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?
Nowadays, A self-service portal is an integral component of a website, specifically designed to provide users with valuable information and resources that assist them in finding answers and resolving their issues independently. The primary objective of any self-service portal is to enable users to efficiently address common inquiries without the need for external assistance.
customers increasingly favor self-service options over direct human interaction, as these solutions facilitate quicker access to answers and help mitigate unnecessary wait times. By implementing self-service support, organizations can empower their customers to complete tasks and troubleshoot issues autonomously, thereby enhancing overall satisfaction and efficiency.
Why is the self-service knowledge base important?
Customers expect support, and they want it quickly. They aim to accomplish their goals with minimal hassle, which often means they prefer self-service options. Loyalty can no longer determined by price or product alone, instead, customers remain loyal to companies based on the quality of the experience received on their end. If they do not receive the expected level of service, they can easily switch to a different 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 reported a clear majority here; 72% of online consumers in the U.S. prefer using a company's website to find answers to their questions instead of contacting the company via telephone or email. This highlights the trend that customers are increasingly inclined to explore websites first, confident that they can find the information they need before making any direct connections.
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 easily access the information they need to get answers to their questions, helping to minimize wait times and improve their overall experience.
- 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.
- Satisfied customers are more likely to stay loyal to the brand and recommend it to others.
- 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.
