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What is customer self service?

Learn about customer support strategies that improve service experiences by empowering customers to get answers and resolve issues on their own.
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Introduction to customer self service

As customers continue to demand faster and more personalized support, adopting self-service strategies becomes increasingly important for every business. Customer self service refers to the tools and resources that help people access information and find solutions to problems without needing to contact a live representative. Using self-service channels like FAQs and knowledge bases, your business can lower costs while offering more flexible, convenient, and scalable support.
Key takeaways
  • Customer self-service strategies use various tools and systems to provide customers with the resources they need to resolve issues independently.
  • Businesses implement self-service systems to improve customer experiences while increasing the efficiency and availability of their support.
  • Types of customer self-service channels include FAQs, chatbots, knowledge bases, community forums, and customer portals.
  • Self-service tools and resources can connect to your existing CRM system to deliver more personalized experiences and increase their effectiveness.
Benefits

Benefits of customer self service

Providing tools and resources that let customers overcome problems by themselves enables many benefits for your business, such as:

Increased customer satisfaction

Self-service systems give customers more control over their experiences and reduce the need to wait on hold for service representatives. This improved convenience can also help boost customer retention and loyalty.

Shorter wait times

Self-service options help customers find relevant information and troubleshoot common issues quickly—and without waiting to connect with a representative.

Lower costs

Self-service strategies help reduce operational costs by reducing the number of calls and inquiries customers need to make before solving an issue.

Improved availability

Self-service resources give people the tools and information needed to quickly find answers and fix issues on demand—even outside of business hours or when few service representatives are available.

Valuable insights

Self-service systems can track customer behaviors to provide valuable data that helps your business improve products and services.

Better scalability

Self-service channels like chatbots can handle large volumes of customer inquiries at once, making it easier to scale support operations as your business grows.

Higher employee satisfaction

Self-service channels reduce the number of repetitive and mundane customer inquiries that service teams must manage daily. Tools like FAQs and community forums can handle common customer inquiries, allowing your service teams to focus on more complex and engaging work.

Greater efficiency

Customer self service significantly lessens the time and effort it takes for teams to resolve basic inquiries, freeing up resources for more critical tasks.

Key components of customer self service

Self-service systems are comprised of various channels that equip customers with the tools and resources needed to solve problems and get information independently. Essential channels and features that make up an effective customer self-service strategy include:
 
  • Comprehensive knowledge bases. Provide customers with detailed collections of digital resources, such as in-depth articles and step-by-step guides, that help them troubleshoot issues and find answers. Optimize your knowledge base by ensuring it’s well-organized, searchable, and regularly updated.

  • Interactive FAQs. Share a list of the most frequently asked questions and their corresponding answers to give customers a quick and straightforward way to find information. Optimize your FAQs by incorporating dynamic elements that help personalize the experience for each customer. Interactive FAQs add features like collapsible sections, search functionality, and chatbots to help customers locate the information they need faster and more easily.
     
  • AI-powered chatbots and agents. Deploy intelligent self-service tools that use natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to understand customer response and handle a wide range of queries. These tools are available around the clock and can manage many inquiries at once, dramatically improving the scalability of your customer support. To maximize the effectiveness of your chatbots, connect them to your knowledge base, CRM system, and other service solutions to ensure they always engage customers with accurate, contextually relevant responses.
     
  • Community forums. Take advantage of your customers’ expertise by giving them a platform to connect, share experiences, and offer advice. Community forums reduce the workload of your service team by enabling users to resolve each other’s issues instead of creating a new support ticket. Building effective forums requires fostering an active and helpful community around your products and services—to do this, encourage customer participation by recognizing top contributors, moderating discussions, and integrating your forums and knowledge bases.
     
  • Customer portals. Provide every customer with a centralized hub for all the self service features they might need. These systems streamline service experiences and make it easier for users to find the tools and information they need quickly. Optimize your customer portal by ensuring it is easy to navigate, organized logically, designed intuitively, and personalized based on customer preferences.

Customer self-service software

Organizations can streamline the adoption of self-service strategies with customer self-service software—a type of customer service software designed to give people the resources they need to find information and resolve issues on their own. These business solutions bring various self-service tools together onto one centralized platform, simplifying customer experiences and accelerating time to resolution without requiring direct involvement from support teams.

Many modern help desk software solutions, such as Dynamics 365 Customer Service, also use AI capabilities to further enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your self-service strategies. With machine learning algorithms and generative AI, businesses can deploy virtual assistants capable of understanding and responding to customer queries. Plus, AI-enabled self-service systems can automate tasks and processes without sacrificing service personalization.
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Implementing self-service channels

To set up self-service channels, organizations must determine which tools and systems are best suited to their unique business objectives and customer needs. For example, a healthcare provider may offer a customer portal where patients can view medical information, but a software company may get more value from implementing a community forum where users can answer each other’s questions. To choose the right tools for your business, evaluate your customers’ most common inquiries and issues.

After selecting self-service options for your business, consider connecting them to your CRM system to enhance their effectiveness. This integration makes it easier to personalize self-service experiences and provide consistent and accurate information. By tapping into your business data, these channels can update customer portals in real time and offer tailored content that helps everyone resolve problems faster. Plus, this connection helps streamline self service by giving customers access to all the information and tools they need on one system, reducing the need to sign into multiple platforms.

Other best practices for self customer service include:
 
  • Regularly updating your knowledge base to ensure all information is accurate and relevant.
  • Offering guidance and instructions that show customers how to solve their own problems.
  • Collecting and analyzing user feedback to improve your systems.
  • Organizing your content logically to keep all information easy to find.
  • Using dynamic elements—such as a search bar—that help ease navigation across your tools and resources.
After implementing customer self-service channels, consider tracking these key performance indicators to measure the success of your systems and highlight potential areas for improvement:

  • Usage rate. The percentage of customers using self-service options instead of traditional service channels.
  • Deflection rate. The percentage of issues resolved using self-service tools and resources.
  • Time to resolution. The average time it takes to resolve issues using self-service systems.

Customer self service challenges

Although self-service systems help organizations lower costs and improve customer experiences, implementing these support strategies may require organizations to overcome significant challenges and barriers to adoption, such as:
 
  • Resistance to change. Both customers and support teams can be hesitant to replace traditional customer service techniques with self-service tools and resources. Some customers may prefer interacting with service representatives, while some employees may struggle to learn and implement new systems. Your business can reduce resistance to change by continuously monitoring customer behavior and support team productivity to identify where your self service is falling short and adjust accordingly.

  • Cost of implementation. The initial investment needed to set up self-service systems and teach service representatives how to use them may be too significant for some businesses. To adopt self-service strategies using limited resources, start small with a pilot project—like simple FAQ pages—to gather feedback and make gradual improvements without significant upfront costs.
     
  • Content management. Ensuring self-service options are accurate and relevant is essential to reduce customer confusion and frustration, but some businesses may not have the resources needed to keep this information up to date. However, your business can help simplify content management by connecting self-service systems to your CRM solutions. This helps update information automatically while generating new opportunities to personalize customer experiences.
     
  • Technical challenges. Adopting self-service tools can be complex depending on your existing customer service infrastructure. Legacy support systems may not be compatible with modern technologies, requiring costly upgrades or replacements. Before implementing self-service systems, assess your current infrastructure and identify any potential compatibility issues—and consider using middleware solutions that bridge gaps between traditional and modern systems.
     
  • Maintaining a human touch. Finding the right balance between automated self-service options and human support can be difficult for many businesses as they begin adopting self-service strategies. Some issues will likely still require direct assistance from service representatives, so making sure customers can easily reach your support team is crucial. As your business implements self-service systems, regularly gather customer feedback to understand pain points and preferences—and use this data to improve how your automated and human support systems function.

Customer self service case studies

Across industries and market sectors, businesses are adopting self-service strategies to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and availability of their customer support. Companies that have successfully implemented self service include: 

Apollo

As one of the Nordic region’s leading tour operators, Apollo arranges vacations and business trips for more than one million people each year. To help personalize each customer experience and reduce support traffic, the travel company expanded its knowledge base to offer additional self-service options. Using Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Apollo routed frequently asked questions to an AI chatbot, reducing inquiries and support requests by two-thirds in the Swedish market.

Lenovo

When global technology company Lenovo needed tools to help manage inquiries and increase customer satisfaction, the business adopted Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Dynamics 365 Contact Center to deliver an AI-powered chat service. Using Microsoft Copilot, Lenovo boosted the productivity of their support teams by 15% while reaching record-high customer satisfaction.

Microsoft

To better support its service representatives, Microsoft shifted from 16 different case management tools to one customer care platform, Dynamics 365 Customer Service. In addition to improving collaboration and easing complex technical cases, the Microsoft support team also began using virtual chatbots to offer more self-service options. By deploying AI-powered chatbots, the company handled routine inquiries faster and realized a 32% increase in self-service activity.

The importance of customer self service

Any business—regardless of size or industry—can dramatically increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their support by providing customers with tools and resources that help them resolve basic issues and answer common questions by themselves. Self-service channels like FAQs and knowledge bases give customers access to key information around the clock—and tools like AI-powered chatbots can help troubleshoot problems without direct involvement from live representatives.

Using self-service software solutions like Dynamics 365 Customer Service, your support team can implement self-service systems and focus more time on higher-value, strategic work.

Customer self-service resources

View Dynamics 365 guidance and insights that help your business adopt self-service systems and strategies.
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Frequently asked questions

  • Customer service refers to how a business engages and supports its customers before and after they purchase products or services. It includes answering questions, troubleshooting and resolving issues, and offering guidance across different channels to ensure every customer experience is positive. Effective customer service is crucial because it helps your business generate repeat customers and foster brand loyalty.
  • Self service is a customer support strategy that empowers customers to find answers and resolve issues without direct assistance from service representatives. Providing self-service options helps customers quickly access information and find solutions, improving customer satisfaction while reducing the workload of your service teams.
  • Types of customer self service include:
     
    • Comprehensive knowledge bases.
    • Interactive FAQs.
    • Chatbots and AI-powered agents.
    • Community forums.
    • Customer portals.
  • Self-service software is a technology solution that streamlines the adoption of customer self-service systems and strategies for your business. These solutions also improve customer experiences by bringing all the tools and resources customers need to resolve issues independently together on one easy-to-use platform.

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