We’re used to thinking of help desk support in very technical terms: fixing issues, helping users who are stuck with specific problems, and working some backend magic that users won’t even be aware of.
Amidst help desk calls and service emails, winds of change swept over enterprise customer support. With a massive rise in user per product, and with the constant improvements in measuring customer support satisfaction, brands and corporations can no longer afford to keep users waiting on the line. Saying you'll “return a call within 48 hours” is no longer acceptable to customers.
Global IT departments needed a sustainable solution that would take the pressure off human support representatives and empower users to solve their own issues, autonomously, and at the same time improve their proficiency and product skills.
The solution was simple: automation of basic support processes. We are talking about simple troubleshooting actions – resetting passwords and answering common questions. As time went by and the technology evolved, support automation grew to answer more complex issues. Today, self-service support is a must-have in the corporate support toolbox. Enterprise organizations embraced self-service technologies that until five years ago were popular only to SMBs. These include a variety of solutions, such as in-application guides, searchable FAQs, and chatbots.
Support experts figured out something amazing: once users were able to search FAQs intuitively, in the same way most people search Google today, FAQ usage rates went through the roof. And if you brought the FAQ search inside the application, instead of forcing users to stop what they were doing, break concentration, and travel to another tab – that would make FAQs and knowledge bases everyone’s new favorite help tool.
But support experts realized something else that would rock the tech-support boat dramatically: self-service could also be used for learning and software training, and users couldn’t get enough. Users were learning by themselves, improving their software usage proficiency, and reducing their dependency on support reps.
Self-service support is creating a scenario where there are only winners:
As the technology rapidly evolves to pioneer support solutions that are even more efficient and cost-effective, we can look forward to voice-supported help, visually detected issues, and more.
Noa joined the Oracle University marketing team when Oracle acquired Iridize. With a strong background in digital marketing, UX planning and customer strategies, Noa headed the content team in Iridize and now joins Oracle as a resident Guided Learning and content expert.
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