Customer self-service is considered the “killer application” for AI. However, unless best practices are followed, customer self-service might degrade quickly into customer disservice causing defection instead of delight. Here are some practices that have enabled our Global 1000 clients to achieve up to 90% call deflection while building the brand at the same time!

1. Delight, don’t just deflect

Businesses should implement self-service with the strategic intent of not only deflecting phone calls but also delivering delightful self-service experiences for customers and building the brand. Poor self-service, purely focused on reducing live customer contact, can turn off customers. Here are some ways to delight customers through self-service:

• Provide multiple self-service options whether it is the interaction channel that a customer might prefer or the way they might want to use self-service to find answers—some might like FAQs, others might prefer natural language conversations, and some might prefer step-by-step guidance, for example
• Make sure to allow customers to escalate from self-service to human-assisted service without losing self-service context. Who wants to repeat the mother’s maiden name ad nauseum?!

2. Teach them to “fish”

You know the proverb “give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.” Use technologies such as cobrowse to teach customers how to use self-service so they can help themselves when they come back for service the next time—this is like providing training wheels for kids when they learn how to ride a bike.

3. Self-service everywhere

Customers should literally “trip” on self-service. Make it easy to find and ubiquitous.

• Make it available at touchpoints where your customers “live”—web, app, IVR, and more
• When customers are on hold for human-assisted service, organizations can send a contextual self-service link to the customer, where they might find the answer, while assuring them they won’t lose their place on the call (or live chat) queue if they decide to try out self-service. Since most calls today originate from smart phones, this approach is an effective way to gently nudge customers to digital self-service.

The caveat: Your self-service better be contextual, correct, and consumable for this approach to work.

4. Don’t force it

While this is not a complete list, here are some common self-service blunders:

• Trapping customers in a self-service cul de sac or dead-end without allowing them to escalate to a human when they want to
• Trying to handle complex or high-stakes customer queries through self-service without assessing the organization’s self-service capabilities and maturity
• Continuing to push self-service when customer sentiment is going south in a self-service conversation
• Not preserving self-service context when the conversation is escalated to human-assisted service

Businesses should triage customer queries based on customer sentiment, nature of the query, value of the customer, and other factors. For instance, high-stakes queries on life-and-death matters or large and complex financial transactions could be routed to human experts whereas routine low-stakes queries can be routed to self-service first. As part of a unified omnichannel Knowledge Hub, AI can be used to triage customer queries at scale.

5. Trust or bust for AI

Gartner warns that 100% of AI projects for CX will fail without integration with a modern knowledge management system! 61% of contact center leaders and consumers are concerned about erroneous or inconsistent answers from AI, according to a recent KMWorld State of AI survey. Trust ignites user adoption, which, in turn, ignites business value. The opposite is true when answers cannot be trusted. Consumers and frontline employees associate “trusted” with correct, consumable, compliant, and contextual. A surefire way to deliver trusted answers is to implement a central hub for AI Knowledge, where conversational, generative, and agentic AI are backed by rich content management, pre-built connectors to trusted enterprise data and content, and analytics.

6. Leverage the right technology and technology partner

The building blocks of a modern self-service system include:

• Rich interaction capabilities unified in a conversation hub, supporting a comprehensive set of interaction channels—SMS, social app messaging, live chat, cobrowse, email and more, including support of channel-specific features (e.g., support of Apple Pay when a customer is interacting through Apple’s Messages for Business)
• AI Knowledge Hub (explained earlier). Moreover, an AI knowledge hub built on a composable, BYO architecture provides you with the flexibility to leverage your own bots, LLMs, and other sourcing and consumption points
• Analytics Hub to get insights on contact center operations and AI knowledge scope and performance (e.g., agent performance by individual or queue or the effectiveness and adoption of GenAI prompts)
• Generative and agentic AI capabilities to speed up the knowledge management lifecycle and further automate service—from delivering trusted answers to also driving trusted actions on behalf of the customer, all backed by the AI knowledge hub
• Technology partner with a proven AI knowledge implementation method and domain expertise to generate quick business value

eGain client success stories

• Specialized Bicycles, a pioneering leader in e-bikes, replaced their hard-to-use, obsolete knowledge management system for self-service with the eGain AI Knowledge Hub. The eGain hub now serves as the single source of truth, i.e., trusted content and process knowhow—across 21 languages! Self-service search success has improved 85% and the use of conversational AI for diagnostics has soared 18X since the deployment of eGain!
• Hypergrowth retailerwas struggling to meet the soaring demand for customer service. They tried out eGain’s Virtual Assistant through the eGain Innovation in 30 Days™ program, a risk-free production pilot. Delighted with the experience, the retailer deployed eGain chatbots for multiple brands. The bots are resolving a wide range of shopper queries, deflecting customer contacts by up to 90%. Where needed, they escalate the conversation to agents, who can see the full self-service context in the eGain Advisor Desktop™, to seamlessly move the conversation forward.
• Leading omnichannel retaileris automating and augmenting customer service with eGain, leveraging digital self-service, messaging, chat, and IVR deflection to digital service, all backed by the eGain AI Knowledge Hub™, to handle over 9 million customer contacts per year. They are deflecting 45% of phone contacts and 30% of IVR contacts with digital self-service and chat messaging, delivering joined-up omnichannel service with context-aware escalation to agent-assisted service.
• Large federal government agency achieved groundbreaking results after adopting the eGain AI Knowledge Hub. They were able to divert up to 70% of incoming calls to AI virtual assistants, cut case handling time by 25%, and streamline online form-filling with AI knowledge assistance. These impactful improvements boosted agent engagement to 92%, well above the industry average of 67%.

Conclusion

Done right with the backing of a trusted AI knowledge hub, self-service can help slash customer service customer service cost dramatically while scaling service cost-effectively and elevating the brand.

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