Put simply, customer self-service portal is any instance in which a customer, or consumer, is able to serve themselves.
With the available resources and connections, a purchaser of a product or a subscriber of a service is able to resolve support issues without the accompaniment or the assistance of a member of support staff.
By giving your customers, followers and subscribers the option to serve themselves, you can free up any previously-strained resource internally, cut costs and have better visibility of what’s causing common issues amongst your customer base.
Read on to find out what customer self-service portal means for an organization digitally, and for more detail on the many ways in which it benefits businesses.
Customer self-service portal in the digital sphere
In the context of digital, customer self-service and the use of a self-serving portal software will almost always center around a knowledge base. Knowledge bases are a great way to provide your audience with everything they need as a ‘first-port-of-call’ self-service option.
This knowledge base will become a back-log of information, a bank of resources that highlights every corner, offering and product of your business and directs readers to the right answer via dedicated Q&A sections.
Products such as Verint Community and Verint Web Self-Service create a customer self-service portal experience that forms fun, interactive spaces that are perfect for engaging your customers and encouraging participation on your own private customer community platform. In turn, you’re able to create trust and build on existing brand loyalty through transparency. More on that later.
As a real-world example, customer self-service portals might exist online for an electronics supplier. If a customer finds what they think is a fault with one of their newly-purchased products, rather than having to pick up the phone and speak to a support adviser, the customer can simply search within the knowledge base for product information, or post a new question if the answer doesn’t already exist. This way, the customer can find if any other users have had similar issues, or if it can be fixed without needing customer support.
But how does a self-serving portal benefit a business?
Benefits of a customer self-service portal
If we take the example above, and carry on where we left off, there are multiple ways that customer self-service portals can benefit a business.
Firstly, it has been widely reported that many customers don’t like to pick up the phone, they’d rather talk to an expert or representative via direct messaging or self-resolve through resources. This is great news for those already using a self-service system, as the happy customer will be more inclined to self-resolve, rather than if they didn’t have the option, which could lead to them not making a support call and leaving bad reviews on public websites or through word-of-mouth. In short, web self-service portals can act as a fantastic safety net for bad press.
Another key benefit of web self-service portals is visibility of issues. Being able to have a birds-eye view on all issues, frequency of issues and how easily issues can be self-resolved, this allows you, as a moderator to ensure that things don’t get out of hand.
And perhaps the most appealing benefit of them all, is the potential cost-savings for your business. Without the overheads associated with needing physical staff for all customer enquiries.
Utilize a self-service portal software for your business with Verint today
With 25% of callers giving up after they have been kept on hold, now would be the time to invest in a customer self-service portal that as a business, you can trust. Not only can you cut costs but you can provide a self-serving portal software that will deliver business results and increase customer satisfaction.
If you like the idea of cutting support costs, increasing customer satisfaction, protecting your brand’s digital integrity and streamlining processes for more efficient operations, then why not speak to our team of experts about how Verint Self Service and Community can help your organization. Alternatively, request a demo to witness what a world-class community platform looks like!