Improve Customer Experience through a well planned Online Self Service Strategy
We have seen the tremendous rise in internet usage in the recent past. Even with such fast growth, internet penetration is only about 25% of the world population with a large scope for further growth. Also, commerce over the internet is growing due to increased transaction security and ease of operation. Companies should take advantage of this online channel for trade to increase customer satisfaction and reduce cost of operations through a self service facility. But in order to take the full advantage of online channel, companies should conduct a detailed study of the various factors involved before embarking on their online strategy.
Some points worth considering before implementing an online Self Service application are:
- Identify the type of customers who are going to use the self service application (e.g. consumers, business users, distributors etc).
- Check if self service functionality is absolutely essential for the company to increase revenue / improve customer experience / reduce operational costs.
- Perform a Cost Benefit Analysis (investment vs. the revenue/cost reduction) before making a decision to implement self service.
- Conduct an analysis of the requests made by the customers through retail stores / call centers and apply 80-20 rule to decide the functionalities to be offered through self service.
- Keep in mind the broadband penetration in the geographies where the self service application needs to be launched.
- Try to keep the functionality very simple so that customers can use it easily and effectively. Simple websites can fetch quick and more revenue.
- Transaction security is one of the factors that need to be considered.
- Check if the current trend of Social Networking (through Facebook, Twitter etc) can help increase customer satisfaction, loyalty and increase order conversion rate etc.
- Identify the services that you would like to offer to the customer via the self service mode based on the cost-benefit analysis. Some of the services like disconnection of services are not advisable to be offered through self service channels.
- Segregate the functionalities into real time service or non real time services.
- Ensure that you have appropriate teams to handle requests received through self service channels.
- Try to implement the self service functionality in phases in order to minimize risks and improve usability.
- Ensure that your current systems are capable of handling some of the most important services offered through internet like up-sell / cross-sell, product comparison, personalized offers etc.
- Try and ensure that the customer experience obtained through self service is comparable with the experience through retail stores by providing functionalities like click to call or click to chat etc.
- Find ways to motivate customers to use self service application rather than call centers.
It is very essential to perform the analysis of the above factors before deciding on an online self service strategy. A carefully designed self service application can go a long way in improving customer experience, and customer satisfaction rates while reducing costs of operation.
