A guide to analyzing your self-service offering

To introduce or expand self-service, companies often lack an overview of the current situation. Our analysis guide can help to identify a company's current conditions and, on this basis, to introduce or expand self-service.

The problem: the lack of overview

Companies want to provide customers with efficient and accessible customer service. A key element is self-service, which enables customers to find solutions to their concerns on their own without having to contact a service representative directly. Despite the potential offered by self-service, many companies are faced with the problem of finding the right focus from a sea of functions, platforms and areas to expand their self-service offerings.

You have various tools and functions in the area of customer service, but you lose track of what actually exists and how it is used. This results in an uncoordinated service landscape in which valuable resources are not used optimally. Without a clear understanding of the current situation, no targeted optimizations can be made. The result: inefficient customer service and missed opportunities to improve customer satisfaction and efficiency.

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The solution: Self-analysis with professional guidelines

The good news is that companies don't necessarily depend on external consultants to optimize their self-service offerings. A professionally prepared self-analysis guide can help you create a detailed report for your company on the current state of the self-service offering and identify concrete steps for improvement.

1. List self-service channels and analyze user data‍

First, an overview of all existing self-service channels (such as FAQ pages, chatbots, and knowledge databases) should be created and their visibility and use assessed. The evaluation of traffic, interactions, and customer feedback can provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of existing self-service offerings. Are there unused channels that could perhaps be more effective in solving problems? It is often enough to redirect existing traffic so that initial results in self-service optimization can be achieved.

2. Check user experience and content‍

Are all self-service interactions working as intended? Are there any technical issues or interactions that are not effective or can be misunderstood? Can the users' questions really be answered by the content offered? Many user experience problems can be found by putting yourself in the role of the user and trying to solve an exemplary problem through your customer service area.

3. Evaluate technologies‍

Existing systems should be regularly checked for updates and compared with newer technologies.

4. Comparison with best practices‍

A comparison with industry-wide best practices can reveal where there is room for improvement. On this topic, please take a look at our white paper to get a detailed analysis of the best practices from leading companies in the industry.

5. Get feedback from stakeholders‍

Involving various departments — for example, marketing, sales, IT and directly from the support team — can open up new perspectives and lead to the identification of synergies.

6. Workshop on prioritization of ideas‍

The development of an action plan requires prioritizing the identified measures to effectively manage implementation.
In our self-service workshop guide, we have identified the steps that will make the workshop successful.

Conclusion

Optimizing the self-service offering is an ongoing task that can increase customer satisfaction and significantly improve customer service efficiency. By applying systematic guidelines for self-analysis, companies can achieve this goal even without relying on external advice. This process makes it possible to identify weak points, optimize processes and ultimately create a more customer-oriented and efficient service offering.