We will show you how you can use your customer contacts to gain a deep understanding of the reasons for non-use of self services and effectively activate customers to use them. The causes of failure in self-service can also be identified at concern level. This allows you to eliminate the causes in a targeted manner and avoid follow-up contacts in the service center.

What is the problem?

Today, almost all companies offer self-services in addition to personal support from a service center. The market for self-service solution providers is difficult to keep track of and is developing rapidly. Companies have invested massively in the development of self-services, not least because of the increasing scarcity of human resources, and will continue to do so.

But the usage figures are lagging well behind the desired development. The Service Excellence Cockpit from FORWARD PARTNERS AG shows in its 2022 report that the level of self-service usage has risen from 18% in 2016 to just under 23% in 2022. The Swiss management consultancy's data is based on over 200 companies from various sectors in the DACH region.

But the potential is huge: our analyses show that in almost all sectors, over 50% of all customer contacts are located in the "blue" area (digitize contacts).

Now, service employees are not trained interviewers and sometimes find it difficult to ask customers questions. But with the right selection of employees and a maximum of two questions with predefined answer options, you can very quickly obtain a representative set of answers.

Example: At an energy supplier, the answers from callers to the service center revealed the following picture: two out of three callers with a "blue" request had not tried to resolve their request independently with self-service before calling.

A link between the survey data and the request structure shows considerable differences between the various concerns. In the top 5 overview of the "blue" concerns, the differences are easily recognizable: While customers have a clear preference for clarification in a personal conversation with a service employee for account issues, customers seem to be more open to the self-service solution for budget billing adjustments.

How can these digital gaps in the implementation of the service strategy be effectively closed? A deep understanding of the reasons why customers do not use self-service is a prerequisite for developing suitable activation strategies. Essential information about this can be obtained by asking the customer a second question:

Example: The customers from our previous example responded to this question with the following distribution. This shows that personal attitudes and a lack of information are the main drivers for personal contact. In this case, the company has also blended the data with demographic customer data and customer classes in order to develop detailed activation strategies.

Companies can bring about a change in their customers' behavior towards more self-service use exclusively within the (on/offline) interactions in the customer lifecycle. A positive customer experience during portal registration and the associated (stock) stimulation for future use play a key role here. Based on a deep understanding of the customer, every interaction with the customer should be examined with regard to its suitability for self-service stimulation. In particular, direct, issue-specific stimulation should also be examined at the customer service touchpoint.

Scenario 2: When customers fail in self-service - complete and optimize the self-service offering quickly and effectively

We stay with our customer and his "blue" request. In contrast to scenario 1, he now tries to solve his specific problem himself using the self-service offerings in the digital channels. In doing so, the customer is acting entirely in line with the company's expectations and service strategy.

As they then immediately contact customer service with their request, it can be assumed that they have failed to use self-service. Or to put it more clearly: our customer was unable to resolve their issue using the means provided by the self-service and was forced to use another (second) channel.

The need for a second contact drives up service costs, although this is exactly what self services are supposed to avoid. In addition, this experience influences the customer's attitude towards self-service and significantly reduces the likelihood that they will use self-service again the next time they make a request.

Right now, in the service discussion with our customer, is the ideal opportunity to understand why our customer has failed in self-service and to eliminate the causes. These causes can be cross-request-related (accessibility and usability of the self-service applications) or request-specific (findability, comprehensibility, completeness and relevance of the content for the specific request solution).

So we ask the customer in the service contact (in the context of their request solution):

Here, the answers should be closely aligned with the company's self-service offering.

Example: An insurer revealed considerable usability weaknesses, which were responsible for over a third of self-service abandonments. By recording these weaknesses in detail, they can be pinpointed and optimization measures can be implemented.

Another quarter of abandonments are due to missing functions. Here, self-service is not prepared for the concerns of these customers. There is a gap between supply and demand that needs to be closed. A precise breakdown of these 24% according to concerns is the basis for a targeted completion of the self-service offering.

How WOCAS^® helps you to optimize your self-service

With WOCAS^®, you can easily integrate the self-service questions into the recording of customer intents. The questions are only displayed for the employee if the intent is actually suitable for mapping in Self Service.

This allows you to evaluate for each intent why customers did not use the self-service or what specifically caused them to fail when using it. You can see exactly where you can better guide customers to Self Service and which Self Service functions need to be further improved in order to avoid follow-up contacts in the call center.

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