Eliminating phone calls or driving call deflection has been a central goal for self-service initiatives since the first intranets and support portals went live. But is there anyone who truly expects their call volume to drop to zero? Like any new media or interaction channel, the Web has found its role, and in some industries—think travel or real estate or certain high tech products—the majority of interactions and transactions are likely to occur online, with little assistance from traditional intermediaries like travel agents, brokers or sales reps. But when it comes to tech support and customer service, despite numerous success stories, Web self-service will just be one of the channels you will need to support, along with voice response, text chat, email, SMS, etc.

For many, the challenge is finding the right role for each channel, and the right mix of options for each user that you support. Equally important is to know what to measure across all of your service and support channels so that you can balance the mix of benefits for IT, the business and the end user. Understanding your customer and educating them about how to get help, where to find answers or experts, and indeed when to call is critical. If you do this well, when they call, there’s an awful good chance that it will be worth answering!

Know Your Customer
As discussed in prior columns, segmenting customers is essential to providing both a compelling, tailored online experience and having a chance at optimizing your various interaction channels. This includes doing surveys or focus groups, defining categories or groups of users, mapping their entitlements (recall that a call can only be considered deflected if the customers was allowed to call you), and ideally identifying each group of customers’ preferred channel for various tasks, e.g., they want to share tips with other users and get upgrades online, receive service alerts via e-mail and have the ability to call if they have warranty issues.