The New Normal highly advocates for self-service portals due to a myriad of reasons. For one, consumer behavior has changed courtesy of “contactless” service requirements. Secondly, the “servicescape” worldwide has successfully embarked upon the implementation of the hybridized workforce (humans + bots).
But why does the idea of self-service hold weightage? Wouldn’t it increase the mental effort? Wouldn’t it be branded as “pressure” from companies on customers to access DIY knowledge base?
The short answer – No, it won’t because self-service directly contributes to “instant gratification.” And, in today’s fast-paced environment, gratification beats all the odds.
More than 60% of consumers prefer digital self-service options. The successful facilitation of the same puts companies in the position of increasing the customer satisfaction score by 55% every year.
But, even with all the quantifications favoring self-service, companies fail to translate the same into practice.
More than 62% of self-service portals are branded “hard to use.” Then there’s a problem of help desk fragmentation and inconsistency with omnichannel competence.
Why’s that? Because companies miss the mark in creating a positive customer attitude. According to a 2021 study on the efficacy of self-service technology, a well-designed servicescape drives a “positive customer attitude,” which ultimately influences customers’ decisions to make the most of self-service portals.
So, it’s not only about having a self-service option but also how you lead customers to the same and how their interaction with the self-service technology contributes to their overall experience.
And that’s everything you get with ServiceNow Customer Service Management (CSM) self-service portals.
The Facility of Self-Service Portals for Customers
The ServiceNow Service Portal application helps with the development of customized self-service portals. These portals are designed to:
- Store customer’s profile data
- Maintain customer’s product/service usage data
- Keep a check on the viability of omnichannel interaction
- Ease up the process of opening new cases
- Update the customer about the case status
- Help them review their case history
- Direct them to other self-service options (e.g., service documentation/tutorials – knowledge base)
The CSM self-service portals work for both the B2B and B2C arrangements. For directing the customers to these portals, users have the facility to integrate the portal with virtual agents.
The Power of Knowledge Management
Knowledge is power, and ServiceNow justifies this by providing the option to create and configure service-, product-, and customer-centric knowledge base. The real-time access to information builds a psychological connection with customers, thus contributing to an “eagerness” for self-service interaction.
That said, the features and tools in ServiceNow’s CSM self-service portals make it a powerhouse for knowledge management. The following are a few examples of the same:
- Knowledge base articles can be configured to integrate with portals, thus helping customers easily access the right self-service content.
- AI-powered search faceting can be employed to make the search results easily locatable and more personalized.
- AI-powered search can further recommend query suggestions and handle grammatical/syntactical errors.
- Businesses can quickly identify gaps in the knowledge base articles and promptly fix them. ServiceNow recommends making the most of Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS) for the same.
The Support of Virtual Agents
Virtual agents are the first point of contact for customers. These can facilitate natural language chat (chatbot) or voice interaction. ServiceNow CSM helps employ such virtual agents to:
- Answer common customer queries.
- Direct customers to self-service portals for product usage, service call data, and support options
- Direct customers to the knowledge base, community engagements, etc.
- Route complex cases to dedicated self-service support agents
- Integrate with social media messaging apps like Messenger, WhatsApp, etc.
- Provide agents the capability to put real-time conversations on the conversation pilot for handling common self-service scenarios.
The Ease of Service Catalogs
ServiceNow service catalogs enable users to manage the service request, resources, and requests for a specific service or product that the company is offering.
ServiceNow CSM provides the features to make such catalogs available to customers in a structurally sound and interactive manner.
These catalogs promote the hierarchical categorization of services and products and their corresponding types.
The idea is to bypass the otherwise time-consuming helpdesk and allow the customers to self-serve for the same.
The Capabilities of Engagement Messenger
Implementing all the previous-listed features makes the overall customer experience more natural and intuitive. But what if the customers have queries, feedback, and ratings about the services or products right where they are?
Customarily, organizations construct multiple web properties. Across these properties, they list out similar or variable offerings, catering to a specific demographic through a defined functionality.
However, such a multi-faceted web presence makes it challenging for businesses to direct customers to immediate case resolutions. The ServiceNow Engagement Messenger helps solve this problem by acting as an intelligent, scalable, robust cross-channel customer experience platform.
It integrates with third-party communication platforms, making it easy for customers to engage with the organization’s digital presence.
The best thing – Engagement Messenger consolidates AI search, knowledge management, virtual agents, service catalogs, appointment booking, and case management all in one place.
Such capabilities lay the foundation for a better self-service experience and equally rewarding self-service ROI.
The Bottom Line
ServiceNow CSM is about empowering businesses to transform their customer service with self-service features and capabilities.
The basic premise is to expedite self-service for both the customers and the businesses.
It’s a win-win situation where the customer gets the satisfaction of control, and businesses get the opportunity to save time and money.
ServiceNow takes the initiative to roll out self-service innovations in successive phases. To that end, implementing CSM self-service is all about driving a more customer-centric business model.
Get in touch with an expert to learn more about hassle-free CSM self-service implementation.
