Threado 101: How to improve self-help options for your customers

This is a part of a series where we talk about ways of improving your support functions. In this guide, we explore how you can improve support by offering better self-help options with AI solutions.
Author:
Priyanshu Anand
Last edited:
September 21, 2024

The need for self-serve support

Customer self-service options have emerged as a vital component in enhancing user experience and streamlining support operations. AI stands at the forefront of this transformation, bringing a host of benefits that elevate self-service to unprecedented levels of efficiency and effectiveness.

Even more so, customers prefer not having to speak to support agents today unless it’s necessary because of reasons like longer wait times and context-switching. Usually, when you’re working on something and you encounter a problem, you want a solution as soon as possible. Not being able to do that is not favorable. Hence, customers prefer being able to resolve their concerns on their own before having to speak to an agent.

As a part of providing better customer satisfaction, you need to provide them with self-help options which means making improvements to how you provide those options in the first place.

How can you improve self-help options for customers

Enhanced AI chatbots for immediate assistance

AI chatbots have revolutionized the way support is provided to customers. They're not just scripted responders; they're intelligent systems capable of understanding customer inquiries in a nuanced manner. These chatbots deliver instant solutions, reducing wait times significantly. They're always learning from each interaction, which means the more they interact with users, the better and more accurate their responses become. This real-time learning process ensures that chatbots become increasingly adept at providing responses that feel personalized and intuitive, significantly improving the customer's experience.

Making improvements to the help center

One of the key strengths of AI in support operations is its ability to continuously analyze interactions and feedback. This ongoing analysis allows AI systems to identify areas where help resources, such as FAQs or knowledge base articles, might be lacking or outdated. By pinpointing these gaps, AI can guide the update and expansion of these resources, ensuring they remain relevant and useful. This proactive approach to maintaining a knowledge base means that customers are more likely to find the answers they need without direct intervention from support staff, making self-service not just possible but preferable in many scenarios.

Provide omnichannel support

Customers are extremely tech-savvy and in turn digitally adept. Hence, they want the product that they use to be accessible via platforms that they’re comfortable with. This creates a necessity for organizations to offer support across platforms aka omnichannel support that can allow customers to comfortably access support features across convenient channels.

As a way to improve your self-serve model, you have to be willing to not just enable channels of support that are convenient for you but most importantly, convenient for your customers. The more ways there are for a customer to ask queries to an AI bot, the more likely they are to resolve queries on their own and not turn to an agent for help.

How can Threado AI help with self-help options

Threado AI understands how important it is not just to assist your customer-facing teams with answers but also to serve as the first line of defense before customers find the need to reach out to the support team. This is why Threado AI offers omni-channel ways in which it can be accessed, therefore making it easier for customers to use it and not have to struggle to find it.

Start by training Threado AI on your knowledge base

Once you’ve signed up for Threado AI, you can train the bot on multiple data sources including URLs, PDFs, tabular data through CSVs, customer conversations, support tickets, and more.

After you’ve trained the bot across your available data sources, it’ll look something like this -

Installing the bot across different channels

After you’ve trained Threado AI, you can first test it yourself, and then install it across channels where your customers can use it as part of a self-serve option.

You can install the bot as a web chat on your website, within the product, or on Slack. Your customers will be able to access the bot wherever it’s installed and ask questions. If you have a Slack channel for your customers, they can simply post their questions and the Threado AI app automatically responds to them. Similarly, for the web chat, you can make it accessible within your product or website so customers can easily ask their questions in the same way they would reach out to your agents.

Self-help options keep tickets under control

Self-help is your token to scaling customer support sustainably. Ticket volume is one of the most notorious reasons why support agents suffer higher burnout and attrition. With self-help options coupled with AI, you can see upwards of a 50% reduction in support tickets and eliminate repeat tickets that don’t require agent resolutions. This frees up your agents’ time to focus on more pressing concerns and not worry about meeting ticket targets every day. In fact, you can also enable your team to resolve tickets faster with Threado AI.

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