Scaling international customer support through self-service channels

It’s no surprise that in today’s digitally connected world where users can get answers to any question in a matter of seconds, that many customers prefer finding answers on their own time, through self-service channels.

This is good news for businesses. It presents the opportunity to efficiently answer many of your new customers questions without the overhead of hiring new agents. One of the most effective self-service channels is your website's FAQ page.

Building & Scaling Your Self-Service Content

Simply adding a new page to your website with a list of questions is not going to be very effective. To have a powerful FAQ page you should invest time and carefully create resources that are tailored to both your customer’s needs and your business objectives.

A good FAQ page can be an effective addition to your website, serving several functions from:

• Freeing up agent and customer time spent answering common questions
• Delighting customers with unexpected features or uses that weren’t directly addressed on the product pages
• Increasing sales and conversions by alleviating customer concerns
• Reducing transaction support costs by eliminating contacts for simple questions
• Showing your expertise and establishing trust with customers in new markets

Helping your customers help themselves in 5 simple steps:

1. Start right: Leverage historical customer queries to identify top user issues and understand why your customers are asking for support.

2. Prioritize & organize: Identify issues that can be resolved without a 1:1 interaction with an agent. A good FAQ page should we well written, organized, and easy to navigate. Topics should be cataloged under clear section headers that customers can quickly jump to as relevant. FAQs should be written in simple language. This is especially important to remember if your product or service is technical.

3. Showcase your business: While your FAQ page should be optimized to answer customer questions, it is also important to keep in mind the overall goal of the website. If your goal is to generate leads, or sell a product or service, you can use your FAQ pages to educate your customers on the benefits of your product or service increasing the likelihood of a conversion.

4. Measure: Identify success criteria and integrate analytics to track and enhance the decision making process. A well organized and written FAQ page should answer your customer's most common questions. This will free up agent time to work on more complex questions, saving both your customer and agents time and your business money.

5. Continuous Improvement: Seek customer feedback on your FAQs and schedule content hygiene checks and audits. Track viewership and periodically measure effectiveness of the overall strategy. When expanding into new markets it is important to ensure that your FAQs are optimized and localized for the new market. It is important to understand if the top FAQs are the same for all markets, and adjust prioritization accordingly.