Changing the Face of Customer Service with Self-Service Tools
Namratha Prasad
Research firm Gartner predicted that by 2022, 85% of customer service interactions would start with self-service. Anthony Mullen, Senior Research Director at Gartner, said, “The burden of managing and supporting self-services is being taken from today’s support staff and being pushed into customers’ hands.

This level of delegation, from ‘DIY’ to customer-led AI, will be a major force shaping customer self-service.” (Source: Gartner Says the Future of Self-Service Is Customer-Led Automation, www.gartner.com, May 28, 2019). Self-service tools were anticipated to be the new customer service trend, as customers increasingly expected an effortless experience. These self-service tools included Virtual Personal Assistants (VPAs) and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based chatbots.

. The shift to self-service tools was driven by the fact that there were some issues that customers could easily and quickly solve by themselves, without the assistance of a customer service representative or service technician. Apart from the uninterrupted accessibility, self-service systems eliminated the need for a customer to get in touch with the right service representative and spend considerable time in accurately explaining their problem. It also brought down support costs, without compromising the user experience.

Several organizations were spending considerable resources on developing knowledge bases, which contained content about most customer service issues. Self-service knowledge bases such as forums, FAQs, etc. not only provided answers to customers’ questions efficiently but were also the most cost-effective customer support method. Once the knowledge base was in place, based on the user personas, different organizations chose a particular self-service tool to ensure optimum customer satisfaction.

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