The Growing Value of Customer Self-Service Portals in Field Service
Self-service is a trending topic in various areas of business. Over the past several years, consumer-facing organizations have spearheaded the concept of self-service and embraced a range of digital capabilities to make customer interactions easier and more streamlined.
In the field service industry, customer self-service is decidedly digital-first as well. After taking a note from consumer-facing markets, many field service organizations now use customer-facing digital portals to help their customers manage interactions with the company.
Here’s what the growing value of customer self-service portals means for the field service industry.
The Benefits of Self-Service Portals
Self-service portals provide key benefits to both the business and to customers.
Businesses have been investing in digital experiences for customers as a means of cutting costs, but they’ve also realized some significant gains in customer satisfaction due to their investments. Most of today’s customers don’t have the time or patience to make phone calls. Instead of picking up a phone and being forced to wait on hold or hope for a call back, self-service portals enable customers to seamlessly report an issue, schedule a repair, and track the status of their service.
In many cases, customers can get answers to their inquiries directly through the portal, especially if the portal contains resources and documentation about the company’s products. For example, many self-service portals are linked to knowledge bases that contain answers to FAQs and other important information, and they are backed up with AI-enhanced services like chatbots to help customers root out problems through automation.
For field service organizations, self-service is a means to increase customer satisfaction while also reducing the working hours it takes to satisfy customer inquiries. Those inquiries that can be resolved through self-service don’t end up going to a call center. This frees up significant amounts of time for company staff who otherwise would have to speak to customers over the phone.
Most digital self-service solutions also link to the company’s internal systems. This allows for seamless scheduling, progress tracking, and more—all initiated by the click of a button on the customer’s end.
Self-Service Portals Are Transforming Field Service
Self-service has already dramatically changed the ways consumers interact with businesses. In many instances, it is now more common for a consumer to log into an app or a website to make a purchase, check the status of an order, or interact with a company than it is for them to pick up a phone.
Beyond the immediate benefits listed here, self-service portals are transforming the way businesses interact with vendors’ field service teams. Today’s self-service portals can be reasonably compared to other transformations in self-service that have had broad-reaching implications throughout history. For example, the emergence of automated teller machines (ATMs) forever changed the way people engage with their banks.
Ultimately, customer self-service is about putting more control into the hands of customers themselves, and customers are embracing self-service portals to access help right when they need it. A recent report by Deloitte noted, "Even those conversations that have traditionally occurred in contact centers are now being automated by companies employing new technologies such as chatbots and artificial intelligence […] According to Forrester, consumers prefer using we or mobile self-service over speaking to an agent on the phone."
Creating a Future of Self-Service
Moving forward, field service organizations must review the current status of their customer interactions to determine if more self-service tools could help or need to be improved. Most companies should adopt self-service in some capacity, whether they deploy an all-inclusive self-service portal or a simple chatbot to answer frequently asked questions about their products.
To learn more about how field service organizations can leverage self-service, don’t miss the next Field Service conference event, happening at the JW Marriott in Palm Springs, CA from April 26th to April 28th, 2022.
Download the agenda today.