3 trends shaping the progression of self-service in CX

Learn why the demand for CX self-service has reached unprecedented levels and how to get it right with data

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Adam Jeffs
Adam Jeffs
01/23/2023

self-service airport kiosk

The need to offer self-service options is now critical for those in CX with 95 percent of brands reporting unprecedented demand from their customers.

CX Network takes a look at the recent Personalize CX with data-driven self-service report to dive into this trend, among others, and offer some insight on the key themes shaping the progression of self-service in CX.

We look into why businesses are observing such high levels of demand, why self-service needs data and why trust is now so important to the customer experience.

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Increased demand for self-service has been observed by 95 percent of businesses

Self-service has been around for many years now, however adoption and demand for it has been accelerated rapidly by the disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result, we are now seeing unprecedented demand for self-service initiatives with 95 percent of brands not only seeing an increase in self-service requests but also requests for more sophisticated self-service for more complex tasks.

Jan Richards, CX Network advisory board member and head of customer experience for Irish Life Group, suggests that this increased demand is likely due to a desire for customers to regain some level of control in incredibly uncertain times.

Richards says: “We live in an increasingly uncertain and complex environment. At a strategic level, enabling self-service is about the balance between empowerment and trust. The customer’s expectation for us to deliver that balance means the important drivers of customer experience are increasingly nuanced. Drivers of satisfaction are changing and require a deeper understanding than ever before.”

Related content: Three real-world factors driving demand for self-service

Self-service with the right data improves CX and reduces costs

The report shared research from Frost & Sullivan which indicates that live interactions with customers incur a cost 24 to 48 times higher than that of self-service. This means that the implementation of self-service features to any customer journey not only offers the benefit of delivering on the increasing demands of customers but also saves businesses money while doing so.

Michele Carlson, senior product marketing manager at NICE explains that these benefits can be taken one step further when self-service initiatives are backed by customer data:

“In building the business case, CX leaders will gain traction in introducing a self-service solution that is purpose-built for their business. While AI-driven solutions are driving the greatest ROI, the technologies that are most beneficial are those that continuously learn from the historical conversational data from the businesses’ voice and chat interactions.

"CX leaders succeed in their key metrics when bot developers can make accurate updates in minutes instead of months,” she adds.

With this in mind, brands should be focused on applying customer feedback data and voice of the customer insights to offer comprehensive and personalized self-service interactions.

Data security is key for building trust

According to Irish Life’s Richards, data security is paramount to the delivery of seamless self-service. This is about more than simply avoiding legal trouble, it is how you show customers that you care and instil confidence that they can safely self-serve without worrying about the safety of their data.

Richards explains: “We increasingly need an emotional connection. This is about showing you understand your customer and care about them. The human touch, in person or online, is crucial, as is trust. Keep my data safe. If there has been a problem, tell me. Years of overselling and data breaches mean it is harder for companies to earn this trust.”

The difficulty of earning this trust means that once it is gained it serves as a major competitive advantage over those who have not yet been able to do so. If brands wish to drive customer loyalty and improve retention rates, the first step is to earn the trust of those customers and ensure they feel safe when self-serving.

Richards continues: “CX leaders will need to collaborate closely with marketing, IT, security, risk and any other departments that are important for your teams to carefully design and measure journeys that are based on compliant standards that vary by industry, business type and individual customer. We should include privacy related KPIs and metrics in our CX measurement programs to measure journey performance.”

You can watch her full presentation here

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