It's Time To Up The Ante On Your Web Self-Service Approach

Your customers won't settle for sub-par self-service on your site.

It’s 2016. Your customers and website visitors expect to be able to find what they need on your site right when they need it. And if they can’t find what they need, you can expect 57% of them to abandon your website when the going gets tough and answers aren’t easily available.

Maybe your response to that is, “Well that’s ok, I’ve got a really thorough FAQ section. That’s self-service, right?” Yes, that counts, but only in the most primitive sense. FAQs and knowledge bases force your web visitors to leave what they’re doing on your site to seek out answers to their questions. (And did you know that less than 1% of most websites' visitors ever go to those "help islands"— i.e. stand-alone knowledge bases, FAQs, and forums?)

SEE ALSO: DON’T LET THEM LEAVE THE PAGE! THE DEATH OF THE STATIC FAQ

According to the Real Self-Service Economy report, 70% of approximately 3000 consumers in a global survey said they expect a company website to include a self-service application that will help them get customer service on their own terms. So maybe your FAQ section isn’t the best self-service approach.

Right Answers, Right Place, Right Time

So here’s the million dollar question — how can you provide an online self-service experience that will live up to your customers’ expectations and improve their overall satisfaction with your company? It’s simple — by showing the right answers, in the right place, at the right time.

This quick 5 point checklist can help you understand the steps required to enable a web self-service strategy on your site that does just that.

After reading the 5-step checklist, you'll understand how to:

  1. Uncover if your website would benefit from run-time content (and learn what the heck run-time content is).

  2. Regularly audit the actual helpfulness of your “help”.

  3. Keep your web visitors on track to their goal.

  4. Reduce the amount of work your visitors must do to get the help they need.

  5. Make it easy for your visitors to escalate to personalized help when they need to.

With the right strategy on your website, you take the work out of your web experience for your customers. You end up helping them help themselves—and everyone wins.

 

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