Mastering Customer Support: A Comprehensive Guide to Self-Service Software
Don't take this the wrong way, but your customers need a little space from you—it's not you, it's them.
The truth is, customers want to be more self-reliant. They want to solve problems on their own without contacting support. Think of it this way: When your washer cuts out mid-cycle, are you picking up the phone, dialing through options, and waiting on hold? Or are you heading online and searching for a troubleshooting guide?
The latter option is self-service support—when customers use your resources to help themselves rather than reaching out directly to your team. And the vast majority of customers expect brands to offer this.
To provide self-support options, companies are embracing customer self-service software. These tools empower customers to quickly find solutions to common issues, all while lowering costs and relieving your support team.
What Is Self-Service Software?
Self-service software describes a collection of tools designed to help customers troubleshoot simple issues on their own without speaking to an agent. These tools include knowledge base software, community forums, chatbot tools, and ticketing systems.
Self-service solutions are often automated, freeing agents to work on other tasks. Since content is formulated around frequently asked questions, self-support resources help eliminate repetitive queries from your live support queue. Companies using virtual customer assistants report drops of up to 70% in their call, chat, and email queries.
Why Self-Service Software Is Growing
Self-service software is experiencing tremendous growth, with global market size expected to hit $32 billion by 2027. Companies recognize the advantages, especially in SaaS.
Meets Customer Expectations
Today's customers communicate through digital technology and often dislike phone calls. But while customers don't necessarily want to talk to you, their service expectations are higher than ever. They want immediate solutions and convenient experiences.
Self-service tools meet these expectations. Customers are instantly connected to straightforward solutions so they can troubleshoot issues as they please. Instead of being dependent on live support, they have resources to handle their own problems quickly and at their convenience.
Reduces Support Costs
Self-service portals can drastically reduce support costs. It costs far less to serve a customer with self-service than with live help. Research suggests that live help costs about $8 per transaction, while self-service costs only about 10 cents.
Enabling customers to help themselves reduces support tickets, meaning you need fewer support reps. Since the same resources can be utilized by thousands of customers at once, you can scale support as you grow without hiring proportionally more agents.
Provides 24/7 Support
Self-service software has no off-hours. Customers can reach help no matter the time of day or day of the week.
This is a difference-maker for smaller service teams, allowing them to provide 24-hour support without agents around the clock. It's also crucial for supporting global customers since it alleviates time zone issues.
Improves Staff Satisfaction
Customer demands are increasing, and pressure to meet expectations falls on support staff. More than a quarter of customer service workers experience emotional burden at work, and over half of call center workers feel burned out daily. This low morale leads to attrition.
Self-service tools ease this burden. By fielding routine questions, these tools lighten the load from live agents dealing with high ticket volumes. Agents are free to spend more time on complex matters for strategic clients, boosting satisfaction and making them less likely to leave.
Improves Product Adoption
Online self-service provides customers with access to resources about your products, from FAQ pages to in-depth video tutorials. These resources encourage customers to learn more about products and familiarize themselves with features they might not know about. Customers more quickly learn the value of your offers, improving adoption.
Software Categories That Enable Self-Service
Self-service software comes in various forms. Your business might want one of these tools or might choose a combination.
Knowledge Bases
A knowledge base, also called a help center, is an online hub full of detailed information about your products and services. It's a home base connecting customers to helpful resources to navigate your products. Resources can include FAQ pages, user guides, articles, video tutorials, and links to live help.
Knowledge bases are built to cover commonly asked questions and organized so customers quickly find answers. They often include advanced search functionality and are highly effective at offloading routine queries from your customer service team.
Community Platforms
Community platforms are online customer spaces focused on engagement, sharing, and discussion. These platforms connect customers to a host of self-service tools—knowledge bases, video tutorials, how-to guides, blog articles, and FAQ pages.
Communities typically include forums or Q&A software, allowing customers to post questions and ask for guidance. Support agents can monitor discussions and jump in as needed, but customers can also help each other, sharing tips and workarounds. Since conversations are saved, customers can search past discussions to find answers to common questions.
Chatbot Software
Chatbots provide customers with immediate and personalized assistance. They can be integrated with knowledge bases to respond to requests with links to helpful articles and resources.
These tools mimic human conversation without needing a live agent. Many modern chatbots are powered by AI, using language programming to interpret customer messaging and respond with relevant information. They can work in tandem with live chat and support ticketing, offering customers the option to escalate to live support if needed.
What to Look For When Choosing
The right solution depends on your needs, budget, and resources. Here are features to consider.
Knowledge Discoverability
No matter how much information you load into your self-service tools, none of it's useful if customers can't find it. Look for software with advanced search functionality.
Some tools let you add labels to help center content. The search bar uses tags and keywords to direct customers straight to relevant information. This speeds up response time and eliminates frustration since customers find what they need through one simple search.
Knowledge Management
Some solutions offer tools to help you manage and update your help center. This might include publishing tools and a dashboard showing which content is trending and which needs reviewing or updating. You might also flag certain content so writers can see which content needs attention.
Automation
Automation can streamline workflow tasks. For example, advanced ticketing tools can be configured to automatically tag and route issues to specific agents. Automation is especially useful for large businesses with high ticket volume since it relieves agents from menial tasks.
Integrations
Self-support tools work best when they work together. Integrations allow you to seamlessly transfer requests from one channel to another as needed, without losing background information or making customers start their conversation over. This leads to more efficient workflow for agents and consistent customer experience.
Some solutions offer more integrations than others. Most important is choosing one that integrates with tools you already use.
Reporting and Analytics
The best self-service tools provide valuable metrics regarding support performance. This helps you understand where customers experience frustration so you can refine processes.
Solutions can provide KPIs like customer satisfaction scores, customer effort scores, time to response, number of tickets closed, most frequent requests, and most visited pages. Define the most important metrics for your team and look for solutions that provide these insights.
Scalability
Your support tools should handle future needs as well as current ones. Look for a platform that can grow with your business. The best solutions handle increasing numbers of customers and multiple teams of agents. Consider how future growth will affect pricing, as many platforms charge per agent or per user.
Making Your Choice
There are many providers to choose from. Community platforms offer comprehensive self-service by combining knowledge bases, peer support through forums and Q&A, and the ability to scale support through customer-to-customer help.
Look for platforms that offer discussions and Q&A to encourage peer-to-peer support, custom spaces to host specific content and resources, tags to keep posts organized and enable easy navigation, advanced search functionality so members find answers quickly, and analytics to see which posts are trending and which content needs attention.
The right solution helps you meet customer expectations for self-service while reducing costs and improving team morale.
Ready to explore self-service software? Talk to sales for a demo.
FAQs
What is self-service software?
Self-service software describes tools designed to help customers troubleshoot issues on their own without speaking to an agent. This includes knowledge bases, community forums, chatbots, and ticketing systems that automate routine support.
How much can self-service reduce support costs?
Companies typically see significant cost reductions. Live support costs $7-13 per interaction on average, while self-service costs pennies. Some companies report saving millions annually through support deflection to self-service channels.
Should we use multiple self-service tools?
Often yes. Knowledge bases provide structured content, communities enable peer support and discussion, and chatbots provide immediate response. These tools work best together, with integrations allowing seamless transfer between channels.
How do we get customers to use self-service?
Make it easy to find and use. Place prominent links to self-service in your product and communications. Ensure search works well. When customers do contact support, agents can reference self-service resources, teaching customers where to find answers next time.
