Most Americans believe that there’s a recession on the way. This has already started to influence businesses as companies try to reduce costs and explore opportunities to increase their efficiency. Most famously, Elon Musk just cut his company's staff by 10% — and this is just one example of the effects of an economic crisis. Seeking solutions, experts look back to the history of recessions and find that an excellent customer experience can be a business’s greatest ally in these challenging times.
"[R]revenue growth is indeed one clear advantage of customer experience excellence. Why? Happy, loyal customers have better retention, they’re less price-sensitive and they’re more willing to entertain offers for other products and services – all helping to raise revenue. Plus, because they love you so much, they spread positive word-of-mouth and refer new customers to you – lifting revenue even higher."
– The customer experience ROI study
Source: Watermark Consulting
As one of facets of the company’s CX system, self-service can be a direct, cost-saving option and bring real benefits — you spend less than you would for different human support teams, which will save you money in a moment of decline.
Statistics by Accenture illustrate that a well-executed help center can save anywhere between $1,000,000 and $3,000,000 a year. How is that possible? The calculation is simple: the cost for one support agent interaction ranges anywhere between $7 and $13 while the cost of a self-service interaction is just a few cents. Read more in our previous blog article “How to Measure and Maximize Self-Service ROI with the Zendesk Help Center”
How to build a help center capable of reducing tickets?
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Help Center vs Agents — is it a cost effective self-service solution?
We have been tracking the results of our clients' help center projects since 2015 and here’s what we’ve noticed:
Ticket deflection by 26%
Instead of identifying the problem, which is more often than not easily resolvable, customers tend to first look for an answer in the help center — it saves them time and helps them avoid unnecessary calls and meetings.
Support team doubles their productivity
Based on the previous fact, agents receive fewer repetitive tickets with basic questions. This frees up their time to handle more complex tasks.
15% increase in sessions
Once they’ve visited a company’s well developed help center, customers return to it and stay longer than before because they’re able to follow the help center’s easy navigation system and quickly find what they’re looking for.
Getting back to the Watermark report we mentioned earlier, it is crucial to create a flawless customer experience for when customers need to problem solve. This is especially true during an economic downturn. Now it should be clearer as to why we at Lotus Themes are so focused on the UX-part of our help centers — it is exactly what your business and customers need.
So, if you’re ready to try the help center as an anti-crisis measure and see its self-service benefits on your own, give us a chance to help you!
Looking for some more facts and numbers about self-service benefits? Here you go:
— Customer self-service solutions like FAQs, forums, knowledge bases and help centers are in high demand right now because 69% of buyers prefer to resolve as many issues as possible on their own.
— Zendesk, the global expert on CX, says that 91% of customers would use a self-service portal if it were tailored to their needs.
— According to Gartner, "By 2025, proactive (outbound) customer engagement interactions will outnumber reactive (inbound) customer engagement interactions."
— There are just 5 crucial elements to Zendesk’s customer self-service strategy: discoverability, proactivity, accessibility, clarity, and innovation. It’s not a big first step to start paying a bit more attention to that!
We hope this article helps you get motivated to prepare for this imminent recession. Remember, there’s always the option not to lose profit but double it!
Count on the custom-made help center as one of your trusted solutions.
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