Business Intelligence Lowdown: Evolve Your Self-Service Strategy

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December 20, 2005

Evolve Your Self-Service Strategy

Customers often find self-service applications to be inconsistent, and providing limited opportunities for transactions and interaction. For creating successful, usable applications, you need to create a strategy for self-service contact that is driven by both customer and business requirements. First of all, get your web and IVR teams together and do their research / homework about self-service. The strategy team should include members who are responsible for all self-service applications (web, IVR, email, kiosks), technology, and marketing resources. Also include in the team people from the contact center - they will provide customer and call flow expertise. Next, define the objectives for your self-service strategy. Make them measurable. Identify opportunities for moving high-volume, low-complexity contacts to self-service channels. Another important aspect of the strategy is to map self-service applications to the most appropriate channels. Focus on having 'quick hits' on the IVR, and more complex applications on the web. Experiment with speech recognition - figure out if it can deliver advantages beyond what touch-tone can provide. You need to focus on creating consistent user interfaces across all channels. For instance, ensure that the activities are worded similarly across channels. CRM Today reports:

Develop cross-channel marketing and branding so that self-service looks seamless to your customers. They should have a similar experience regardless of whether they use the IVR, the web, or send an e-mail – that means that you use greetings, logos, graphics and tag lines consistently across all channels. Develop a security strategy that’s consistent across channels, too. Don’t make customers remember different user IDs and PINs for different channels. And don’t require folks to identify themselves if they’re only looking for general, non-secure information.

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December 20, 2005 in CRM | Permalink