The Top 5 Customer Self-Service Trends In 2024
2024 customer self-service trends and advancements include:
- The rise of Customer Journey Analytics (CJA) and the fall of customer surveys
- Implementing customizable, personalized self-service portals
- Using Generative AI (GenAI) to optimize digital self-service channels
- Exploring the role of Extended Reality (XR) in the self-service space
- The shift to Voice of the Customer (VoC) data
Customer self-service is an essential tool for call and contact centers, remote teams, and of course, consumers themselves.
But how did self-service evolve in 2023, and what are the top customer self-service trends for 2024?
Read on to find out.
Reviewing Customer Self-Service Developments in 2023
In 2023, the large-scale adoption of Conversational AI, Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs), and automated chatbots revolutionized customer self-service. These advancements meant customers could use self-service solutions to completely resolve complex support issues without ever involving a live agent.
2023’s foray into intelligent self-service helped businesses offer 24/7 customer support without hiring additional agents, eliminated long wait/hold times, and increased first contact resolution rates.
But while automating the majority of customer service interactions has its benefits, team leaders now realize doing so has made evaluating the customer experience much more difficult. AI may increase productivity and speed up resolution times, but it also makes customer interactions much less personal.
These issues, coupled with rising consumer reservations about AI, will force companies to explore alternative forms of self-service in 2024.
2024 Customer Self-Service Trends
The most important 2024 customer self-service trends for 2024 are:
Customer Journey Analytics > Customer Surveys
Although customer surveys provide detailed insights into agent performance and CX, today’s consumers are much less likely to complete them than in the past. Customer survey responses have dropped by 7 points since 2021.
In 2024 and beyond, businesses will use omnichannel customer journey analytics (CJA) to evaluate the efficacy of self-service options, CSAT scores, and customer experience.
A Gartner study found that over half of CX decision-makers plan to purchase CJA tools in 2024–and 45% of those leaders say that purchase will be their first foray into CJA software.
Customer journey analysis begins from the moment the customer first contacts a business and ends only when the customer’s issue has been entirely resolved. CJA data helps managers identify customer journey roadblocks, common support topics, popular communication channels, and the root causes of self-service abandonment. CX leaders also believe CJA insights will help ease customers' transition from the self-service portal to live agent interactions.
CJA metrics and KPIs include:
- Goal and intent analytics
- Customer sentiment monitoring
- Customer journey mapping and path monitoring
- Peer benchmarks
- Real-time/historical website and clickstream analytics (popular pages/time spent on her page, number of visitors and sessions, site engagement, pages leading to website abandonment, etc.)
- Interactions with and data provided to self-service tools (chatbots, IVR/IVA, social media messaging, etc.)
Personalized Support Portals
Personalized customer service has been a huge CX trend in the past few years–but in 2024, businesses will focus on personalizing automated self-service interactions to meet consumer expectations.
Twilio Segment’s 2023 State of Personalization report found that while 92% of businesses are already using automation and AI to personalize the service and support process, almost 60% of customers are uncomfortable with companies using AI to provide a tailor-made experience.
The solution? Personalized customer self-service portals.
These self-service portals provide instant, on-demand access to more basic customer service needs like order/shipping updates, but also allow customers to view past support interactions, update contact or demographic information, or monitor case management updates. Customers can set their communication preferences, customize their dashboards, view segmented promotions, and upload attachments to existing tickets.
Above all, these personalized support portals include access to knowledge portals, video tutorials, webinars, user manuals, and step-by-step guides.
Best practices for creating and implementing customer self-service portals are:
- Create a mobile-first interface that’s intuitive and easy to use
- Enable SSO, biometrics, and PINs to verify customer identity
- Add a site index, search bar, and advanced search filters to your online knowledge base
- Let customers rate or comment on all support materials in the knowledge base
- Add an online user forum as another method of self-service that encourages communication between customers
Generative AI In Digital Self-Service Channels
Digital self-service channels like website/in-app chat and social media messaging may be popular in theory, but in practice, customers are often left dissatisfied with their experience.
Roughly half of consumers are frustrated with chatbots, either because they don’t understand the question being asked or provide unhelpful, nonsensical answers. With 75% of consumers believing chatbots do not offer quality support for more complex customer service needs, business owners need to make a change now to save digital self-service channels.
In 2024, that change is Generative AI (GenAI for short.)
GenAI creates images, written and audio content, code, and synthetic data that, thanks to machine learning and advanced algorithms, sounds much more natural than traditional AI.
48% of CX leaders believe that in 2024, GenAI will have the biggest impact on the quality of virtual assistants, including chatbots. These experts say GenAI will revolutionize digital self-service channels even more than it has content creation.
GenAI-powered chatbots will be able to offer proactive outbound automated support at key moments in the customer journey, and automatically sync any information the customer provides across communication channels.
Additional benefits of using GenAI to optimize digital self-service channels include:
- Ability to provide global support with real-time translations
- Improved lead generation with automated lead qualification and follow-ups
- Personalized, segmented chatbot conversations with data from integrated CRM systems
- AI-powered data collection and analytics to provide insight into customer sentiment/activity
- Cost savings and faster buying cycles
Extended Reality (XR) in Customer Self-Service
Forget about delighting your customers with self-service options–2024 is the year to create a completely immersive support experience.
How? Through Extended Reality (XR), an umbrella term encompassing virtual, mixed, and augmented reality.
Within the self-service space, XR can provide complete remote support that digitally recreates the experience of one-on-one, in-person customer service and tech support. Customers can learn how to repair products, engage in a virtual interactive sales pitch, digitally try out products, or complete the onboarding process–all without involving a live agent.
Products and services enriched with augmented reality boost customer engagement rates by 200% compared to their non-AR counterparts. XR increases brand recognition, creates more upselling opportunities, and delivers an unforgettable customer experience–so getting ahead of this trend will put you far ahead of the competition.
Voice of the Customer (VOC) Data
Voice of the Customer (VoC) programs provide more holistic and comprehensive CX feedback than customer surveys alone, and will be a key part of the quality management and self-service processes in 2024.
Instead of prompting customers to take a survey after a support interaction, VoC solutions automatically ask customers to leave product/service reviews on the channel of their choice–often directly within the support portal. VoC then automates the review management process, following up with customers who have had a negative experience and using GenAI to respond to public feedback appropriately.
VoC programs use speech and text analytics to automatically analyze direct customer feedback alongside customer journeys and self-service interactions. This approach helps team leaders identify the gaps between customer expectations and customer experience and better understand the root causes of poor support interactions.
Admins can also include social listening as a part of their VoC strategy and receive real-time alerts for bad press or other company mentions.
What’s Next For Customer Self-Service?
Customer self-service trends in 2024 reflect the importance of personalized support and the changes in the way businesses collect customer feedback. No matter how you adjust your strategy this year, it’s clear most consumers prefer self-service over live support–provided those do-it-yourself options are accurate, easy to use, and can make customers feel valued.
Will you be adding GenAI to your contact center self-service channels, or focus more on creating convenient self-service portals for your customers? Let us know in the comments or on social media.
