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But for all these opportunities, the “sense” of personal service remains low—which is one reason so many people revert to the contact center. A good self-service site should take into account who is logging in, how long they’ve been a customer, what kind of customer they are and what kinds of offers they might consider. If this sounds far-fetched among carriers, that’s because little of it has been done yet. But just log onto Amazon.com and use it a few times. You’ll see an online shopping experience that is far more personal than can be found at many brick-and-mortar shops. Organizations need to realize this and build self-service commerce applications to make it more inviting, and secure, for customers to establish personas of sorts based on their interests. The work now is to take the idea of personalization and use it across all channels, based on one of the essential elements that are often missing – relevant, timely and accurate data.
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As with any sales scenario, the best solution this year may become outdated in the next. |
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appeared friendly and even fun. The design goal was to accommodate the second group without alienating the first: a tall but achievable goal.
Analytics can also tell you what people are doing on the site—where they go and what they respond to. Again, the data can be surprising. Eye tracking studies often show that people look between the lovely design elements in search of information. Analytics can reveal the collective visitor “footprints” on a site, showing which paths were taken, which were ignored, and where people jumped off. Knowing that will tell you a great deal about where to focus your design efforts. Customers should also be made aware through marketing campaigns not just of the existence of the site, but what self-service
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| More data and insight, put into practice
In looking for higher self-service adoption rates, companies need to do the careful analytics necessary to find out who is actually using the site, who is not, and why. The data can be surprising. For example, companies often want to move their “low-value” customers online. But the work Amdocs has done with telecommunication service providers has shown that it’s often the high-value customers who are most likely to use self-service channels. They are more apt to have a broadband connection at home, a laptop on the road, and a higher-than-average comfort level with Web transactions. Ergo: know thy online customer and design accordingly.
Of course, it’s not always that simple. One of our clients discovered that divergent groups all came to the site. The main users were goal-oriented planners who wanted a quick, fast, professional interface. But there was a less-confident second group, more open to recommendations, and—happily—more inclined to make impulse purchases—if the site
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features are available. Otherwise, customers land on the home page, solve their immediate concerns, and depart for other websites.
Changes are also needed at the backend because people are already availing themselves of multiple channels and expect continuity between them. This means that if you place an order by phone, you should be able to wheel your desk chair over to your computer, log onto the company site, and see the transaction posted. Otherwise, you’ll conclude that it hasn’t gone through. For this to happen, legacy information “silos” will need to be fully connected, with one system “aware” of the other’s activity. That said, the self-service challenge is primarily not a technical challenge, even though most projects are driven by IT. Customer operations are usually positioned better to know what is required.
Another trend affecting self-service is the Web 2.0 phenomenon of people creating their own content. That often plays out on self-service sites in the form of forums, where
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