Why Marketing Matters When Introducing Self-Service
So your company is installing an interactive voice response (IVR) system to reduce the number of customer service reps needed in the contact center, or it’s encouraging customers to find their answers online rather than by contacting a salesperson. As a marketing exec, such moves toward encouraging self-service don’t affect you—or do they?
Indeed they do, because they can create more distance between company and customer and weaken relationships, which in turn leads to a lack of loyalty. In a white paper entitled “Five Web Self-Service Pitfalls,” customer service software provider eGain Communications Corp. uses banking in the ATM age as a case in point. In trying to cut costs by replacing flesh-and-blood tellers with ATMS, “they had bartered away an important customer interaction opportunity for anonymity,” according to eGain. “A few years of ATM interactions and the banks had no emotional capital left with customers. There was a surge in retail customer churn rates as customers started to shop for the best CD rate or the least expensive checking account.”
That doesn’t mean banks should banish their ATMs, of course. After all, consumers by and large prefer the convenience. It does mean that the marketing department needs to be involved in any companywide shift to increasing levels of self-service, even though such a move may seem to be a purely operational decision.
Among eGain’s suggestions: “Coach” customers to use self-service options with instructions that make clear the benefit to the customer. (Polo.com’s “Create Your Own” personalization option is a good example, with its colorful imagery and emphasis on uniqueness.)
Also, do some research to determine which audience segments prefer self-service and why, then market the service to them as a differentiating feature. For instance, eGain refers to research performed by one of its banking clients that showed that a significant portion of its audience preferred self-service not because of the convenience but because they often felt silly asking service reps what they feared were basic questions.
