SELF-SERVICE: MAXIMIZE BUSINESS
RESULTS BY HELPING CUSTOMERS HELP
THEMSELVES
February 2016
 Omer Minkara, Research Director,
Contact Center & Customer Experience Management
Report Highlights
p2
Companies with selfservice programs
retain 40% more of
their clientele yearover-year.
p4
Best-in-Class firms
are 80% more likely
to integrate selfservice activities
within omni-channel
programs.
p7
Best-in-Class firms
are 88% more likely
to use self-service
data to project agent
demand to minimize
overstaffing and
understaffing.
This report identifies the value of self-service programs, which
help contact centers minimize customer effort and reduce
service costs. We’ll show how Best-in-Class firms design
strategies that maximize returns from investing in self-service
programs.
p9
Best-in-Class firms
are 62% more likely
to utilize real-time
analytics to exploit
potential sales
opportunities during
self-service
interactions.
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Self-Service: Maximize Business Results by
Helping Customers Help Themselves
Self-Service: Ignore at Your Own Risk
Getting self-service
right is tricky. Use selfservice for the right
issues, and you’ll have
happy customers. Use
it for complex issues,
and you’ll have
unhappy clients.
Design the right
strategy to achieve
optimal results.
Definition: Self-Service
For the purposes of this research,
Aberdeen defines customer selfservice as the use of technology
tools that allow organizations to
empower their customers with the
ability to address their own needs,
without interacting with a live
agent. Self-service interactions take
place across different interaction
channels, including company
websites, mobile applications, and
kiosks.
The dynamics of customer service have changed drastically over
the past decade. The ability to handle customer issues promptly
and in a personalized fashion remains crucial to ensure client
satisfaction. However, companies can no longer focus on
accomplishing this goal solely through channels used to deliver
agent-assisted service (e.g. phone, social media, and live chat).
Modern customers demand the flexibility to solve their needs
themselves — without navigating an IVR system, waiting to get
connected to the right agent, and explaining their issue. This
means companies looking to “help customers help themselves”
must incorporate self-service within their business activities (see
sidebar).
Findings from our research show that contact centers with selfservice programs outperform those without it across key
measures such as customer retention rates and client profit
margins. Specifically, self-service users enjoy a 40% greater
customer retention rate compared to non-users (67% vs. 48%).
They also achieve 6.8% annual growth in the average customer
profit margin, compared to a mere 1.8% by non-users. For more
insights into how self-service improves company performance
results, read Aberdeen’s February 2016 The Business Value of
Customer Self-Service: Happy Customers, Better Financials study.
It’s important to note that the aforementioned benefits are
realized when self-service is used in the right context and for the
right purposes. Recommending that customers use self-service
to resolve issues that your company knows are best resolved
through agent assistance is a poor strategy. It increases the risk
of frustrating the client, and will likely result in repeat contact,
further lengthening the time to resolution.
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Self-Service: Maximize Business Results by
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When Is the Right Time to Use SelfService?
The answer to the above question
is one of the primary determinants
of success in improving company
performance versus seeing
minimal to no value from selfservice investments. Read
Aberdeen’s February 2016 SelfService vs. Assisted Service: What’s
the Right Time to Use Them? study
for a brief overview of when to use
self-service vs. agent assisted
service.
Our analysis above points out that simply adopting self-service is
not enough to maximize company performance. Technology
adoption must be coupled with a well-designed strategy to
achieve the desired results. Before we identify the key
ingredients of Best-in-Class self-service programs (see sidebar on
page 4), let’s first take a look at how building the right strategy
makes all the difference in attaining high performance.
Four Reasons You Need the Right Self-Service Strategy
The modern contact center must navigate two seemingly
different, but connected, objectives. First, is the need to delight
customers; this is reflected by the ability to improve customer
satisfaction rates. The second objective is enhancing operational
efficiency, which contributes to a decrease in service costs.
Metrics such as average handle time and agent utilization are
indicative of organizational success in this second area. Table 1
shows that contact centers with Best-in-Class self-service
programs outperform All Others across all those related metrics.
“Customer support activities are
costly. Hence, deflecting support
needs by enabling clients to help
themselves is a key enabler to help
enhance financial health.”
~ Eric Stieg, Senior Manager,
Communities & Social Media,
Infoblox
Table 1: The Benefits of a Top-Notch Self-Service Program
Company Performance (n=215)
First contact resolution rate
Year-over-year improvement in customer
satisfaction rate
Year-over-year improvement in agent utilization
rate
Year-over-year improvement in average handle
time
Best-in-Class
All Others
83%
16.2%
55%
-0.3%
5.8%
-1.0%
3.7%
-4.1%
Source: Aberdeen Group, February 2016
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Self-Service: Maximize Business Results by
Helping Customers Help Themselves
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The Aberdeen maturity class
framework is comprised of three
groups of survey respondents.
This data is used to determine
overall company performance.
Classified by their self-reported
performance across several key
metrics:
• Best-in-Class: Top 20% of
respondents based on
performance
• Industry Average: Middle
50% of respondents
• Laggard: Bottom 30% of
respondents
Sometimes we refer to a
fourth category, All Others,
which is Industry Average and
Laggard combined.
Best-in-Class contact
centers resolve 94%
more issues through
self-service, compared
to All Others.
33% of all customer
issues in Best-in-Class
firms are resolved
through self-service,
compared to only 17%
by All Others.
Success in first contact resolution rates is a validation that Bestin-Class firms provide customers with the right capabilities
needed to address their issues themselves. Hence, they reduce
the client need to contact the business repeatedly. Successfully
resolving support issues through self-service also means that
those companies are able to deflect a certain percentage of
those requests, and avoid handling them through agent-assisted
service. As a result, they enjoy a 5.8% annual improvement in
agent utilization rates, while All Others experience a 1.0%
worsening in this metric due to repeat customer contacts
resulting from poor use of self-service.
Providing customers with the right content and tools via selfservice also enables Best-in-Class firms to shrink average handle
times by 3.7% year-over-year, compared to a 4.1% increase by
All Others. This decrease in handle times is certainly helpful in
improving customer satisfaction rates — a leading indicator that
firms in the latter group risk losing their clients to ones in the
former group. Best-in-Class firms enjoy a 16.2% annual increase
in customer satisfaction rates, compared to All Others observing
a 0.3% decline.
Get Your Priorities Right
Achieving Best-in-Class status is no easy feat. It requires contact
centers to determine the right self-service strategy and master
its execution. Figure 1 illustrates the top three strategies used by
top performers vs. All Others. A quick overview of the findings
depicted in that figure reveals a disparity between the priorities
of the two groups. Most notably, Best-in-Class firms are 80%
more likely than All Others to focus on building a unified view of
customer data across disparate systems (63% vs. 35%).
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Self-Service: Maximize Business Results by
Helping Customers Help Themselves
5
Figure 1: Integrate Self-Service within your Omni-Channel Programs
Integrate contact center with other
enterprise systems to create a unified view
of customer data
63%
35%
Provide agents with seamless access to
relevant data to personalize customer
interactions
38%
16%
All Others
Track, measure, and report contact center
performance data to identify opportunities
for efficiency gains
Percent of respondents, n=215
Best-in-Class
25%
41%
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
Source: Aberdeen Group, February 2016
The unified view mentioned above is particularly important
when considering the manner in which customers interact with
businesses. Aberdeen’s December 2015 Omni-Channel Customer
Care: Best-in-Class Steps to Success study showed that an
average contact center uses four channels to interact with
clients. Companies that excel in utilizing multiple channels to
deliver customer care do so through ensuring the consistency
and personalization of conversations across all channels — a
capability also known as ‘omni-channel.’
Figure 1 shows that companies with poor performance in selfservice programs must adjust their priorities. While
underperformers focus on identifying their strengths and
weaknesses in self-service programs via tracking, this is a cartbefore-the-horse mistake. Yes, tracking for efficiency gains is an
important activity, but it must be preceded by integrating
disparate systems to have a complete view of customer data.
This is critical, because without such a unified view of customer
data across all channels, agents will struggle to deliver
The priorities of Bestin-Class firms are
different from those of
All Others.
Top performers focus
on incorporating selfservice within their
omni-channel
programs. Others try
to run before they
walk, and focus on
performance
measurement rather
than laying the right
foundation.
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Self-Service: Maximize Business Results by
Helping Customers Help Themselves
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 Read the full report,
“Omni-Channel
Customer Care: Bestin-Class Steps to
Success”
 Related Research:
"The Business Value
of Customer SelfService: Happy
Customers, Better
Financials"
Best-in-Class firms
enjoy a 17% greater
current agent
utilization rate,
compared to All
Others.
consistent and personalized messages. Once companies lay the
foundation to deliver successful omni-channel programs,
identifying the strengths and weaknesses of self-service
programs through tracking and reporting activities will then help
continuously improve the company’s performance.
Building Blocks of Best-in-Class Self-Service Programs
Figure 2 provides some additional insights into how Best-inClass firms incorporate self-service into their broader omnichannel strategy. All of the top performers indicate that they
have a formal process for sharing self-service insights captured
through the contact center with other stakeholders in the
business. This compares to only 66% of All Others. Having this
building block in place is important. It helps the organization
engineer a more complete view of customer data. Such a holistic
view of account insights facilitates delivering omni-channel
programs, not just through the contact center, but also through
sales, marketing, and even back-office activities.
Figure 2: Share the Wealth: Make Self-Service Insights
Available to all Relevant Stakeholders
100%
80%
100%
66%
60%
Best-in-Class
All Others
60%
50%
40%
32%
32%
20%
0%
Contact center information is
Customer self-service
Process to route simple issues
extended to non-contact
activities used when
/ lower value transactions to
center staff
forecasting agent demand
the self-service portal
Percent of respondents, n=215
Source: Aberdeen Group, February 2016
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Self-Service: Maximize Business Results by
Helping Customers Help Themselves
Another activity helping Best-in-Class firms achieve top-notch
results is aligning self-service activities with forecasts of agent
demand. As outlined in Aberdeen’s May 2015 Contact Center
WFO: How to Balance Customer Needs with Agent Productivity
study, forecasting agent demand based on customer traffic
across multiple channels is important for minimizing agent
overstaffing and understaffing.
For example, when observing a sudden spike in the percentage
of issues resolved through self-service, companies must adjust
their agent headcount to avoid overstaffing — unless traffic
across other channels is expected to increase at the same rate.
Using this capability to predict and manage agent headcount
reduces unnecessary costs and minimizes delays in average
handle time. Data shows that top performing self-service users
are 88% more likely to consider self-service traffic when
forecasting agent demand, compared to All Others (60% vs.
32%).
While self-service is an invaluable tool that reduces customer
effort, it’s important to also remember that not every support
issue is suited to be addressed through self-service. For example,
checking account balance or transferring funds between two
accounts is a rather simple activity that can easily be done
through self-service. However, discussing how to build and
manage the portfolio of a wealth management client is rather
more complex, and hence would be better handled through
assisted service. Best-in-Class firms understand these nuances of
when to use self-service. They are 56% more likely than All
Others to have identified lower value / simpler transactions (50%
vs. 32%). These insights are then used to route relevant issues to
Top Self-Service Capabilities
Companies use a wide array of
capabilities to provide customers
with the ability to help themselves.
Our research shows that the most
widely adopted capabilities are as
follows:
•
Portal with product &
service information: 76%
•
Frequently asked questions
(FAQs): 68%
•
Downloadable manuals,
drivers, etc.: 64%
•
Educational videos: 64%
•
Keyword search box: 60%
•
Portal with customer
account information: 60%
•
Mobile application for selfservice: 52%
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Self-Service: Maximize Business Results by
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the self-service portal (50% vs. 32%) — see the sidebar for a list
of capabilities adopted by more than half of all self-service users.
Best-in-Class contact
centers achieve a 3.3time greater annual
improvement
(decrease) in service
costs, compared to All
Others (6.4% vs.
1.9%).
As noted earlier, the most notable mistake made by poorly
performing contact centers is using a misguided strategy of
focusing on measuring results, before laying the foundation
needed to drive those results. The activities highlighted thus far
will help your business build the foundation needed to drive
strong results. However, we also recommend following the lead
of the Best-in-Class and incorporating the performance
management capabilities highlighted in Figure 4. These
capabilities will help you ensure that you continuously improve
your performance.
Figure 4: Regularly Gauge Self-Service Insights to Improve
the Customer Experience
90%
86%
Best-in-Class
70%
64%
All Others
63%
50%
50%
39%
32%
30%
10%
Repeat customer contacts are Real-time analysis of customer
Automatically update IVR
analyzed to determine common
behavioral data to enable
workflows based on new data
issues among customers
custom sales and support
uncovered by business
activities
intelligence
Percent of respondents, n=215
Source: Aberdeen Group, February 2016
As depicted above, Best-in-Class firms are 34% more likely to
have a process to regularly analyze repeat customer contacts,
compared to All Others (86% vs. 64%). This helps identify clients
who contact the business seeking assisted service after trying to
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Self-Service: Maximize Business Results by
Helping Customers Help Themselves
address their needs through self-service. Those insights are
extremely important, as they reveal the content gaps companies
need to fill in order to enable customers to successfully use the
self-service portal. They also provide early signals of negative
customer sentiment — clients contacting the business to seek
support after an unsatisfactory self-service experience would
likely be unhappy. Such early warnings enable prioritizing repeat
contacts in your automated contact distribution (ACD) queue.
They also help provide agents with data captured through the
self-service portal to minimize the likelihood of asking repetitive
questions to identify and resolve the issue.
Analyzing self-service data provides several additional
performance improvement opportunities. First, it helps agents
identify which points in the interactive voice response (IVR)
journey customers dropped off when trying to use self-service.
These insights help tailor the IVR workflows to improve
containment rates — a metric used to measure the percentage
of customer issues addressed through the IVR system without
the need for agent assistance. Best-in-Class firms are 56% more
likely than All Others to regularly conduct such analysis of their
IVR system (50% vs. 32%).
Best-in-Class selfservice users enjoy
4.4-time greater yearover-year growth in
annual company
revenue, compared to
others.
Are you using your
self-service data to
drive similar revenue
gains?
Yet another opportunity provided by analysis of self-service data
is the ability to deliver targeted customer offers. For example,
consider a consumer using a self-service portal to check the
delivery status of a recent order. The use of real-time analysis of
data captured through the self-service portal would allow the
retailer to offer the client an expedited shipping opportunity or
display a related product that is regularly purchased by other
consumers buying the same item. These personalized offers are
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Self-Service: Maximize Business Results by
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Don’t use self-service
as a siloed activity.
Incorporate it within
your omni-channel
activities to achieve
maximum rewards.
instrumental in driving incremental spend through self-service
activities. Best-in-Class firms are 62% more likely to have such
real-time analysis capabilities to generate personalized offers,
compared to All Others (63% vs. 39%). The ability to analyze selfservice data in real time requires companies to complement
their self-service program with analytical tools supporting realtime data capture and analysis.
Recommendations
To outpace competitors, it is no longer enough to simply add
new channels within the channel mix. Contact centers have been
looking for ways to gain a competitive advantage ever since
multi-channel became the new normal. To create happy and
loyal customers, the modern contact center must master the use
of each channel and seamlessly connect conversations across all
channels. It is this focus on incorporating self-service within
omni-channel programs that differentiates the Best-in-Class
from All Others.
Adopting and executing a well-designed self-service strategy
pays off for the Best-in-Class. They attain far superior results
across key measures, such as customer satisfaction rate, first
contact resolution rate, and average handle times. We
recommend that you incorporate the below activities to move
your performance towards that of the Best-in-Class. If your
performance is already aligned with the top performers, then
incorporating these activities will help your business maintain
superior results.
•
Use self-service strategically; don’t frustrate your
customers. Self-service should minimize customer effort,
not add to it. If your experience and historical knowledge
on support issues points to the fact that certain issues are
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Self-Service: Maximize Business Results by
Helping Customers Help Themselves
best resolved through agent-assisted service, don’t put
your customers through self-service. They will only come
back to assisted service, and they will be frustrated.
Analyze which issues are best resolved through selfservice, and raise awareness among your clients that they
can resolve those issues themselves, without the need to
contact the business.
•
Incorporate self-service insights within your broader
business activities. These activities can range from
forecasting agent demand to sales intelligence. Best-inClass companies use data captured through self-service
interactions as opportunities to grow client spend and
reduce costs. You’re missing out on opportunities to
maximize returns from investing in self-service if you’re
not already incorporating self-service data into activities
such as forecasting agent demand and sharing those
insights with your sales counterparts, to have informed
selling conversations.
•
Regularly gauge the results of user activity to align
your self-service program with evolving customer
needs. You won’t know if your self-service program
meets client needs unless you analyze data showing the
percentage of support issues resolved through selfservice. Similarly, lack of insights into repeat customer
contact means that you’re frustrating clients with the
need to contact your business multiple times, as they
can’t resolve their issues via self-service. If you have
similar symptoms, we highly recommend that you
incorporate reporting and analytics tools to identify the
strengths and weaknesses of your self-service program.
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Self-Service: Maximize Business Results by
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Doing so will help you maintain your strengths and focus
on addressing weaknesses.
For more information on this or other research topics, please visit www.aberdeen.com.
Related Research
The Business Value of Customer Self-Service:
Analytics in Customer Service: Data-Driven
Happy Customers, Better Financials; February
Service Excellence; July 2015
2016
Contact Center WFO: How to Balance Customer
Self-Service vs. Assisted Service: What's the Right Needs with Agent Productivity; May 2015
Time to Use Them?; February 2016
Flash Forward: Change your Mindset to Get Your
Knowledge Management for an Integrated Service Customer Experience Future Ready; May 2015
Experience; December 2015
Customer Messaging: Exceed Consumer
Omni-Channel Customer Care: Best-in-Class Steps Expectations and Reduce Costs; May 2015
to Success; December 2015
Social Customer Care: The Path to Success; August
2015
Author: Omer Minkara, Research Director, Contact Center & Customer Experience Management
([email protected]), LinkedIn, Twitter
About Aberdeen Group
Since 1988, Aberdeen Group has published research that helps businesses worldwide improve their performance.
Our analysts derive fact-based, vendor-agnostic insights from a proprietary analytical framework, which identifies
Best-in-Class organizations from primary research conducted with industry practitioners. The resulting research
content is used by hundreds of thousands of business professionals to drive smarter decision-making and improve
business strategy. Aberdeen Group is headquartered in Boston, MA.
This document is the result of primary research performed by Aberdeen Group and represents the best analysis
available at the time of publication. Unless otherwise noted, the entire contents of this publication are copyrighted
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without prior written consent by Aberdeen Group.
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