Mapping and Marrying the Self-service Experience

What is the right balance of automation and the human touch in the customer experience (CX)? How much self-service is too much? Too little? And exactly where does self-service fit into your CX strategy?

We were on the road again last week attending the Frost & Sullivan Contact Center East Executive MindXchange in Marco Island, Florida. “Realizing your Customer First Vision,” the 15^th anniversary of the conference, focused on several customer-centric themes, including operations, technology, employee engagement, and innovation.

PTP led a session called “Mapping and Marrying the Self-service Experience.” This session built on our belief that every customer interaction is a journey that can involve multiple channels, including your website, contact center, mobile app, and social media.

We know customer experience (CX) is a differentiator, and companies need to strike the perfect balance of human touch with digital to win. Our session explored the question “where does self-service fit in a CX strategy?”

Best Practices from Professionals

Participants were asked to consider and document leading practices to determine the self-service journeys that offer the best CX in their organizations.  We shared knowledge, proven examples, and action steps important to creating a self-service vision. We used an infographic to guide the conversation in the session, and our fabulous participants identified some additional benefits of well-done self-service interactions:

• Self-service gives the customers control and, with that control, comes a more satisfactory emotional experience
• Self-service creates consistent experiences and reduces variability across interactions
• Additional product offerings can be matched with the customer during a self-service interaction, increasing the likelihood of up/cross-sells

Self-Service Strategy Starters

To end the session, we discussed these self-service strategy starters:

1. Do a touchpoint study: A touchpoint will help you understand how customers feel about their contact experience, revealing customer preferences and expectations for contact channels by contact type. It can help you identify good candidate interactions for self-service.
2. Keep on journey mapping: Journey mapping is still one of the best ways to understand what customers experience when interacting with your brand. They also are critical to designing the optimal future state. You may want to focus your journey maps on the interactions identified in the touchpoint study.
3. Identify the risks and benefits: Combined with your touchpoint and journey mapping efforts, do a risk/benefit analysis to further understand the opportunity for self-service.
4. Build, test, launch, and optimize: Remember to continue to dedicate resources to ongoing monitoring and improvement efforts of the self-service experience.

View the Self-Service Infographic 

Let Us Help with the Strategy

What would you add to this approach? Let’s continue the conversation as you develop and implement your self-service strategy!