The History, Art and Science of Self-Service

Image: Shutterstock All too often, self-service has been hailed as the silver bullet that will solve all customer service related problems of companies. I am tempted to chime in with an agreement impulsively. But then, I am suddenly reminded of my schooling in this subject, not all of which was a breeze.

It was the winter of 2003-2004, and I remember trying to book tickets to New York from Chicago’s Midway airport. It was particularly frustrating. I was already immersed in CRM technologies by then, and remember wondering how such a reservation system actually came about into operation. Now, more than a decade after that incident, I am still at it, along with several colleagues, and we’re trying to deliver good, if not great, self-service experiences.

For the uninitiated, self-service has a long and illustrious history. During the innovation boom that set off around 1984 with the break- up of the AT&T system, people suddenly began to put the telephone to uses never before thought off. Computers were also making a shift from being scientific curiosities to objects of everyday sighting, if not outright use.

In this environment, self-service took birth. The interactive voice response unit (IVR) was born much before that of course, but people’s new found love for both technology innovation and customer service made self-service technologies the rage of the day. Every respectable bank, airline, utility company, brokerage and you-name-it firm had to have this feature.

In the 90s, in conjunction with the sudden awareness of customer service (Jan Carlzon of SAS made customer service famous as recent as 1981), CEOs and business managers were also pressured into controlling burgeoning costs of customer care and communication. It suddenly seemed as if the customer wanted to ‘talk’. But ‘talking’ costs in terms of phone lines, people, overtime, training and so on.

Naturally, IVR-based solutions (which were the first generation self-service solutions) gained rapid acceptance. Significant amounts of money were pumped into every area of research related to IVRs, and there were billion-dollar companies in this space, seemingly from nowhere. Both the users and buyers of these systems at large became aware of the hazards and the rewards of this technology. Around the same time, the internet phenomenon happened – and the self-service revolution was well and truly on its way.

But then, we came full circle – in a sense that innocent and star-struck customers mostly realized that automated and 24x7 service did not necessarily mean great service. And a backlash began. Many customers complained about being deprived of customer service, and having to bear the cost (in terms of time and effort) which a company should rightly be bearing. Clearly, nobody likes to be stuck in an IVR or a self-service portal.

Self-service has an undeniable ability to cut down costs of service dramatically, and keep the experience standardized at the same time. However, companies need to be smart in deploying self-service selectively, rather than indiscriminately. But some companies out there have done a great job of adopting self-service, and even earning customer kudos for a job well done.

A quick glance at what they did:

1. Understand the customer. Accept the fact that customers will want to talk to you directly sometimes, even though they may love your portals and mobile apps mostly. So, be available when required.
2. Enrich content. Utilize short videos, voice snippets etc. along with FAQs.
3. Convert self-service into a two-way medium. When customers want to communicate with you, or ask a question, be available through a medium of the customers’ choice. Hence, as the degree of involvement changes, a proper channel which can effectively convey the emotional state of the customer is available for communication with your company. Clearly, you will run to your bank, in person, if you find $10,000 missing from your account.
4. Analyze actual usage patterns. Many a times, the manner in which customers end up using a self-service channel is completely different from the one that may have been envisaged by the designers of the system. Hence, make changes as required in order to make the customer’s life easy.

The science behind organizing information for customer’s use has been well and truly refined, if not outright perfected. The work that now remains to be done in order to make customers gung-ho about self-service is to make company systems and technologies near sentient. It’s not an easy thing to do – and a prize worth several billions of dollars awaits the enterprising ones that succeed in this pursuit.

- By Vijay Narsapur, AVP & Strategic Business Practice Head, Customer Service, Infosys BPO

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.