How the proliferation of the self-serve model is shaping Operations and Customer service landscapes.
Fact Analysis:
1. “35% of consumers find it very important to have a fully self-serve model available to resolve their issues and address business needs.” — (Emplifi) — This reflects the value potential of existing needs in the market that can address the customer satisfaction scale.
2. “92% of customers say they would use a knowledge base and 83% say they’d use a community forum for self-service needs.” — Vanilla Forums — This reflects clients’ intent to invent time and connect, but through limited options thus demanding ease of self -serve model adoption.
3. “39% of customers say they can resolve issues much quicker using self-service model options than other managed model.” — Deconstructing Delight report — Freshworks- This reflects the business need for one of the key drivers (“Time to Market”) of a self-serve model.
4. “Only 13% of customers are fully able to resolve their issues through self-service as the only channel.” — Gartner — This reflects the need for a Hybrid model, that cater to challenges with the self-serve model.
Analyzing the above facts leveraging Kano Model places the self-serve model as a “Satisfier” with future business trends reflecting place it as a “basic expectation”.
The Drivers for the self-serve Model:
The current Scenario of growing demand for self-serve mode is driven by the following factors/Trends.
1. Development in Platform Economy eases the development of the product as a service that can be managed by the client, developing a sync between systems, and leveraging network effect to address the availability of skilled human capital.
2. Growing application of AI provides an ease to understanding customer business scenarios and performing in-depth analysis to deliver a tailored solution that leverages a self-serve model and ease daily operations processing while developing customer-specific knowledge.
3. Increasing demand for Governance and control.
4. Growing competitive landscape that requires addressing ‘time-to-market’.
5. Partner’s Cost structure also plays an important role in driving client decision to opt. for a self-serve model.
Impact and Way-Forward
1. The partner organization should analyze its cost per contact to develop a Hybrid model and restructure its cost structure to address the need of the client, adding value for all parties.
2. Product Owners should develop a client-specific knowledge base that highlights and cater to the operational needs of businesses, leveraging infographics. And set up a mechanism to update the knowledge base to address changes.
3. Organizations should adopt the “Train the trainer” model to ease the development of product understanding with the client team and manage costs to deliver a self-serve model.
About Sunmeet Singh Oberoi(Thought insertion / Summarizer)
Sunmeet has a proven track record in Business Consultancy, Enterprise digital transformations, and strategy initiatives execution. Sunmeet had worked with Tata Consultancy Services in Strategic growth business addressing the Manufacturing industry’s digital solutions present in international geographies. Sunmeet had also worked with different NGOs and as part of his entrepreneur journey piloted a project to address Tier-2 city problems in India, and did his MBA from Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai. Currently, he is with ZS Associates as a Business Operations Consultant.
LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunmeetso/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SunmeetSingho
