In all service professions, there will always be waiting times, regardless of whether it is within the framework of what is considered acceptable or unacceptable waiting times.
Our pilot study for this project showed that a large part of our customers would rather handle certain matters themselves, if they were given the choice between doing it directly themselves or wait 4 hours for service – given that there were an easy way to handle the matter.
This, in turn, gave us our most important focus area for our self-service portal. Ease of use with a focus on simplicity.
How did it go for us?
On May 2, 2019, we went live with our self-service portal, MyAdmin, and the first month we had a brilliant 763 cases performed by our own end customer administrators, which corresponded to c.a. 15% of all cases, including the cases received by our service organization by phone and email. We also noted that approximately 15% of our total customer base had logged in to the site.
So far in 2020, our self-service case management rate for end customers is stable at an average of 14%, partners have had access to the site since the end of 2019 and we are connecting more and more of our Wholesale partners to the portal as 2020 progresses.
Our usage curve for Self-service since the launch 2/5-2019
How did Self-service change Dstny’s way of working?
First and foremost, with the help of the cutback of telephone and mail tickets that self-service contributed to, our competent support was able to focus on the more advanced cases that were usually about some form of troubleshooting. Furthermore, self-service also set a higher standard for our training, especially in connection with the delivery process. We went from reactive problem solvers to proactive educators. Of course we have to be on our toes for the customers who do not use self-service yet.
What will be the next step?
Although most would not count on self-service as a form of ‘Zero line support’, it created space for us to be able to expand our actual ‘Zero line support’. We already have a FAQ on our website, but during the year we also started up a large knowledge bank for both internal and external use, which we call Helpcenter. Here, both existing and new staff will be able to find all the information they need about services, everything from how they are set up and supported to the commercial aspect. We also collect product sheets and information that can be useful for end customers who are curious about the service.
We are currently working on another project that we call Dstny Academy, which is an educational platform that will be aimed primarily at employees, partners and Wholesale. This portal will help us create a great onboarding process, which leads to our employees and partners gaining insight into our services more quickly and therefore can become even more helpful towards the end customer.
When it comes specifically to Self-service, we will have a very strong focus on integrations and user-friendliness, in 2021. We have, during a long time, offered a handful of integrations with self-developed services as well as services via other suppliers. It can be about everything from reporting systems to answering services to queue management tools. We want to, seamlessly, implement these in our self-service, so that the customer can manage all their communication tools through one and the same platform, regardless of the service provider. These integrations must, like our existing services in the portal, be user-friendly with a focus on simplicity.
Dstny looks ahead
Long waiting times, unless you are an insurance company, are unacceptable nowadays. For that reason, end customers will continue to strive to do what they can do, quickly and easily, themselves. Therefore, we at Dstny must ensure that the customer has all the prerequisites to succeed in this, without it taking time and energy from their daily tasks.
I believe that the focus must continue to be on the availability of information, simplicity, good education and seamless integrations, all in one and the same platform.