Customer self-service is proactive customer service that provides electronic support for customers to access information and perform routine tasks without requiring the assistance of a live customer service representative.

Customer self-service empowers customers to solve their own problems. This improves customer experience since the self-sufficient customers are happier customers. Instead of asking customer service reps for every small issue, it empowers customers to find their own solutions whenever possible.

A customer self-service portal is a portal that offers information and resources to help users find answers and resolve their issues instead of relying on interaction with a customer support agent directly.

A good self-service portal is one that is easily accessible, designed with intuitive navigation, guides customers to the right area for their issue and allows for escalation to assisted channels when failure to self-serve appears inevitable. Organizations should strike a balance between a contained self-service experience and access to assisted channels. We don't want it to be too easy to contact through assisted channels. However, we also don't want a labyrinth of resources that frustrates the customer. An effective portal knows its limits and works toward tilting that balance in favor of containment over time.

To improve self-service containment rates, CSS leaders must look beyond simply improving their self-service channels and consider the holistic experience that often starts within search engines and third-party information sources. Containment can only be achieved if the organization has control over the information and guidance across self-service resources, as opposed to customers floundering so much with bad information that they only look for a contact phone number.

CSS leaders are focused on adding digital channels and increasing self-service capabilities. Instead, they should refine channel strategy to focus on seamless integration of their existing channels/capabilities and ensuring customers start with digital resources. A seamless customer journey not only improves the customer experience, but by improving the connection between self-service and assisted channels, customers will be more confident when organizations guide them to starting in self-service.

The common elements of customer self-service are FAQs, search, knowledge bases and communities. Increasingly, organization are implementing chatbots, virtual customer assistants and digital interactive voice response systems (IVRs). While there are any number of different options, the critical component is that they work together to create a seamless, contextual customer experience. Simply offering a number of tools can work against their purpose if customers bounce around in futility and end up in assisted channels with a higher baseline of effort and frustration.

Chatbots and VCAs fail due to the lack of the necessary tradeoffs for successful implementation. Perhaps the service leaders have a chatbot that is far too limited in its capability to handle the complexity of the experience they want to provide their customers. Or, maybe they have an expensive solution that they rush to integrate.