Why IT Businesses Are In Need Of Self-Service Portals?

There are public poles and surveys explaining the significance of self-service portals for customers and businesses. Today, customers are looking to submit tickets, place orders, get bill details, and receive several services on their own terms. Such services get activated with technology investments that can be a challenge to implement for smaller businesses. So here we are, examining the why, what, and how self-service portals can be beneficial to businesses.

Why there is a need for self-service portals for IT services companies?

The first major reason is that even if business customers are not explicitly asking anything, it means they are expecting it from the seller. Next thing is that with this investment, the eCommerce seller can scale his business where cloud services are becoming great support. Self-service and customer-facing MS CRM portals develop advanced customer experiences and enable IT services companies to scale at a predictable and fixed cost. It is because when businesses stop thinking about scaling and customer experience, the pool of opportunities gets shrink.

Self-service for better customer experience

When a customer gets an incredible experience with a service provider, he repurchases the products and services from the same provider. Self-service offers and creates a better customer experience. For an IT development company, the customer experience journey begins when he contacts. There are a lot more interactions than you can imagine.

To deliver an unforgettable customer experience along the journey, Microsoft dynamics 365 partners and technology services companies need to own the tools and infrastructure to streamline these interactions.

What can a company do with self-service for its customers?

Defining self-service is not a task- it is about letting customers to do the things at every stage on their own. Here are a few instances that explain the things customers want to do-

1. Register for a training event
2. Update their company and personal profile
3. Create and get a quote
4. Update payment details
5. Place fresh order for new services
6. Review and handle the old services
7. Request for assistance for an issue
8. Review and update agreements
9. Review invoices
10. Request samples
11. Check stock inventory
12. Create lists

Most of the time, it is only a ticketing and case management scenario that is enabled as self-service. The reason behind it is the processes and data which are created and accessible in different systems. This is the main challenge for service providers as they cannot enable such scenarios when the data is available in multiple systems.

By allowing the customers to perform these listed tasks will significantly lower the service cost for any business. With self-service, customers can create more space for CSRs and the sales team can get the benefit of higher-value services.

While there are retailers and distributors that have already deployed e-commerce, some manufacturers and businesses are slow to adopt eCommerce. The reason behind it is that their businesses have been developed on relationships and they worry that the bond will be affected when they bring eCommerce. But the fact is relationship gets stronger with eCommerce as a business owner can be available to customers as per the need and not when he assumes they do.

It is important for businesses to understand that self-service is not online-centric but digital. There is no separate offline channel for sales people. They are rather empowered with the latest insights. They require tools and exceptional commerce experience to provide the best customer experiences.

Why to Invest In Self-Service?

There is one simple rule- the more you direct the customers to effective self-service resources, the more efficient every support level becomes. As it is true that the best support request is actually the one that is never made.

When you invest in self-service, you get a list of benefits like-

• Enhanced customer intelligence – Self-service commerce sites are able to accumulate a large amount of customer data that can be shared with existing CRM solutions. The sales team can access the purchase history, delivery requirements, and customized pricing structures of the customer. This data makes the team more efficient in dealing with clients.
• Frictionless buying – The B2B buying process sometimes turns into a complex process, especially when the buyers need to contact sales executives for small, regular orders. With the self-service option, buyers are empowered to make purchases like consumers. This results in reduced friction in B2B buying.
• More time to bond with customers – Self-service enables customers to complete easy transactions without any help. This enhances the focusing power of the seller and they work on the relationship with the customers.