To meet today's demands for a holistic, digital customer experience and offer customers a wide range of contact options, companies are challenged like never before. The challenge is to create a consistent and seamless customer experience. Especially in technical support, however, the usual contact channels such as the telephone or e-mail seem less dynamic and rather outdated. Nevertheless, one still encounters them frequently. And this despite the fact that service requests usually take a very long time, offer little individualisation and cause high costs. In most cases, however, the problem would have been solved in no time if the situation had been analysed in advance and the problem identified at an early stage.
At Conntac, we believe that the best solution lies in diversity and that customer-centric implementation is a fundamental part of tomorrow's service landscape.
This is exactly where the Conntac self-service solution we developed comes in. Consisting of the app for your customers and the Conntac dashboard for your employees, we offer a powerful duo to assist with all support requests. Thanks to the individual and intuitive instructions, from the initial set-up and fault clearance to the first contact in all matters, the app empowers the customer to help themselves. Central to this is the seamless transition to customer care, so that the customer is not left alone until the problem has been definitively resolved.
We have listed the most popular contact channels, explaining how they can be used in combination with a self-service app and how they can be meaningfully expanded without having to adapt the systems or switch off existing contact channels.
For a long time, telephone calls were practically the only way to contact a company and even today this contact channel continues to enjoy great popularity. However, contact by telephone is associated with several difficulties: On the one hand, it can take a very long time to reach a contact person due to the overload of the service hotline during peak calling hours, and on the other hand, high costs arise for the companies, as long conversations usually have to be held to solve a problem. This can lead to clients feeling left alone with the problems.
The self-service app provides a remedy here, enabling clients to process automatic analyses and interactive questionnaires themselves from the comfort of their own homes - 24/7, intuitively and stress-free. If it is not possible to solve the problem completely, the app forwards the problem to support. Here, however, with the big difference that service agents can view all collected analysis data and solution paths of the app in the Conntac dashboard and thus directly start problem solving. This leads to a significant reduction in AHT (Average Handling Time) while increasing customer satisfaction.
Check out our checklist to find out whether your company is ready for self-service. We say yes!
Chat systems are often integrated into websites, where customers are usually served by upstream bots. If the issue cannot be resolved and real, thematically appropriate service agents are available, clients are referred to them. Once here, however, the same problems usually arise as with telephoning. Customers must describe their problem and respond to queries accordingly. Media disruptions between systems and the usually long waiting times until referral to real agents have a negative impact on the customer experience.
With a self-service app, the problem can also be analysed here before contact is made and in most cases it can be rectified directly. If further help is needed, the app forwards the user to the appropriate service staff without media interruption. Seamlessly and in the same app, the customer can now chat with a real person. Here again, however, with the big difference that service agents can view all the collected analysis data and solution paths of the app and thus go directly into problem solving. In addition, agents have the possibility to send instructions to customers and to trigger measurements (e.g. a bandwidth measurement, Wi-Fi frequency measurement, etc.) in the app.
E-mails are also still used in today's customer communication. Mostly, these are used for generating service tickets or transmitting the order status and fault messages to customers. The problem: There is usually a large time lag with this type of communication. Queries are often not answered immediately and service requests often drag on for days. This often leads to misunderstandings and delays, which in turn leads to further service requests.
The self-service app can easily be used as a direct channel to customers. In this way, information is both transmitted to customers and fed back from customers. In this way, topics such as order status, ticket status and ticket creation, malfunction reports and marketing actions are managed in a central location in the future and without annoying detours and delays. Integrations into existing systems can of course be implemented here without any problems.
Clients do not always have the time to deal with the problem analysis. In addition, problem solving is often taken care of in the evenings after work. At these times, most hotlines are already closed or have a long waiting time due to the high call volume. An elegant solution is therefore the call-back function. Customers indicate the time period in which they can be reached and want to be called. If customers are only offered certain time slots for a callback, call loads can be better distributed.
With the help of the self-service app, appointments can be made 24/7, intuitively and at leisure without media disruption. Customers are suggested available time slots in the app and can confirm a suitable appointment. Important! Here, too, service staff have the collected data at their disposal, even if the callback takes place days later and an analysis of the situation with customers has taken place.
Would you like to know more about the different contact channels in customer service and about Conntac Self-Service solution?
Get in touch with us via our contact form! We support you on your way to becoming a self-service company!
