Mastering Self Onboarding: A Blueprint for SaaS Success

According to the Digital-First Customer Experience Report by NICE, only 15% of customers are satisfied with self-service offerings – despite 53% of businesses believing they’re doing a great job. This stark disconnect reveals a troubling truth – customer expectations are being overlooked.

With 57% of consumers willing to abandon a brand after just one or two negative interactions, meeting these expectations isn’t optional – it’s essential.

This blog post is your roadmap to bridging that gap, equipping your team with self-service best practices and tools to transform self-service into a competitive advantage.

What is self-service?

Self-service is a customer support model that allows people to find answers and solve issues independently without direct assistance from the customer service team. By offering tools like knowledge bases, FAQs and online discussion forums, businesses allow users to access the information they need anytime, reducing wait times.

For businesses, it minimizes support costs while boosting efficiency, as fewer resources are required to handle routine inquiries. Moreover, customers value the autonomy it provides, which often boosts loyalty and trust.

By adopting customer self-service tools, companies can foster stronger online communities, increase engagement rates and ensure their support resources are used effectively.

Customer self-service benefits

Providing self-service channels alongside real-time and asynchronous support channels allows customers to choose how they solve their issues. Those who prefer independence can quickly find solutions, while others can still connect with support agents when needed. Here’s how self-service benefits your customers, your support team and your business.

Benefits of self-service for your customers

• 24/7 availability: Self-service tools allow customers to access support anytime, ensuring they can resolve issues without waiting for business hours.
• Reduced wait times: With no queues, customers can find answers instantly.
• Greater autonomy: Solving problems independently boosts confidence and satisfaction.
• Faster resolutions: Self-service often provides quicker answers than contacting support agents.
• Improved customer experience: Self-service empowers customers with efficient, no-hassle solutions tailored to their needs.

Benefits of customer self-service for your agents

• Increased efficiency: Customer support reps can focus on complex or high-priority issues, leaving routine inquiries to self-service tools.
• Reduced workload: With fewer repetitive tasks, support teams experience less stress and better productivity.
• Enhanced productivity: Freed from answering basic questions, customer service reps can work on strategic tasks, such as updating knowledge bases.
• Improved job satisfaction: A lighter workload with more engaging tasks leads to a happier, more motivated customer support team.

Benefits of customer self-service for your business

• Significant cost savings: Resolving queries through self-service costs a fraction of agent-assisted resolutions. Gartner estimates the cost of a self-service interaction at $0.10 compared to $8.01 for an agent-assisted ticket.
• Effortless scalability: As your business grows, self-service solutions can handle increasing demand without requiring additional staff.
• Valuable analytics: Self-service platforms provide insights into customer behavior, helping refine resources and improve services.
• Improve NPS and satisfaction scores: Meeting customer expectations for self-service drives customer loyalty and improves metrics like Net Promoter Scores (NPS).
• Enhanced service quality: Streamlined processes and reduced human error make self-service a reliable, efficient solution.

Types of customer self-service portals

Offering multiple customer self-service options ensures a seamless experience for your customers, catering to diverse preferences and use cases. Below are some of the most effective types of self-service portals and how they benefit your business and users.

1. Support community

A self-service support community empowers customers to find answers to their questions in two main ways:

• Peer-to-peer wisdom: Customers chime in to help each other out. Your team gets to sit back and focus on other things when they do.
• Expanding resource pool: Every answered question adds another piece to the puzzle, creating a dynamic library of solutions.

2. Knowledge base

Knowledge bases offer businesses the perfect platform to host tutorials and guides on using their products. Most come loaded with killer categorization and search features, making it easy for your customers to find exactly what they need. 

And for those of you worried about the tech aspect, don’t be. Premium knowledge base software comes with easy-to-use editing tools that let even the least tech-savvy create crystal-clear documentation.

• Visual aids: Adding images makes instructions easier to follow.
• Step-by-step guides: The ability to break down instructions into digestible steps for easy following.
• Video support: Features that allow the addition of video walkthroughs to explain those tricky technical tasks.
• Integration options: Linking with chatbots or ticketing systems for seamless support escalation.

Bettermode offers a collection of easy-to-use community website templates for different types of self-service portals. When it comes to the knowledge base, there's no better option than the Cloud Project template.

3. Product training portals

Self-serve product training is a powerful driver of customer education and the key to guiding customers to reach Aha! moment. With product training, companies improve customer onboarding, enable customers to learn best practices, drive product adoption and help customer success teams with scalable educational resources.

This becomes especially valuable when the customers can’t access one-on-one help from customer support and success teams. Also, consider some customers prefer self-paced educational content to learn the product and don't favor interaction with customer-facing teams.

Apart from that, product training also enables customers to access content resources whenever they need them.

3. In-product help

When customers hit a snag within your product, the last thing you want is for them to leave the platform in search of answers. In-product help keeps customers engaged by offering support directly within the product interface. 

This self-service tool provides context-specific assistance, such as guided tours for new features or contextual tips based on user actions. Key features include:

• Relevant content: Say your customer is trying to integrate a new tool. Your in-product help should be smart enough to display relevant content to that specific integration.
• Seamless integration: The help options you provide should be integrated so they don’t disrupt the customer’s workflow.
• Advanced search capabilities: Your in-product help's search function should be robust enough to find and present answers in an easy-to-digest format. 

Another popular way to offer in-product self-service is by building guided tours. This is particularly useful when a new feature is launched or a new customer signs up for the product, like in this example, below.

4. Chatbots

Chatbots offer automated customer support through your messaging systems. Customers ask questions and get automated answers. 

This is a useful way to deflect support tickets. Customers who find answers via your chatbot don't need to contact your customer support agents. Chatbots appear in the same widgets support teams use to offer real-time support messaging.

This means you can push customers towards using them before they use the same widget to contact your team. Chatbots aren't the only way to offer self-service support through a chat widget.

Many business messaging services use integrations to increase self-service support options. For example, integrating chatbots with knowledge bases and help centers, so customers can instantly access troubleshooting guides, how-to's and FAQs while chatting. 

5. FAQ page

FAQ pages are a fundamental part of any customer self-service strategy. They address the most common customer questions in a simple, straightforward format. To enhance usability:

• Make the page searchable for easier navigation
• Regularly update FAQs with trending issues from support data
• Embed FAQs contextually across the website for better accessibility

6. Help center portals

Help centers combine multiple self-service tools, including a knowledge base, forums and ticket submission, into a single, user-friendly platform. This comprehensive solution simplifies access to support resources and streamlines the customer journey.

Offering a mix of these self-service portals creates a holistic, omnichannel experience that meets your customers’ expectations while reducing support overhead.

With Bettermode’s Bytelink template, you can create a help center with no coding skills needed.

7. IVR system

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems automate phone-based customer interactions, enabling users to access information or perform tasks like checking account balances without speaking to a live service agent.

• Traditional IVR: Uses keypad inputs to navigate menus, which can be cumbersome for complex queries.
• Modern AI-driven IVR: Leverages conversational AI to offer natural and efficient customer conversations.

The challenges of offering customer self-service

Implementing a self-service platform offers significant advantages but comes with its own set of challenges. Addressing these effectively is key to delivering a seamless and satisfying customer experience.

1. Security concerns

Self-service customer portal often stores sensitive personal and account-related information, making it a target for malicious actors. Ensuring security requires implementing robust authentication measures such as multi-factor authentication (MFA) to minimize unauthorized access risks.

In addition to technical safeguards, customer education plays a crucial role. By offering resources like blogs and guides, you can teach users how to secure their accounts effectively, reducing vulnerabilities caused by human error.

2. Feedback loop

Without understanding how customers use self-service tools, you may miss opportunities for improvement. Embedding quick surveys within tools like FAQs and chatbots allows users to share their experiences immediately.

To dig deeper, you can leverage analytics to track user behavior. How much time are users spending on your support community? What links are they clicking? Where are they dropping off? These metrics provide valuable insights that can guide your improvement cycle. 

3. Escalation procedures

While self-service platforms like knowledge bases and chatbots work wonders for quick fixes, they have limitations. Having a streamlined escalation procedure is non-negotiable for complex issues that need a personal touch. 

Clear call-to-action options, such as prominently displayed “Need more help?” buttons, ensure customers can easily transition to live support. Streamlining the handoff process so that users don’t have to repeat their details is crucial for reducing frustration.

Once the issue is escalated, ensure immediate acknowledgement via automated email responses or text messages detailing what steps will be taken and in what time frame. Timeliness is crucial, so flag urgent cases and ensure they are handled ASAP to prevent further dissatisfaction.

4. Accessibility

Creating an inclusive self-service experience isn't just the right thing to do; it's also a legal requirement. This involves designing interfaces compatible with screen readers, providing sufficient color contrast and offering closed captions for how-to videos.

This can be a bit of a technical challenge. But it's important to build self-service touchpoints with forethought for the diversity of users and their needs. Doing so takes time and resources. However, the outcome is providing every customer with an equal opportunity for self-service. 

5. Over-reliance on automation

Automation is a powerful tool for managing customer queries, but it can create an impersonal customer experience, leaving some feeling like they're just another ticket number. It’s important to strike a balance between automated and human interactions. 

For instance, chatbots and IVR systems should recognize their limitations and seamlessly escalate issues to human agents when needed.

Ensuring this handoff is smooth prevents customer frustration and maintains trust. Collecting feedback on automated interactions also helps identify areas where personalization and empathy can be improved.

6. Training and education of your team and customers

Your self-service resources' success relies on something other than robust technology; it also depends on effective training and education. Roll out detailed training programs focused on using and maintaining your knowledge base, chatbots or in-product help. Understanding the backend will empower your team to perform periodic updates and ensure the information stays current and relevant.

It's not enough to offer self-service options; customers need to know that these tools exist and how to use them effectively. To introduce these tools consider creating detailed tutorials, walkthroughs and guides to introduce users to these tools. 

These can be easily shared across multiple platforms, including your YouTube channel or within the help sections of your app or website.

7. Resource investment

Building a robust self-service platform is a long-term investment that demands considerable time, finances and human resources. Companies must choose the right tools, whether knowledge bases, chatbots or integrated portals, and these come with varying costs. Additionally, hosting, data storage and third-party integrations add to the expenses.

While the initial investment may be substantial, the long-term benefits of improved efficiency and customer satisfaction often outweigh the costs.

10 best practices for providing customer self-service

Whichever self-service options you choose, you need customers to enjoy the experience. Here are 10 self-service best practices you can use and offer exceptional contact support:

1. Keep the content relevant and up-to-date

To provide customers with excellent self-service, your content must reflect the most up-to-date information on your products, services, policies and business processes. 

Stay on top of content relevance with these best practices:

• Reviewing content regularly: Set up a regular review schedule for all self-service information and assign responsibility to the appropriate teams. For example, have customer support update FAQs monthly and product teams review knowledge base articles quarterly.
• Updating content promptly: When new products or features launch, immediately update all relevant self-service materials to reflect these changes.
• Monitoring feedback: Actively monitor user forums and social channels for feedback indicating content gaps or inaccuracies. Quickly address issues through content updates.
• Refreshing older content: If your existing content is popular but outdated, evaluate whether examples, screenshots or videos need to be refreshed to align with current customer experiences.
• Collaborating cross-functionally: Ensure there’s a process for alerting relevant teams about any upcoming changes (like policy updates) that will require content revisions.
• Conducting user testing: Consider user testing when making major content revisions to ensure it meets customer needs clearly and effectively.

2. Strengthen portal security

Security is a cornerstone of building trust with your customers. To safeguard sensitive data and maintain customer confidence, you should:

• Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA): MFA adds an extra layer of security to your portal, significantly reducing unauthorized access risks.
• Regularly update security measures: As cyber threats evolve, ensure that your security protocols are up to date to balance accessibility with strong protection.
• Leverage the latest authentication technologies: Using the latest security measures shows your customers that you’re committed to protecting their personal information.

3. Establish a robust feedback mechanism

Your customer self-service portal is for your customers so knowing what they think can help you improve the self-service experience. You can achieve this by:

• Incorporating feedback tools: Add forms, rating systems, surveys and other feedback options into the self-service portal to gather user feedback. This helps identify areas of improvement.
• Regularly analyzing feedback: Make it a practice to review feedback frequently and use it to make data-driven decisions about what needs improvement.
• Making improvements based on feedback: Act on the feedback received and close the loop by making improvements based on feedback. That shows customers you are listening.

At Bettermode, we use visual feedback tools at the end of each help article, allowing customers to share their thoughts easily and ensuring that we continuously enhance our offerings.

4. Create clear paths for issue escalation

Self-service saves time and empowers your customers. But sometimes, a situation calls for a human agent, and making that transition seamless is where the magic happens. To make this transition smooth:

• Display clear escalation options: Prominently display chat widgets or "Contact Us" buttons, so customers can quickly reach a customer service agent when needed.
• Integrate community forums with helpdesk software: If you have a community engagement platform, allow unresolved questions to be converted into support tickets for follow-up by agents.
• Provide multiple channels: Ensure customers have options for escalating their issues, whether through live chat, email or a support request form.

At Bettermode, we're all about giving our customers options. That's why live chat is embedded in our self-service support pages.

5. Balance automation with personal touch

Automation can handle repetitive tasks and increase efficiency, but it shouldn’t replace human support entirely. To strike the right balance:

• Automate simple tasks: Use chatbots and other automated systems to handle common inquiries and repetitive tasks around the clock.
• Ensure smooth handoff to live agents: When automated systems reach their limits, make sure there’s a clear path for customers to escalate to a customer support agent quickly and without frustration.
• Provide human interaction when necessary: Customers should always have the option to connect with a real person, especially when dealing with complex or emotional issues.
• Review automated content regularly: Continuously assess the quality of automated responses to ensure they remain helpful and relevant.

6. Continuous training and awareness programs

Keeping your team in the loop with the latest tools and resources is your secret weapon. Training ensures your team remains versatile and up-to-date and well-trained personnel are more adept at resolving issues and guiding customers through your self-service portal. 

To keep your team prepared:

• Make training ongoing: Make sure training sessions are not one-time events but part of an ongoing process.
• Use real-world examples: Incorporate practical, real-life customer cases into your training to help staff understand common issues and how to resolve them effectively.
• Review effectiveness: After each training session, gather feedback to identify areas where your team may need additional support or practice.
• Create a continuous training loop: Use insights from training sessions to improve future training programs and optimize the effectiveness of your self-service portal.

7. Strategically allocate resources

Most businesses struggle with limited resources, so it’s important to allocate them where they’ll have the greatest impact:

• Analyzing analytics: Identify which sections of your self-service portal attract the most traffic and engagement. Prioritize these areas for improvement to optimize customer satisfaction.
• Gathering customer feedback: Directly ask your customers which features they find most helpful, then focus your resources on refining these tools.
• Concentrating on high-impact areas: Put extra effort into improving tools that customers find most valuable, such as FAQs or live chat features.

8. Be proactive

Proactive customer service anticipates customer needs before they arise, reducing support ticket volumes and improving overall satisfaction. To do this:

• Anticipate next steps: After customers complete key tasks on your site, proactively suggest related resources or next steps that could help them further.
• Identify potential pain points: Use analytics to pinpoint common challenges or confusion points in the customer journey, then create tailored content (like FAQs or videos) to address these in advance.
• Provide solutions before problems arise: Address potential questions or concerns before customers even ask them, offering resources at the right moments.

9. Make self-service resources visible

Making self-service resources visible is the fast track to helping your customers help themselves. Here are a few key tips:

• Feature resources prominently: Add links to help articles, FAQs and knowledge bases on high-traffic pages like “About Us” or “Contact Us.”
• Encourage use during onboarding: Integrate self-service options into customer onboarding processes to introduce them to the tools early on.
• Optimize for search engines: Ensure that your content is indexed on search engines like Google so customers can easily find your resources when they search for solutions.
• Use chatbots for visibility: Embed chatbots within your platform to proactively guide customers to relevant resources during conversations.

One of Bettermode's customers, Octorate, has integrated community discussions with the search bar available inside their software. That way customers can access community content when looking for solutions via the search box.

Learn more about Octorate's use case here.

Conclusion

Closing the self-service gap is about more than just technology – it’s about genuinely understanding your customers’ needs. Whether it’s creating smarter chatbots, designing an intuitive knowledge base or simply offering more options, every small improvement helps build trust and loyalty.

Think about it: if you were a customer struggling to find an answer, what would make your journey easier?

Start small, measure your impact and refine. Your customers will thank you.

Ready to take the next step? Sign up for a free trial today and see firsthand how easy it is to elevate your self-service experience. You’ll get all the tools you need to create smarter, more effective self-service solutions for your customers.

This article was originally published on January 24th, 2023, and was updated on November 27th, 2024.

FAQ

What is a self-service strategy?

A self-service strategy is a business approach that allows customers to find solutions to their problems independently, typically through online resources, tools or automated systems, without direct interaction with a support agent.

What is the most successful example of self-service?

Amazon’s customer service is a leading example, offering a variety of self-service options such as order tracking, return management and a robust knowledge base, making it easy for customers to resolve issues quickly on their own.

What are the three types of self-service?

• Informational self-service: Customers find answers to questions through FAQs, knowledge bases and tutorials.
• Transactional self-service: Customers complete actions like purchasing, updating accounts or managing subscriptions without human intervention.
• Automated self-service: Customers use chatbots or AI-driven systems to solve problems or get assistance.

What is customer service self-service?

Customer service self-service are tools or systems that allow customers to resolve issues on their own, such as FAQs, live chatbots or self-service portals for managing orders and troubleshooting problems.