Let Them Help Themselves
One of the best ways to provide top-level support to your customers is to actually allow them to help themselves. Customers prefer self-service as long as it is equal or more convenient to use than agent-assisted service. If you have the right software in place, you can do this by setting up a self-help knowledge base. A knowledge base is a repository of information that is accessible by all your customers. In it, you can create answers to all the most common questions, as well as those issues that are less common. Your customers can then quickly search this library of knowledge to find the answers they need. This can be quicker for them than sending in a ticket and waiting for a response. Many people prefer to search for answers themselves, and as long as you have a detailed knowledge base that is intuitive and easy to search, this can be the best way to help your customers. On top of this, it takes the pressure off your support agents because they will not have to spend time responding to tickets that the customer has solved on their own.
What is a Self-Service Portal?
A self-service portal is a section of your website that offers information and resources to help users find answers and resolve their issues. The job of any self-service portal is to help users address common needs efficiently and without outside help.
Today’s Customers Prefer Self-service Over the Human Touch. That’s because they feel they can find an answer faster and avoid unnecessary wait time. Providing your customers with self-service support means that you’re enabling them to complete tasks and troubleshoot problems by themselves.
Why is the self-service knowledge base important?
Customers want support, and they want it fast. They want to achieve what they came to do with as little hassle as possible. These days, that’s synonymous with self-service. They no longer base their loyalty on price or product - instead, they stay loyal to companies based on the experience they receive. They can churn at lightspeed if they’re not receiving the service they expect and move to your competitor.
A self-service knowledge portal is a tool where your customers could look for answers to frequently asked questions. A self-help knowledge base is relevant for companies that does not provide 24/7 support service. It will also reduce the burden on your customer support agents when they do not have to attend to repetitive requests anymore.
Forrester posted that 72% of US online consumers prefer to use a company's Web site to get answers to their questions rather than contact companies via telephone or email. There are a lot of instances when the customer does not opt to call, and would rather visit the website first before making any connection.
Our knowledge base software can help you build a customer self-service knowledge base in minutes where you can create a resource of helpful articles and answer popular customer questions.
Components of a Self-Service Portal
A self-service portal consists of three main components to help provide the customers with a complete self-service experience.
- Knowledge Base
- Community Forum
- Ticket System
Each of these components offers a unique way for the customers to get the answer to any questions they have.
Knowledge Base
When customers come to your self-service portal, the first thing they often do is search for content that might answer their questions. A knowledge base should contain all relevant information (in the form of articles) about your product or service including a getting started guide, FAQs, how-to articles, and step-by-step troubleshooting guides.
Community Forum
Let your customers ask questions, feature requests, share ideas and even answer each other’s questions through community forums. A valuable part of your self-service portal, community forums allow customers to talk to each other about best practices and common questions. There’s a ton of benefits to hosting a community forum on your self-service portal.
Ticket System
It is the 3rd component of a self-service portal. It is a contact us page with a simple ticket form to encourage customers to get in touch if they weren’t able to find an answer on their own. Customers can also view the history of their tickets as well as the status of their currently open tickets in the self-help portal. There is a ticket management section in the admin panel where an admin can view all tickets submitted.
Self-Service Portal Features
- Customers can find answers to their questions faster and avoid unnecessary wait time.
- Reduced number of support tickets. If you intend to reduce the number of tickets; setting up a self-service knowledge base is the ideal choice. It helps you save time by drastically reducing repetitive queries coming from a large customer base.
- It gives satisfaction to customers as they get answers to their questions without getting in touch with you. It also gives an edge to companies as they decrease the number of average requests.
- An always available online self-help customer support portal on your website makes you stand out from the competition.
- Happy customers are more likely to retain and recommend the brand.
- Better Productive Staff - When support agents do not have to attend repetitive support requests, they can spend their time on other productive things. In many companies, the support team is treated as an elite force responsible for keeping your customers happy. That means you don’t want to be clogging up their virtual in-trays with queries that can be handled by a knowledge base article.
Having optimized self-service support, created having the customer in mind will make your customer support almost non-existent because your customers can easily serve themselves.
About PHPKB
PHPKB is a knowledge management software that allows you to setup and manage a knowledge base of frequently asked questions, common practices, business policies and documents for sharing with staff and customers in self-service manner. Established in 2005, PHPKB is the leader in customer support knowledge base systems. Loaded with industry-standard features, PHPKB Knowledge Base Software is used by IT Help Desks, End Users for self-service, Call Centers, ISVs, Managed Service Providers, SaaS and Cloud applications and any product or service that provides self-help customer support for business services to provide immediate answers to their users and customers.
With PHPKB software, you can add a powerful, searchable knowledge base to your site in minutes and help your customers help themselves.
