Most customers have a minimal desire to connect with a company representative for issues with a product or a service. And ever since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, a massive shift in customer-business interactions has occurred, leaning primarily towards virtual communication. Most brands are now receiving an overwhelming influx of customer support requests and that’s why adding self-service to your CX strategy is crucial. Not only will this help with the quicker resolution of customer issues, but also improve your average query handling time. 

To help customers solve issues on their own and lift the burden off support staff, a desirable solution in the form of self-service can be tapped into. A study by McKinsey finds that 66% of customers avail themselves of the self-service options before reaching out to the customer support center.

Customer Self-Service is a must-have. Here’s why: 

According to Kate Leggett (VP and Principal Analyst for CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) and Customer Service at Forrester Research), ‘Customers use self-service options as a first point of contact with a company and turn to digital agent-assisted service to resolve issues and get answers to the questions.

Self-service options are the first-point communication tools deployed by companies, which focus on resolving most customer queries without the need for further agent intervention. With the prevalence of AI tools (including newer ones like ChatGPT), self-service functionalities have become sophisticated and effective in dealing with a variety of customer queries. When executed with the right mechanism, self-service tools benefit companies by cutting down on operational costs and investing in a support staff that prioritizes customer retention and growth.

Self-Service by Freshdesk: A gamechanger for customer experience  

Freshdesk has incorporated Self-Service options from a customer’s perspective and categorized them into three parts: 

• Knowledge base: provides upfront answers to customer queries for resolving problems on their own.  

• Community forums: a user-friendly platform for your customers to interact among themselves; ask questions, feature requests, and engage in discussions about your product.   

• AI-driven Help widget: Allowing Freshdesk users to embed their knowledge articles into their website through a customizable widget that reflects their brand identity. 

Quick overview of Freshdesk’s Self-Service features

1. 1. Freddy answers - The intuitive AI engine by Freshdesk, Freddy, taps into machine learning to understand multiple contexts of customer queries, based on which it instantly picks the best-fitted answer from your knowledge base. Freddy also adapts and learns from past customer interactions, prompting its user to write new answers or improve upon the existing ones wherever necessary.
   2. Customer Sentiment Detection - Angry customers can be tricky to handle and require specialized attention. There is a frustration tracking feature built into the self-service tool, which automatically detects frustration among customers by their ‘rage clicking.’ It then opens a contact form, asking your customers if they need further help via a live agent. 
   3. Analyze & track article performance - Our built-in analytics help Freshdesk members monitor the effectiveness of their knowledge-based content. It lets you analyze the footfall of your articles and prompts readers to offer feedback. Additionally, Freshdesk users can also integrate their Google Analytics account to know more about traffic received on your support portal.
   4. Multilingual knowledge base support - For our users with a global audience, the multilingual knowledge base comes in handy. You can automatically convert content published in your primary language into 42 different languages. Hence, you can cater to different demographics. Freshdesk’s customer service portal also detects and auto-loads the page as per your customer’s preferred language (based on browser preference or login input).

Are you using a self-service mechanism as part of your customer experience? Let us help you upgrade to Freshdesk Customer Support. Write to us at [email protected]