Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

CRM Today (crm2day.com) talked about a recent report by analyst firm Yankee Group2 concerning the future of customer support.

"This report states that the number of Web self-service interactions are anticipated to increase by 86% through 2007, while live phone support is anticipated to decline by 18% during the same time period. The research results confirm the trend seen by Parature that self-service is increasingly customers’ first choice for primary support interactions.

“Such a high self-service rate has benefited Parature not only due to the success of our customers, but also in our efforts to further improve the quality and effectiveness of the self-service aspects of our customer service software,” said Duke Chung, CEO, Parature. “Self-service is quickly becoming imperative for support organizations due to customer demands for fast, convenient and easy access to information, particularly on a 24x7 basis as individuals often work outside of standard business hours or in other global time zones.”

Another of the strengths that Parature offers is their online customer community that has user-generated articles about best practices, "tips and tricks shared by clients and Parature staff, product documentation, as well as in-depth tutorials and training."

There is a major thought here that we all need to take in, and that is that this isn't only an initiative based upon saving money on less help and streamlining our workforces alone. There is a real customer demand for this type of service. While it includes being efficient, it is not the only consideration.

I can testify to the importance of this as not too long ago I worked with one of the big box store companies that have adopted the strategy of a core group of full-time workers, along with the rest of the work force being part-time. For a time it was killing them when people called in for prices and tied up the employees for long periods of time by having them run all over the store looking for prices or giving the prices in their departments and passing them onto another department with the old phone tag game.

Many times those in other departments never answered and the customer was simply transfered back to the original employee they talked to. It was a nightmare. Oddly enough they had systems in place for customers to check, but they weren't promoting it.

Anyway, in the tight markets we're in, the use of web self-service is fast becoming a must for businesses. It will release your employees to be able to handle the important duties in the store itself.