There are many digital self-service benefits. So many companies are focused on orchestrating new digital self-service experiences as part of their CX planning. Cost savings are a significant driver of all this activity. Many companies use the figure $1 per minute to project the cost of live contact center conversations. Compare that to the near-zero marginal cost per engagement for digital experiences. Naturally, not every customer query can be resolved via self-service experiences, but many can, and companies hope to capture those savings as quickly as possible.
All that said, there are various other benefits to the digital self-service customer experience. If you’re looking for a summary of those strengths, this FICX post may be valuable to you.
Speed to Resolution
Companies and most consumers recognize that it is unrealistic to expect that a company has sufficient human interaction staff to address any customer concern when they call in. Wait times vary, of course, but most people recognize that several minutes will pass before connecting with a live person to discuss their challenges. Digital self-service experiences, by contrast, can be delivered immediately 24/78/365 to as many people as requested. Provided that customers can easily use these CX automation experiences, they offer a much faster way to resolve their issues at almost any stage of the customer journey. Digital self-service can also speed tasks like identity verification that can take longer over an audio phone conversation.
Customer Preference
Many customers, especially younger customers, prefer self-service interactions to phone-based live assistance. They intuitively understand how to get information from customer service automation sources, and like the control and speed-to-resolution they get from digital interactions. Indeed one of the most important trends in digital customer service is interoperability – delivering the same digital experience across multiple digital channels so that customers can interact with it wherever and whenever they choose, on whatever device they are using at that time. In fact, for a large and growing portion of your customer base, self-service experiences will always be the preferred channel when they have an issue or concern. It’s how these people\ WANT to resolve their customer queries.
Consistent Experience
As mentioned above, one of the hottest trends in digital self-service is the interoperable experience that customers access from any channel or device. People appreciate consistent experiences and the freedom to begin a process in one channel and complete it in another. By contrast, contact centers cannot ensure that the customer always reaches the same person, even for a single issue, if first call resolution is not possible. For customers, the need to explain a situation to a new support agent – however well-intentioned they may be – is often frustrating.
Better Security
It’s easier to deliver robust data security in a secure digital experience than with a team of live operators, especially when that team has moved to work from home because of the COVID-19 pandemic. While companies must ensure maximum protection for their customer data at rest and in transit, it is a far lower risk than a system of hundreds or thousands of human operators.
Improved Data Accuracy
Many typical contact center engagements require agents to request and transcribe data from customers. Even the most fastidious representative will make occasional mistakes. By contrast, many types of customer information are far more easily entered by customers. Compare your ability to type your postal address with an agent’s. You know that, in your case, Mulbury Court is spelled with a U and not the ER most would expect. Ditto your social security or driver’s license number. Live agents can increase customer frustration in such interactions while providing no incremental value.
Freed Up Agent Time
When digital self-service experiences can answer basic questions, your agents can devote their time and attention to high-value interactions. They can spend extra time with at-risk customers and resolve complex questions for customers who are struggling with something. This also increases agent employee job satisfaction because they no longer spend half their days reading balance information and other data off-screen. Higher satisfaction means lower turnover, which will improve your ability to resolve complex client queries in the future and reduce employee recruitment costs.
Real-Time Data Access
Many companies still struggle with data and communications silos. It’s a fact: digital CX reduces call volumes and supports call center agents. A large fraction of contact centers that we speak with says that getting information into the required platforms can be a significant struggle. A well-designed digital self-service experience can automate the customer-facing elements of an experience and the underlying communications, data sharing, and other processes required by your business and infrastructure. That delivers benefits from every customer-facing team. Further, well-crafted digital self-service experiences can use real-time data access to prepopulate form and other elements of a digital experience to eliminate friction.
Eliminate Communications Challenges
Many people struggle to articulate the information they want in live customer interaction. A great agent can quickly understand the salient points, but many engagements will take extra time until the representative understands and responds to the specific customer concern. This is particularly true of persons who must do business in a second language. By contrast, many can identify needs from a list of options presented on a customer self-service portal. Many non-native speakers find it easier to understand simple text experiences via a customer portal than to speak and comprehend a live operator. Digital self-service experiences can also use visual cues and pictograms to clarify meaning – something that a live operator cannot do without additional technology.
Overall Customer Satisfaction
Study after study reveals that adding digital self-service options to your sales and support systems enhances overall customer satisfaction. It’s clear that self-service features are valued by tens of millions of customers in the US alone, and self-service support is viewed positively by these and other customers. Net, overall customer experience benefits from this powerful and cost-saving approach.
Conclusion
It’s plain that there are many more customer support advantages to digital self-service than just savings. While costs can be a key driver in a company’s decision to fast-track digital self-service development to address customer care challenges, many other benefits to this high-tech approach can yield fruit for a business.
Consider FICX for Digital Self-Service Development
As you and your organization explore digital self-service benefits and consider deploying more digital self-service experiences, consider FICX. The FICX No-Code CX Automation Platform enables anyone on your team to create, integrate, and deploy digital self-service experiences 10X faster than via custom development and for 90+% less cost. Companies in Banking, Lending, Insurance, Healthcare, Telecom, and many other industries rely on FICX no-code solutions to digitize and automate millions of digital self-service experiences every month. FICX experiences are highly secure, compliant with PCI, HIPAA, GDPR, and CCPA, among other regulations and protocols. Further, our pre built integrations make it easy to connect the FICX front-end experience with your existing infrastructure and processes.
Whether you want to accelerate your digital CX plans, fill CX gaps, or simply identify a solution that adapts to your existing infrastructure, FICX self-service functionality is the answer. For more information on how FICX self-service technology can help enrich your customer engagement footprint, visit our website and request a demo.
