overall, this growth says a lot about the market, customer expectations, and the changing landscape of customer expectations. Namely - there is a rising need for instant information to improve operating efficiency and productivity.
That’s why we’ve reached a tipping point, and why the category of self-service is now well validated and profitable. Learn more about how to begin incorporating self-service into your business here.