How To Deliver Amazing Self-Service Support

Getting startedSend customers to your support site

Make sure you include the right support content

Keep your knowledge base content fresh and relevant

Make it easy for customers to find the solutions they need

Make sure your support center reflects your brand

Optimize your support content for all devices

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TABLE OF CONTENTSSelf-service customer support is tablestakes in today’s world. Uber-connected customers like to find their own answers — on their own timeframe — and most would rather use self-service than pick up the phone. The problem is that most of them can’t actually find the solutions they are looking for. Building a support center is an effective and cost-efficient way for growing businesses to help customers, but you have to do it right. Here are six ways to deliver an amazing self-service support experience for your customers.

of US online adults will abandon their online purchase if they can’t find a quick answer to their question.

of customers would rather use self-service to resolve their support issues than pick up the phone or send an email.

— Forrester Research

45%

72%

This may sound like a no-brainer, but if your support site is going to be successful, customers need to know it’s there. This can be a challenge for established companies who are launching a new support site and need to transition customers over. The most effective way to get customers to use your site is to add self-service call-to-actions. In addition

1. Send customers to your support site

to including links to support center to your corporate site, you can add links within your product. You should also consider using a customer support app that includes a case deflection feature, so when a customer submits a question through your support site’s web form, it instantly suggests relevant support articles based off terms in the subject.

CHECKLISTAdd your support site to your corporate site navigation including the footer and all relevant pages.

Integrate support into your product or service, perhaps with an SOS button.

Look for a customer support app that will deflect users to your support site.

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2. Make sure you include the right support contentYour support center is only useful if it has the answers your customers need. To include the most relevant content, make sure you label similar cases in your customer service app so you know when multiple customers are looking for the same information. And monitor what people search for most often. Commonly-used self-service support tools include FAQs, a knowledge base with detailed product information, community bulletin boards, and videos with step-by-step instructions for resolving a problem. Decide what content will best help your customers solve the problems, and then build it.

CHECKLISTLabel cases from customers that could be addressed with self-help content.

Manage a list of articles to create based off the most common case subjects, and use Google Analytics to find other topics that people are searching for.

Determine the best ways to provide answers — via FAQ, knowledge base, community, or video.

Your knowledge base is never really “finished.” To make sure it is always working as hard as it can, you need to continuously improve your articles. Run reports so you can see what content is viewed most often so you know which articles you need to prioritize. You should plan regular, periodic reviews

3. Keep your knowledge base content fresh and relevant

of all of your content (including graphics and video) and set expiration dates so you are forced to revisit everything that you create. Another way to ensure your content stays fresh is to give customers the opportunity to rate it, so they can tell you what needs improvement.

CHECKLISTContinually monitor what people are searching for so you can see if there are holes in your content.

Set review dates for every article and keep an eye on content ratings so you know what needs to be improved.

Integrate content into your company’s software development cycle. Include documentation review tasks in release checklists to ensure it is updated when new or changed features are released.

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CHECKLISTGive every topic and article a meaningful name and categorization that captures the important aspects of the article.

Make articles available through both search and directory on your site, as well as search engines.

Include your contact information in all support content in case customers need more help.

It’s not just enough to include the content that your customers need in your support site. You also need to make it easy for them to find — fast. Include a search bar. Be sure every topic and article has a meaningful name that captures the most important aspects of the article and is tagged with the right category so customers can find it whether they are browsing or searching. And, it’s

4. Make it easy for customers to find the solutions they need

really important that your content is crawlable so customers can find answers through a Google search. You should also be sure to embed all available support channels — and a contact form — in the footer of your knowledge base. This builds customer trust, because if they can’t find what they’re looking for, they can easily contact support through email, chat, phone, etc.

You want customers to feel like they are “in their element” and to be comfortable with your support experience. Make sure that you use the same header and footer as your corporate site and that the domain and subdomain are consistent (for example: www.company.com and support.company.com). It’s also important that you use a style guide to ensure consistency across all of

5. Make sure your support center reflects your brand

your sites, including feature names, capitalizations, and formatting, as well as your tone and voice. And, you don’t have to write your own style guide from scratch. Many established companies publish their own style guides which are up to date with industry standards. You can save a lot of time by finding a public style guide that works for your company.

CHECKLISTDesign your support center to mimic the style of your website and reflect your brand.

Encourage your documentation and marketing writers to use a shared voice and tone.

Create (or borrow) a style guide and standardize it with what your marketing team is using.

With so many people using smartphones to manage their businesses and personal lives, it’s critical to provide a consistent multi-channel experience so your customers can solve their problems on the go. In fact, research shows that 50 percent of smartphone users would prefer to use a mobile customer service app to try to resolve their customer service issues before calling a contact center*. Responsive design — which means that no matter what size screen your site is viewed on, the interface responds accordingly — needs to be your standard for your product interface, your corporate site, and your support site.

* Echo Research

6. Optimize your support content for all devices

CHECKLISTDetermine which devices are being used by your customers and prospects so you can address the right ones.

Use responsive design for your support site so content can be easily accessed from the right devices.

If your product or service includes a mobile experience, offer integrated support.

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