10 Strategies for Enhanced Web Self Service A Call Centre Helper White Paper Sponsored by
1. Fast, Effective, Personalised Service When customers have questions they usually go to the place where they can find answers in the shortest possible time and with the least effort. Frequently, that place is the Web; and the way they access the information they need is increasingly self-service. As the Sunday Times newspaper wrote in March 2012 If people want self-service they use the web; if people pick up the phone they want to speak to a person. Customer relationships maybe more complicated than ever before, and the technology used more intricate, but the basic description of what quality service looks like never changes. It s about giving people the best possible service, as quickly as possible, while keeping cost within acceptable levels. Web self-service today is about so much more than just cheap service delivery. It s about instant customer satisfaction - comparable and sometimes better than a live-agent interaction - and about a rich service experience, especially when personalisation, images, video and elearning become part of the online experience. There are two basic elements to web self-service: Transactional (i.e. making online bookings, checking account details, bills etc.) Service support (i.e. helping customers find answers to technical, delivery, product or other queries online) Page 2
While this Call Centre Helper White Paper is primarily concerned with service support, much of the best practice discussed can also be applied to improving transactional self-service. The aim of the paper is to show organisations how they can solve more customer issues via self-service, improve the accuracy of Question & Answer pages and search facilities - and ultimately please more customers. Page 3
2. 10 Strategies for Enhanced Web Self Service 2.1 Create a Multi-Tiered Online Support Strategy Our first strategy to enhance web self-service is to create various layers of online help. A customer may be on your web site because they are looking for assistance, or they may have encountered a problem while trying to buy an item or find information and need help. It s therefore important to provide appropriate assistance to customers with different needs, at different parts of the customer journey, and from different parts of your web site. Therefore, undertake an in-depth analysis of customers needs, service requirements and desired outcomes to create a picture of your customers service journeys. It is difficult to generalise about what best practice will look like because these journeys will be unique to your organisation. But, suffice to say, some queries will be best resolved through a simple web site search, others via more sophisticated self-help facilities (such as a Support Knowledge Base search, an online tutorial or a conversation on a Community Forum), and others via a live agent conversation (email, phone or web chat). Clearly, it is in your organisation s interests to resolve as many queries as possible via web self-service. Therefore, always use a one final try approach to resolve service requests via self-service before offering the option of escalating a query to a live agent. Page 4
2.2 Optimise Web Site Search Facilities Some organisations choose not to have a site search facility. However, for many, the site search is the starting point for basic customer questions. So ensure that this facility takes service queries into account. Enable visitors to refine their searches to relevant content and avoid giving too many menu options. If you allow customers to search by keywords, ensure that your search facility can handle misspellings, synonyms, trademarks etc. Constantly monitor how people are using the site search facility. If you find that it is failing to answer a lot of service questions then consider setting up a more dedicated service support search function. The same applies to analysing how people are arriving at your web site from Google and other search engines. Learn from how customers describe problems and amend your search and knowledge base content accordingly. You could also deploy a natural language search algorithm. Also ensure that your web site content takes account of trigger words used in popular support queries. Empirical evidence suggests that users are much more likely to scan a page or menu than turn to any form of search box so ensure these words are included in menu options and also embedded in web site content. Page 5
2.3 Optimise Dedicated Web Service Support Facilities and Q&As If analysis reveals that customers aren t getting accurate or useful answers from site search then consider additional support in the form of a dedicated web self-service. Call Centre Helper offers the following tips when setting up a dedicated support area: Provide a single entry point to the facility, even if this is repeated on several web pages Analyse customers most Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and provide a FAQ section as the first line of support. Make this section concise with clear headings. Customers will typically scan category headings first and, if they can t find the answers they want, head to the search box. Regularly update the content of this section to take into account new queries Create a simple Ask a Question box to handle online searches Make this search facility highly visible (e.g. in a prominent position at the top of a page) Keep language simple and don t confuse customers with too many menu options Direct the customer on how to phrase a question with a sample sentence When presenting search results don t make support content look like product search content Provide keyword search options to cater for the same question being asked in several different ways (e.g. what happens if the machine goes wrong after the original warranty runs out? Do you do an extended warranty?) Page 6
2.4 Build a Comprehensive Knowledge Base It is impossible to consistently deliver accurate self-service responses without an extensive and flexible knowledge base. Call Centre Helper offers the following tips on how to create an up-to-date, relevant and intelligent knowledge base: Build knowledge base content from multiple sources including content gleaned from calls, web chat sessions, emails, texts, Community Forums, previous online searches etc. Sort through this vast amount of information, categorise and ensure you present answers to customers in a meaningful and clear way Review content sources on a regular basis to ensure you are giving correct and up-to-date answers to customers Ensure customers (via self-service) and contact centre agents can search the knowledge base in a fast and accessible way Encourage people from all over the organisation to suggest content for the knowledge base. Reward employees for providing content where appropriate and ensure there is a clear process for highlighting areas of the knowledge base that need to be improved. You can also allow agents to publish content to the knowledgebase if they identify an opportunity to head off repeat calls about the same enquiry. Pin issue-related knowledge items to the top of the help pages, especially useful for sectors where there may be a service disruption or outage Ensure other channels promote the website help pages as the best place to start for information Re-use high value content on public sites. There will often be a direct correlation between how easy it is access useful information and the number of service requests received via your web site. Page 7
2.5 Extend Self Help Content to Multiple Platforms (including mobile and social media) In recognition of the growing number of consumer devices and communications channels, consider the best way to deliver self-help content to multiple platforms (including web, mobile and social media platforms) and devices (including contact centre agent desktops, PCs and mobiles). Here are a few considerations: Single database: Multichannel self-help needn t involve the creation of multiple databases and expensive bespoke development work. Ideally, the knowledge base should reside on a single platform to avoid the unnecessary cost and hassle of updating multiple databases Channel-specific self-help services: Mobile is one of the fastest growing customer interaction channels and mobile options are increasing rapidly. It is now possible, for example, to use a geo application* to report a pothole in a road to the council or to obtain travel information using a geo look-up Channel integration: Don t underestimate the importance of integrated channel communications. An increasingly popular strategy, for example, is self-service in, social media out i.e. after resolving a customer query an organisation will tweet about an exceptional customer experience it delivered.. It can work the other way around too. You can identify a problem via social monitoring and then populate a social incident into the agent desktop for resolution. * Geolocation software is used to deduce the geolocation (geographic location) of another party Page 8
However, there is also a darker side to close channel integration in that it gives consumers more options to complain! According to a recent CEI survey, 26% of consumers posted a negative comment on a social networking site like Facebook or Twitter after a poor customer experience. Of those who then had their complaints ignored, 79% shared their poor experience online; while 22% of those who received a response from the organisation to a negative comment, then posted a positive comment. Page 9
2.6 Deliver More Personalised Service Experiences One way of reinforcing how important the customer (or web site visitor) is to your company is to deliver a personalised experience. In other words, if they ve given you personal information (maybe by entering an account number), tailor their web site experience by what you know about them and their requirements. It s not a green light to freak them out! It s an invitation to improve their experience by not asking unnecessary questions or making them repeat personal details. So, for example, if they have previously interacted with your company (by phone, web chat, web self-service etc.) then use this information in a positive way to answer questions quicker and point them in the direction of other useful advice. If you already know they have a particular product then just show relevant search engine results. Make it as easy as possible to do business with you. Page 10
2.7 Create a Member Support Community The popularity of the Net Promoter metric* is a clear indication that organisations place customer loyalty and advocacy at the top of their service agendas. Indeed, rather than just being seen as a measure of the strength of customer relationships, it has even been suggested that a company s Net Promoter score is the best predictor of their growth prospects. This thinking is one factor behind the growth in online Customer Support Communities. An excellent example is Giffgaff. With its name taken from the old Scottish Gaelic word which means mutual giving, the mobile phone company s manifesto states that it will be member run, always listening to members and rewarding them in kind. In practice, this means that giffgaff users help out in operating the company in areas such as customer service, sales and marketing - and are rewarded with offers and cashback for their work. Call Centre Helper believes there are several key factors in making Member Support Communities work effectively, two of the most important being to regularly: Moderate public forums: While the forum is a fantastic way for customers to share experiences and knowledge there are still times when your organisation will need to intervene in discussions. For example, to resolve a misunderstanding, to correct inaccurate advice, or to prevent a situation getting out of control. Encourage technical specialists to review and contribute to debates, including pointing members towards additional resources Page 11
Re-use content: Public forum debates generate vast quantities of useful content. Ensure that you regularly review content and use community content to add to your online knowledge base library. * A customer loyalty metric developed by (and a registered trademark of) Fred Reichheld, Bain & Company, and Satmetrix Page 12
2.8 Build Visual Tutorials and Manuals Self-service information does not have to be displayed in an oldfashioned combination of text and a few nice headings. Instead there are many avenues to include pictures, graphs, illustrations and most importantly video. Video is a hugely impactful medium to convey a message. That is clear from the following figures: British consumers spend 43 hours a month online, or 1 in 12 waking minutes* British consumers spend 4 hours a day watching TV ** 73% of British consumers go on line each day** More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month, spending over 6 billion hours watching video. This is almost an hour for every person on the Earth! A growing number of organisations are now using video and other visual presentation techniques to communicate important service and product support information in the form of online tutorials, step-by-step manuals, maps etc. * Source: Internet Advertising Bureau and PwC survey, 2013 ** Source: Ofcom, 2013 Page 13
2.9 Deploy a Virtual Assistant When dealing with an automated resource, a more natural conversation often creates a better service experience. Technology is not yet at the stage where organisations can deploy robots capable of natural language continuous speech recognition with perfect diction like R2D2 from Star Wars or Data from Star Trek, but the technology is heading in the right direction. In the automated call handling (or Interactive Voice Response) field, for example, a growing number of companies are now deploying systems capable of continuous speech recognition (rather than discrete word recognition) to make conversations more natural and rewarding. In the web self-service field, they are also deploying Virtual Assistants to provide the personal touch. Often badged as Ask Barry, Ask Rita or similar, the Virtual Assistant (or avatar) asks web site visitors to phrase questions in natural language, rather than just enter a series of keywords like they would in a site search box. The technique can be effective at engaging customers and building trust. Here are 6 tips on how to get more from a Virtual Assistant: Create a personality that matches your brand values (friendly, authoritative, humorous) and give the avatar some emotional intelligence to respond to, for example, error messages following data entered incorrectly. But don t overplay it to the point of antagonising customers! The avatar can be the face of an actual employee, a model, a made-up character etc. Page 14
Avoid launching the Virtual Assistant in a pop-up window that covers the web pages people are looking at Make your Virtual Assistant an integral part of your service strategy. Don t create a separate knowledge base, business rules, workflows etc. that need to be managed separately. If customers don t get the answers they require and want to escalate to a live agent, don t make them repeat account details and content Display the avatar on several web pages, not just the support page, and in an obvious position (i.e. not at the very bottom of a page). Make sure any buttons that require clicking are clearly marked and that the chat text box is big enough for customers to adequately describe their problem (and easily review questions before sending) Ensure that the service can cope with minor spelling and grammatical errors Trial the service with a limited set of questions and build it as you learn more about how customers are using it. Maybe start with just a basic set of FAQs. Page 15
2.10 Review Content Performance & Feedback So how effective is your self-service? It is the all-important question because if you don t have the processes in place to review what s going on, you re taking a huge risk. Customer service agents are often the eyes and ears of an organisation and if customers aren t happy, or something is not working, they are often the first to find out. With self-service, however, there isn t that personal connection and you may not know a customer is unhappy until they move to another supplier. So it is essential to measure the effectiveness of all self-service touch points from both a quantitative and qualitative view. Two key considerations: Decide what you are going to measure and measure it in a consistent manner: It s not just a question of finding out how many people are viewing what pages, it s also about the customer journey and how useful the information is. o How many people access the information you provide and then ask for live agent assistance? o How do they rate the information you provide (out of 10)? o What pages are people bouncing from, and why? o What support pages are most frequently viewed? Analytics tools such as Google Analytics can be used to consistently track visits and user experiences over time, with the data analysed to see what is working and what isn t, what new content is required, and where future development is best focused. Page 16
Build feedback tools into your support pages and act on the feedback: Survey (at least) a selection of customers following completed interactions. o Did you resolve their issue? o Were they happy with the information provided? o Does your knowledge base cover the main areas of interest to them? o What other feedback would they like to give? Find a consistent way to collate and analyse this feedback and circulate the results widely. Metricate across the business so people are focused on ensuring inbound contacts are minimised? Page 17
3. Conclusion When 210 UK contact centres were asked as part of research for the ContactBabel UK Contact Centre Decision-Maker's Guide 2013 what are your most important areas of IT expenditure in the next two years, 19% gave self-service as their first choice. This finding clearly shows that self-service will be a key customer contact tool in the years ahead and the challenge is on to deliver it - via the web and phone - as effectively and cost-efficiently as possible. This white paper highlights ten strategies for enhanced web self-service. They are to: 1. Create a Multi-Tiered Online Support Strategy 2. Optimise Web Site Search Facilities 3. Optimise Dedicated Web Service Support Facilities and Q&As 4. Build a Comprehensive Knowledge Base 5. Extend Self-Help Content to Multiple Platforms (including mobile and social media) 6. Deliver More Personalised Service Experiences 7. Create a Member Support Community 8. Build Visual Tutorials and Manuals 9. Deploy a Virtual Assistant 10. Review Content Performance & Feedback Page 18
By following these ten simple strategies, organisations can handle selfservice requests more successfully, improve customer experiences and cut costs. And they shouldn t just view web self-service as a cheap method of delivering service - it s also about satisfying customer needs. Organisations must aim to deliver web self-service experiences that are comparable or even better than live person interactions and personalisation, visuals, video, elearning and other self-service techniques have a huge role to play in delivering the ultimate online experience. It s all about creating happier customers. Page 19
4. About the Oracle RightNow Cloud Service Oracle RightNow Web Experience - The Key to Customer Satisfation Customer service excellence is an expectation, and the Oracle RightNow Web Experience provides a rich, online customer experience solution for customers to research and purchase products, or resolve issues from any device from smartphones to the desktop. While setting a standard for best-in-class customer service, you will simultaneously increase conversions and lower service costs. Deliver a seamless customer experience regardless of where or how customers interact with you Match consumer intent to highly relevant content and interactions to increase conversion rates Provide more information and self-service tools to customers who want it Enable customers to seamlessly transition from web self-service to assisted e-mail, chat, co-browse, and phone agents Make it easy for customers to find the answers they need across the communication channels of their choice Oracle RightNow Web Self Service Cloud Service enables visitors to find answers online from any device. The self-learning knowledge base improves with every customer interaction and provides deep and valuable insight into every customer or trend. For more information on Oracle RightNow Cloud Service please visit http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/rightnow/overview/index.html Page 20