Like me, if you’ve been a leader in the Service and Support space for a while, you’ve seen our customers adapt to changing technologies and use many ways to find solutions to their support issues.
They may start with an Internet or intranet search, then move to live chat or pick up the phone. There are so many different ways – or channels – to get support, but it’s easy for all the options to become fragmented. This leads to our customers having to repeat the same story each time, which seriously impacts our ability to resolve issues during the initial contact. We need a clear goal to meet our customers where they are and to make all intake channels work together.
Let’s begin with some clear definitions of our primary channels:
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Self-Service Portals/Knowledge Bases: Real self-service allows our customers to find and fix their issues independently. Here they would find step-by-step instructions, FAQs, links to reset passwords or general troubleshooting guides. This is not simply ‘self-ticketing,’ where the customer fills out a form with their problem and submits it as an incident to the support team to handle. That’s an important difference because real self-service deflects the issue away from the support team; self-ticketing just changes the entry point into the intake method.
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Email: While not uncommon, and it is a convenient and familiar channel, email can also be problematic because there may be incomplete information and more back-and-forth communication. A mature IT support organization would place it as a secondary channel behind portals, chat, and phone.
Customer satisfaction with a well-done multi-channel operation is around 67%, but for a fragmented or disconnected operation, it’s only 28%. There are also some significant cost savings in having a true self-service channel. Having simple issues resolved without contacting the support team can cost as little as $1-$4 per contact. Unfortunately, true self-service is not common and Gartner indicates that today a “traditional” self-service channel is only resolving about 14% of issues, because the content is difficult to find or non-existent.
So, how do you build an effective multi-channel approach?
First, pull your ticket data to determine what channels your customers prefer for different issues. Create a balance across channels: self-service for quick, routine issues; chat for speed; phone for a personal, empathetic touch; and email for documentation.
Avoid the biggest trap: making customers repeat themselves because the systems don’t communicate. You should have a cohesive, unified view of customer activity through shared knowledge, consistent processes, and smooth, seamless handoffs between channels. Teams with strong, connected multi-channel strategies report higher resolution rates, lower repeat contacts and better overall efficiency.
If there’s a budget for it, consider unified platforms that connect all these channels into a single dashboard. Some have intelligent routing that guides the customer to the best channel.
If the budget is tight, examine customer behavior and look at the top two or three channels. Improve your Knowledge Base to provide real guides and move away from forms that just open a ticket for the support team. Train your staff on how to route, document and properly hand off issues so the customer doesn’t have to repeat the same story to every person or system they encounter. Good documentation alone can improve resolution rates.
A strong multi-channel strategy is all about providing the right mix of intake methods and defining what each does best, ensuring they work seamlessly so the customer gets a consistent experience. Small, focused improvements can result in significant gains in resolution rates, efficiency and customer satisfaction.