Stand Out Customer Self Service

We’ve all been there… Trying to find the answer to a question in the middle of the night. But that friendly voice on the other end of the call is a recording, and he’s cheerfully informing you that the customer service department is closed for the evening.

Given the on-demand society in which we live, it’s not surprising that your customers expect you to work on their schedule. What might be surprising, however, is that (even during the day), 76% of customers prefer self-service over talking to a support rep.

Tools like Zendesk Guide can help you help your customers.

Guide works seamlessly with Zendesk Support to reduce cost and increase the quality of customer support on any channel. Guide makes it easy for agents to capture and share their expertise and use it to respond to support requests more effectively with its knowledge base. According to Gartner, “Improved delivery of contextual knowledge to an employee or customer reduces a provider’s time to answer by 20% to 80%, raising competency and satisfaction.”

How to Create the Best Self Service Experience

Getting the “tribal knowledge” out of your Support Teams’ heads and into articles, however, is only half the battle. If your Help Center is not well thought out, organized, and up to date, you might be doing yourself more harm than good.

Here’s what our self-service experts have to say:

1. Begin with the end in mind. If you start with your most important information (articles) and then work backward into sections of content and then finally your top-level categories, you’ll find it much easier to organize your content.
2. Put someone in charge of managing your content. This person should have strong proof-reading / editing skills and have a clear understanding of your brand’s “voice.” When members of your Support Team leverage the Knowledge Capture app to draft articles, this moderator can make sure that your content is properly formatted and categorized based on the established hierarchy.
3. Build a content calendar. With Guide Enterprise, you can automatically schedule posts for publishing / unpublishing to ensure that your content is always fresh and current. Even without the Enterprise plan, however, you should consider using a calendar or other scheduling tool to keep track of time-sensitive content and review this regularly.

Lastly, although Copenhagen is a nice place to visit, it is important to remember that every Zendesk customer starts their Guide experience with the same theming. Consider a custom-built Guide template (or one of our tailored themes) to help your content shine without your team needing a background in website development.

The Pandemic has changed the game when it comes to customer service. And while many companies have made a remarkable pivot to Work From Home life, providing the same level of service is no longer sustainable. Now that the answer to any question (or need) is a click away, it will be the companies that provide a strong self-service solution that will survive in the future.

HOW DO YOU KNOW IT’S TIME TO BRING IN THE EXPERTS?

If your team lacks the available time and know-how it’s time to save yourself money, time, and the hassle. Bring in the experts! When your company’s needs are extensive and complex, you need professionals who have the knowledge and experience to customize, deploy, and maintain your Zendesk Guide system.

729 Solutions is one of few Master Zendesk partners, with years of experience and over 120 Zendesk projects under our belt. Our customers get to dive right into delivering their company results because our expertise lets them skip over the time consuming and costly trial and error stage. Our streamlined process of design, development, and deployment alongside our experience with Zendesk integrations with third-party systems makes us the go-to for all of your Zendesk solutions.