What is a Self-Service Portal?
A self-service portal is a collection of self-help methods or options available for customers that they can access in a company’s website. A customer portal service involves options that allow clients to solve their own issues through self-logging of incidents, password reset, chat services, service requests, and collaborative spaces.
They also empower the customers to resolve issues, request services, and find information. The self-service portal provides customers with multiple ways of getting direct answers. A self-service portal is also a chance of reaching new customers, improving customer relations, and boosting customer-customer relationships.
When a portal is well designed, it has many benefits to a firm as well as IT customer satisfaction. A customer service portal is great if it has direct benefits to the service desk, the business, and end users.
Here are some of the benefits achieved from a good customer self-service option;
1. Reduced Customer Service Costs.
Without a self-portal, customers have to use call tickets. Once you launch the self-help portal and encourage your clients to utilize the services, you will notice a significant reduction of call tickets. This cuts down the cost of expanding the human resources as the firm grows hence saving money.
2. Customer Portals Reduce Agent Workloads.
Every organization wants to increase its workforce efficiency as they maximize customer satisfaction. This is exactly what a self-service portal does. Since the clients have access, and they can see the progress of their tickets, employees do not have to keep answering questions like “Have you seen my ticket yet?”
Even when the clients have started the ticketing process – clients can be directed to other alternatives. They can be directed to related articles and other options these options use specific keywords and phrases reducing ticket volume. Customers can use these factors even without help, allowing employees to focus on solving difficult problems improving customer relationships. Remember a customer expects to have their issues resolved in the least time possible.
3. Customer Portal Teaches Clients New Skills.
Portals expand the client’s skills and offer them the tools that they require to solve issues in the future. Portals provide comprehensive answers to commonly asked questions.
They use simple language and methods to explain how to tackle issues. There are step-to-step guides, how-to-video with images, screenshots, and diagrams. These are very helpful to individuals who are visuals and require hands-on trials to comprehend how to do things right. The portal also has tips and hints that help customers learn more about a firm’s product.
To make this possible, ensure that all the videos are accessible for the customers by seeing they are not scattered all over the site. If they are scattered, they confuse and scare the clients away.
They shouldn’t search all over the site for sections to watch a tutorial and site to get tickets – ensure they can have all their problems solved in our section.
4. Boosting Site Traffic.
The customized information for the self-service portal can be a useful tool for bringing traffic in the site – it marks it as a source of knowledge and authority site in its field. Current and potential clients trust the firm continuously improve the brand visibility, business value and credibility of the company.
Other voices such as bloggers, writers, and customers share information through self-service platform questions/answers or forums functionality. Their articles that are proposed to solve the questions surrounding a product can increase visibility by bringing other people who want to understand the product.
An attractive, reliable, and responsive portal ensures clients get all the information in one site. This means that all self-portals with high visibility always bring traffic. The company can also leverage from external customer service experts by allowing them to share blog posts or speak in one of their forums. This saves the resources of the company that could have otherwise been used to answering the questions. It also has the advantages of different voices from different backgrounds explaining the brand to the customers.
5. Leveraging Personalized Information.
A great selfservice strategy allows your customers to access what they need by using the solutions they used from a similar search in the past.
This is made better when you make it possible for clients to give their portals a personal touch. Customization can be a greater tool when used in portals. For example, the client can be addressed by their names when they log in the portal. The customer portal service can display the items bought by the client and display the relevant content for the client based on their interests.
This makes customers feel like a firm’s partner whose input is valued which translates them to happy customers. Personalization will also allow a firm to know the challenges their clients are facing and come up with the necessary solutions.
On the other hand, the company enjoys easy customer relationship management.
6. Increased Positive Customer Recommendations.
A customer selfservice portal improves the reputation of a company through positive client interactions. However, this comes with the cost of creating valuable content that is simple to understand and user-friendly consistently – in good time. Many millennials check the FAQ first before they take a call ticket, meaning they want to find questions by themselves. It is therefore vital that the FAQ session has an appealing look and features such as email options and live chat.
The features ensure customers get feedback and assistance. Great customer portal service provides a very positive experience for clients leading to positive reviews.
7. Enriching Social Media Engagement.
Since portals have a dedicated social media feed to answer queries, employees participate in the self-help service. They take time to answer questions regarding the goods and services of a company.
It is therefore vital to ensure you teach employees everything there is to know about the company. With this knowledge, they can be able to ensure they have ready right answers when the customers ask them any questions. This increases customers’ satisfaction and gives a better feel of the customer’s needs.
Portals that have knowledgeable content use social media to disperse the information on how their services enhance the user’s experience. The social media activity increases the visibility and voice of the firm. It also enhances social media encouragement, attracts new clients, and improve the relationship of existing clients.
Wrapping Up
A self-service portal is vital for every business. It improves the customer experience in a million ways. The first thing that a customer does when they have a question is to visit the FAQ session. It is, therefore, crucial that the sector has all features such as chat and Skype details. Also, it should be colorful to encourage clients to read.
For better results, it is vital to ensure that you offer valuable content about your products and share in social media.
This will improve the brand voice, visibility, and relationship with your clients. The portal will also help you save on time and costs that you would have used to expand the customer care services as the company grows – Not to forget the increased traffic on your site, as other bloggers refer individuals to your site for a deeper understanding of your field.
It also leads to improved productivity of employees due to a reduced number of ticket volume.
Good luck creating a self-service portal for your clients!