In the world of business ownership, there are very few maneuvers which have zero downsides. Of the few exceptions, offering a customer self-service web portal is high on the list. Creating and maintaining a self-service portal can be a lot of work on your own, but luckily, PhaseWare can make that process a breeze, giving your company invaluable benefits.
The main function of a customer self-service portal is incident deflection. In order to help serve your customers quickly and accurately, PhaseWare’s Self-Service Center (SSC) offers features like a well-mapped and easily searchable FAQ will cut down on any service wait time. This will also help ease the demand on your employees to respond to customer concerns, reducing the amount of customers who actually wind up needing human support for their issue. Alongside an FAQ, PhaseWare can present to the customer a wide set of knowledge bases, solutions, downloads and forums, all fully customizable to match your company’s look and meet your company’s speed.
Having customer self-service portal also creates an option for the customer to take control of their situation and seek out resolutions for their own benefit, which may be more effective in reducing repeated contacts for the same problem. If the customer is able to read through the process, resolve their own questions, and walk away feeling informed, the experience is entirely positive and likely to stick with them if anything similar should take place in the future.
PhaseWare’s Self-Service Center will also make it possible for your customers to reach the support they need 24 hours a day, even if you are not able to keep staff on the ready around the clock. Additionally, if it turns out that the customer’s issue isn’t able to be resolved through any of the informational centers, your customer will not have to wait to let you know about their experience. He or she will be able to submit and track their own tickets online, which helps calm the anxiety of waiting through other modes of service. The availability of such a tool will improve your company’s image and help you keep a higher level of satisfaction with your customers, day or night.
With all of these benefits, and even more yet unmentioned, utilizing the Self-Service Center will also result in reducing costs spent across the board. There is no need to employ 24 hour customer support, which will cut drastically back on spending. Whenever employees are available, the Self-Service Center will make it so that they spend less time focusing on customer issues, and more time available to support your company by other means. The positive side effects of offering a customer self-service portal are nearly unending.
It’s all about reducing unnecessary customer support contacts, and increasing the peace of mind on all accounts. When your representatives are free to target their talents, the results will show with higher levels of customer and employee satisfaction.
