As customers gravitate toward self-service technologies, how can you be sure that you’re seeing a good return on investment (ROI)? It starts with understanding the benefits of self-service tech, then monitoring your chosen technology to ensure you’re getting those results.
With a few more real-life examples, we’ll dig into some of the advantages self-serve brings. These are advantages your organization can harness with technology like ours.
Data Integrity
When people have to engage directly with staff for help, there are many ways data is created, collected, and acted upon. While one employee might take down notes on pen and paper, another might send email to supervisors. Another might not track data at all. But, when your organization employs self-service technology, your customers access one standardized system.
With this system, all data received of similar request-types is uniform in form, disposition, resolution, perfect for auditing. Having data integrity also means you can better analyze that data, which boosts your organization’s performance. And it ensures that your organization can handle customer issues using the same standardized information.
As a Forbes article points out, organizations that make data and analytics the core of their business strategy do better with digital transformation. When the company Precisely formed, the IT team took the time to integrate customer account data and implement a data quality process. This is similar to what you would see from a well-made self-service portal: standardized information, such as countries, addresses, and names. Now, when customers interact with the company, they can expect the same customer service and experience thanks to data integrity.
Statistical and Historical Accuracy
Along the same lines of data integrity, self-service tech ensures statistical and historical accuracy. This historical, accurate data can be used to anticipate future trends or problems, and guide decisions. The statistical and historical accuracy can even extend to providing metrics to users, where it is appropriate.
Suez, a water and wastewater management company, created a digital platform for its customers. They can use this app as a customer portal to make payments, schedule service calls, and request new services. And, they can also access their metrics, with statistical and historical accuracy.
A Suez customer can log on to Suez Connect, the self-service digital platform, and understand their personal environmental impact, for example. This empowers customers to make their own data-driven decisions, which is a value-added service.
The company says more people have used it and enjoyed it than they expected at first. And data quality has improved. The value-add that is data reporting sets the company apart from competitors, attracting new customers.
User-Friendly Self-Service Forms
We’ve discussed how important data is to your organization and how advantageous it is to have clear, controlled, consistent data. But how does your organization get that data in the first place, and why does self-service make for better data? It has to do with the way your users can interact with your technologies and systems under a self-serve model.
Self-service, particularly self-service forms, is a very user friendly system. When your organization uses a quality self-service platform, you will find that forms are easy to create, and your customers will find they’re easy to fill out. This has a high ROI value itself. The less time you spend dealing with paperwork, the more productive and profitable your organization becomes.
Crosby Hops is an agricultural company that switched to a customer portal for various aspects of doing business. One critical feature is order forms, which customers use as a way to self-service purchase hops. Now, the team does not have to take calls and hand-enter orders.
Self-service forms like this also point to the value of data integrity and accuracy. Before using a self-service portal, Crosby Hops team members had to use Excel sheets to track information, including ordering and fulfillment info. Now, with stronger data practices and self-service forms, Crosby can process more orders, faster. The customer service department can focus on their core role — delivering quality customer service, instead of dealing with order issues. And, Crosby can do this work with fewer people focused on orders, dropping down to two managers from what used to be five or more.
Ready to see how these benefits work for your organization? We’re happy to help! Our technologies include platforms that provide excellent eWorkflow, work from home, and IT service management capabilities. When you choose Workflow Process and Incident Tracking, GroupLink Self-Service Portal, or GroupLink for SafestSchools, you choose a platform with excellent ROI.