• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
IVR Technology Group

IVR Technology Group

Delight Customers. Reduce Costs. Increase Efficiency

  • IVR payments
  • text payments
  • products
    • Automation Platform:
      Roll your own voice & text applications
    • Payments Suite:
      IVR payments by phone, text & chat
    • Broadcast Suite:
      Automated alerts by voice, text & email
    • White Glove IVR:
      We can help decrease agent call volume
    • Automation Solutions:
      More CS automation solutions.
  • about
    • About Us
    • FAQ’s
    • Security First
    • Careers
    • Partner With Us
    • Our Valued Partners
  • contact
  • blog
PCI DSS Certified Level-1 Service Provider

Three Trends Driving A Shift Towards Customer Self-Service

What’s Compelling This Shift In The Traditional Customer Support Model?

Today, customers desire instant access and first-contact resolution to their needs. From the consumer’s standpoint, they’re continually seeking instant gratification, immediate delivery, instant service, and most importantly, instant satisfaction. This need for immediacy is impacting the traditional customer support model.

Think about it. If you’ve just purchased a new Smart TV, you want to take it out of the box, plug it in, and start enjoying your favorite programs, right? But what happens if it just won’t connect to your Wi-Fi? What do you do? The last thing you want to do is sit on the phone for upwards of 30 minutes waiting to speak to a representative. And as it turns out, neither do the rest of the consumer pool!

Here are three trends that are causing a shift towards customer self-service.

Personal Preferences

Let’s quickly return to our example of the new (but malfunctioning) Smart TV. In today’s world, consumer preference is shifting towards self-service, as opposed to traditional troubleshooting and customer support. Seriously, do you want to contact a call center to find out why your new TV won’t connect to the internet? Would you instead file a support ticket? Or would you try a chatbot to see if you can self-serve your way to an answer?

I assume the latter. As it turns out, according to major industry research firms like Gartner and Forrester, self-service is one of the fastest-growing channels within the customer support sector over the past five years and the channel of choice for the last three. 79% of customers would rather use self-service than a human-assisted support channel (Forrester). Funnily, 33% would rather “clean a toilet” than wait on hold for a support agent (Aspect CX Survey)!

Machine Learning

You’ve probably noticed the recent influx of technologies like chatbots and other AI-driven solutions on the internet in past years, but have you interacted with a chatbot in a customer-service situation? When built well, chatbots can gain a deeper insight into customer satisfaction by learning about related issues, troubleshooting solutions, and customer concerns. Read more about the role of chatbots in customer experience.

With the recent influx of AI and machine learning technology, businesses have seemed willing to implement the new technology into their customer support models because it presents a specific type of low-risk, high-reward kind of situation for companies.

Machine learning works by continually absorbing information. So, as customers continue to interact with chatbots and other forms of AI, it grows in intelligence and can offer more effective solutions – and perhaps its most impressive feature is that most customers aren’t even aware that they’re not chatting with a human. Because chatbots are quick, efficient, and somewhat helpful, consumers would rather self-service and self-troubleshoot their issues through the web.

Customer Success Now Trumps Customer Support

The Customer Support role is increasingly coming under the purview of the executive running Customer Success. Consider the metrics that matter most to a well-run support team today. If you think it’s cost followed by customer satisfaction, you would have been right five years ago. Today due to the strong adoption of subscription-based business models, renewals (customer retention) and upsells (organic growth within the customer) trump any cost-saving KPIs.

However, customer success that comes from customer satisfaction means better and more timely support. Creating this type of support with just customer support staff is neither easy or scalable. Automation and self-service, therefore, are critical in any customer success practice.

Related Customer Success Stories

We’ve given you some thought-starters on what do do, now here are some examples of how these kinds of strategies have helped our customers.

A major global credit card issuer came to use with a significant problem in one of their regional markets, overly long hold times at the contact center. We deployed a customized IVR to suit the unique needs of the customer database and began helping them improve their core data: How we solved long hold times.

Using a full suite of automation technologies, we helped drive the growth of a regional self-storage company with dozens of locations:  Growing a self-storage company through automation.

A financial services company with aggressive growth plans came to us with an urgent need, a custom IVR for a new product they acquired. Based on that success, they now look to use to drive growth through exceptional customer experiences: Building gold standard customer experiences.

Conversations,  IVR and Automation

Primary Sidebar

Follow us on LinkedIn for all our latest posts.

We’re Excited To Announce Our Partnership With Bluefin

Texting Etiquette For Business

How SMS Automation Helps with Multi-factor Authentication

How SMS Automation Reduces Contact Center Labor Costs

How Outbound Surveys Improve Customer Experiences

Get Rapid Customer Feedback With IVR Surveys & Qualtrics

Case Study: Growing A Bank Through UCaaS & CCaaS Integration

The #1 Reason To Choose A Contact Center as a Service

Customer Story: Building World-Class CX With IVR Voice Surveys

Footer


circle-twitter
circle-linkedin
circle-facebook
circle-mail
circle-phone
IVR Technology Group
HEADQUARTERS
  65 Lawrence Bell Drive, Suite 102
  Amherst, New York 14221
  1-716-250-2800
DALLAS SALES OFFICE
  1090 Texan Trail
  Grapevine, TX 76051
  1-972-846-4100
Client Login
SiteMap
Press
Contact Us
Privacy Policy
compliance

© 2021 · IVR Technology Group, LLC · all rights reserved