Customer experience (CX) is how your customers perceive your brand, based on their interactions with it. Customer service is the quality of attention and care you provide for your customers through various touch points. An important shared goal between CX and customer service is making customers happy. In this article, we’ll share how a Salesforce customer self-service portal can help please your customers.
One way to empower customers and transform CX is with a customer self-service portal. Customers can use a self-service portal to find information, request services, and resolve issues without requiring any interaction with a representative from your company.
Customer self-service portals often include:
- A knowledge base with a collection of FAQs, articles, videos, and how-to guides
- A form to log a service request
- Collaborative spaces, like discussion forums for customers to share helpful tips and information
In today’s self-service economy, implementing a customer self-service portal may be critical for promoting ease of doing business. A recent Forbes article1 shows that:
- 67% of customers prefer self-service over speaking to a support agent
- 73% of customers want the ability to solve issues independently
It’s clear that self-service is becoming a top choice for customers.
To help your business travel down this path, Salesforce has developed tools that can be deployed relatively simply.
Use Case Examples
To be competitive in the manufacturing industry, equipment needs to run efficiently and maintain optimal machine uptime. If equipment breaks down during a second or third shift, being able to find the part during that shift can save hours and days of machine downtime.
A Salesforce customer self-service portal can help customers find the parts they need at all hours of the day and simplify the order process. Since the portal leverages Salesforce as the customer relationship management (CRM) system, this can enable personalized experiences, accurate pricing (which may include promotional discounts, credits, etc.), and efficient order management.
In this case, a portal can help streamline the ordering process, improve response times, and drive sales.
Technology and software-as-a-service companies also can greatly benefit from a Salesforce customer self-service portal. For example, you can scale your support by providing customers with self-service options. Customers can resolve simple issues with access to guided instructions and quickly find answers in FAQs. This can help free up service agents’ time so they can focus on more complex issues like technical or billing support.
In addition, since the portal is an extension of the Salesforce CRM system, more complex cases can be pushed directly to an appropriate agent using AI technology and your routing rules. Customer information also can be synched across departments and other integrated systems, so there’s a complete view of the customer. This can help AI populate helpful knowledge base articles for customer queries and help agents personalize and enhance CX.
When customers are empowered to solve issues independently, several key metrics may likely improve, including resolution times, sales, customer satisfaction, and employee satisfaction.
Want to Build a Customer Self-Service Portal?
Connect with the Business Technology Solutions team at FORVIS. We are a certified Salesforce partner. Our Salesforce technology consultants have decades of experience helping organizations review technology platforms, design systems to streamline processes, and achieve their goals through digital transformation. To discover how we can help you design and implement a Salesforce customer self-service portal, reach out to a professional at FORVIS.
- 1“The Changing Face of Customer Experience in the Self-Service Economy,” forbes.com, May 19, 2023.