Knowledge, Knowledge Everywhere, But Not a Drop to Drink

By Rachael Green, Project Manager

We have so much information available at our fingertips, so why is it still so difficult to find the information we’re looking for?

Two recent experiences caused me to wonder why my service providers don’t offer more advanced self-serve options (for things I’m sure they could). I wanted to change my T-Mobile cell phone plan, and on my Amazon Mom account I wanted to find out why I received a 15% discount instead of 20%. In both cases, I did a quick search on their sites hoping to instantly find the answer to my question. I went through five or six steps only to end up talking to a live agent, when I didn’t really need to. The live agents were helpful and quickly answered my questions, but I still had to spend more time getting an answer.

These scenarios seem to be an online pattern – encourage customers to self-serve, yet only offer limited information. Half of the time, my questions aren’t that complicated – they just aren’t covered by the standard FAQs. I’ll find loads of info close to what I want, but it’s not clear what the actual answer is to my question. Maybe it’s a combination of FAQs, but I still want to know for sure. I want to be positive I understand, and it’s 100% the correct answer.

There are many sites where I would self-serve if I had the option to go beyond basic FAQs. And it wouldn’t be hard for those sites to put the more advanced content out there. They could put the content in a virtual assistant (VA) where I can ask my own question, in my own way. If it’s a more complicated question or if the answer requires more details from me, the VA can ask me questions before returning an answer, or even gather info about my account before providing an answer.

So how do you let customers, like me, easily self-serve with advanced support? Combine all the expert knowledge from your website and your content experts, and drop it into the intelligent, user-friendly VA format – your customers will thank you, and you’ll free up resources for non-self-serve issues.

Download the V-Portal™ overview to see how Creative Virtual and their expert team can help you do just that!