Web vs. Phone Self-Service....

A blog I have started reading recently is Service Untitled. This is a great, active blog to read, with lots of very useful insights and information from people who truly care and think a lot about customer service.

Their latest post focused on self-service FAQs on the web and the author offered the following recommendations about what a good FAQ should be and should not be:

1. It should not be forced. Companies should never require their customers or users to use self-service. They can suggest it or make it more noticeable, but they should never force it.
2. It should be intelligent. FAQs and self-service options that are static are worthless. The systems should update based on popularity, helpfulness, etc. There should also be humans watching the self-service systems and how customers are using them. Use Google Analytics if your system doesn’t already have an analytics tool.
3. It should ask for suggestions. Like Google and LucasArts, good self-service centers should ask if articles were helpful, if they helped resolve issues, etc. To take it a step further, human representatives should ask if customers tried self-service. If they say no, ask why. The answers may be surprising.
4. It should be up-to-date. There are very few things that are less helpful than an out of date help center. Make sure yours stays up-to-date and contains relevant information.
5. It should be easy to navigate. It should also be easy to search. Make sure your help center is easy to navigate. It should be easy to go back, easy to explore relevant entries, and all of those good things.

Very interesting how the 5 requirements above closely match to some best practices in phone self service: (1) don't hide the zero out option, (2) use information that you can gather about the caller and the context to serve them intelligently, (3) get feedback from callers and monitor caller satisfaction, (4) offer accurate information and solve caller problems, (5) make sure the call flow is coherent and rational (for instance, don't drive people crazy with jumbled menus full of holes - "For Support, press 1, for sales press 7, for billing press 5," etc.).

See more about this in an article I recently published in TMCNet: "Treat Humans Humanely and they Might Just Like IVR".