Visual Self-Service solutions have rapidly become commonplace as companies have adapted to COVID-19 and digitized their operations. The combination of rich, easy to use visual interfaces and sought after automation has created solutions that benefit many levels of business. Solutions streamline customer service interactions, boost satisfaction among customers and employees, and are even being deployed to add efficiency and effectiveness to internal operations. Benefits abound but these five stand out as the most important for businesses looking into Visual Self-Service solutions.

“Visual Self-Service solutions streamline customer service interactions, boost satisfaction among customers and employees, and are even being deployed to add efficiency and effectiveness to internal operations.”

Customer Satisfaction

Most customers today prefer (properly implemented) self-service solutions because they increase speed to resolution and generally reduce customer effort while eliminating wait times. Visual self-service is no different. Customer service agents, for example, shouldn’t have to fill in forms on behalf of customers or walk callers through straightforward processes. By leveraging technology like robotic process automation (RPA), businesses can reduce pressure on agents and accelerate call times by eliminating the middleman.

Today’s visual self-service solutions also enable a great deal of personalization — a key component of modern customer satisfaction. Visual self-service solutions allow interactions to securely pull a variety of personalized details from backend databases and display everything from names to past purchases and even suggest solutions to common problems customers might be calling about without them having to ask. A Salesforce study found 97% of marketers surveyed reporteda measurable lift to business outcomesfrom their personalization efforts. Providing new product and offer alerts to retail customers, automatically displaying coverage information to insurance consumers, and other applications goes a long way to creating a feeling of loyalty and increasing customer satisfaction.

Improved KPIs

Lower AHT, increased CSAT, improved NPS scores, increased first call resolution (FCR), and shorter time to resolution are all possible thanks to visual self-service. The fast and satisfying experiences of well implemented self-service automation have a direct impact on these critical KPIs and more.

Visual Self-Service can sometimes have curious effects on KPIs, however. It is important to bring context to the cost per contact calculation. When customers are resolving the majority of simple, straightforward calls using self-service, the average length of live agent calls might increase as a result. When the only calls reaching customer service reps are complex calls, the number of contacts tends to decrease, but these interactions can end up being longer and the cost per contact can actually increase. If businesses measure the total average handle time of customer interactions (both live calls and visual self-service experiences), cost per contact across all channels should decrease overall.

Agent Empowerment

Strained under the weight of switching to WFH and faced with a wave of increased call volumes, agents assisted by integrated visual self-service tools can focus on more complex calls where their skills are most important, and are less likely to leave call centers as part ofthe Great Resignation.According toGartner,“Migrating Contact Volume From Assisted to Self-Service Channels” was one of the most important priorities for 80% of customer service leaders in 2021, followed closely by “Automating Customer Service Processes.” It makes sense. Removing stress from live agents reduces agent churn at a time when hiring and training new agents is harder than ever.

Sitting on top of traditional voice IVR systems, visual self-service tools likeVisual IVRdeliver engaging customer service to callers with common use cases, leaving live contact center agents available to handle more complex, empathy-driven interactions where their human skills and expertise provide the most value.

Cost Reduction

The bottom line benefits to new visual ​​self-service solutions are their cost reduction capabilities. These self-service solutions deliver end-to-end automation wherever they’re applied, reducing the number of inbound customer service calls that reach live agents, as well as the average handling time (AHT) of each call. Self-service solutions can be offered to callersin the IVR tree,during a call but before customers are connected with an agent. By deflecting these calls to self-service automation technology agents never need to interact with fully deflected callers. Shifting routine, repetitive call types to self-service is a cost effective method of handling inbound interactions like Order Status in retail, Appointment Confirmation in healthcare, Claims Submission in insurance, or FAQ and knowledge bases for almost any industry.

Shift self-service from reactively handling inbound calls to proactive outbound messaging and automated outreach connecting to the right customers at the right time can deliver the help they need before they decide to call in. For instance, what used to be simple one-way SMS appointment reminders can now deliver comprehensive appointment confirmation tools, provide directions, adding to calendar, ability to reschedule, and more, reducing the need for customers to call a contact center, and further reducing call center costs.

Revenue Growth Opportunities

Visual interfaces create opportunities for revenue growth business can’t access in other ways. As customers wait on hold during customer service calls, visual self-service solutions can easily connect and display product advertisements and other marketing materials. Every visual self-service interaction carries with it the opportunity to market in this way. Banners promoting similar products to those customers have recently ordered, mid-experience pages promoting upsells and cross-sells, and post-interaction surveys and feedback suggesting products customers might also be interested in can all drive new revenue.

These revenue growth opportunities aren’t limited to purely visual self-service interactions either. Due to the nature of these solutions (instantly deployable, HTML5-based, app-like interactions), revenue driver pages can be linked to during online chat sessions, sent by agents at the end of live interactions, or even deployed with QR codes on products and anywhere URLs can be embedded.

Visual Self-Service solutions benefit businesses at every level. From bottom line cost reduction to customer and employee satisfaction, the need for visual self-service in the modern contact center is clear. As it increases business outcomes with boosted personalization, improves the speed to resolution while reducing customer effort, and boosts a host of important KPIs, it’s no wonder that Visual Self-Service solutions have rapidly become commonplace as companies have adapted to COVID-19 and digitized their operations.