Today’s consumers expect not just your standard customer service, but a comprehensive and responsive self-service support on every website they visit. Customers expect companies to provide them with the same experience they receive from large industry leaders who provide superior support solutions for any service-related questions or issues they might have. 

We tend to associate customer service with the retail and ecommerce industries, but as the retail giants expand into new industries, they take with them the same high expectations for online support. Media, Gaming, SaaS, and other industries are now expected to provide stellar customer experiences with live representatives and self-service solutions such as easily searchable help-centers, chatbots, and automated answers generated by artificial intelligence. 

Customer Support Center: Media

An efficient self-service support center is highly valuable for subscription-based services. On the one hand, the customer sees a tremendous amount of benefit from easily finding answers to all support-related questions, without having to scrupulously browse various pages on the website, which inevitably will lead to search fatigue and frustration. 

On the other hand, the organization itself benefits from eliminating or drastically reducing the support cost by customer. The operating costs savings, combined with increased customer satisfaction, are a win-win situation for both the organization and the customer.

There are multiple complementary ways to provide superior customer service solutions on a media website. These include:

• Incorporating support-related queries in a multi-index search
• Redirecting customers to a dedicated support page
• Adding support-related banners that get surfaced when users enter a support-related query
• Featuring a chatbot answering users’ questions on support-related topics

Support center for gaming: Playstation

When users on Sony Playstation’s website enter a query in the search bar, a single search results page shows results from many different sources, like content pages, games, and customer support. Giving users a single access point for information eliminates the time and effort required to browse the website extensively.

When customers on Sony Playstation’s website search for topics related to customer service and support, they are directed to a dedicated support page, thus eliminating the need to browse the website separately.

 

 

 

Support banners in search for TV shows and videos: 

Show available resources in banners when users specifically search for topics about customer support.

 

 

 

Customer Support Center: SaaS

SaaS users looking for support related information expect to find relevant answers quickly. The benefits of implementing a support center on the website are not limited to cost reduction and convenience. It’s a way for SaaS companies to align and better adapt to their user preferences, since technical users tend to prefer to search for information independently.

Highlighting and snippeting for SaaS: Adyen

SaaS company Adyen uses a federated search experience for their website’s support center. They offer a variety of information based on a single query, and by using highlighting and snippeting, Adyen helps users understand why specific search results match.

 

 

 

Conclusion

Customer service is an essential part of any organization’s revenue and growth strategy. Good customer service experience benefits the ROI and customer retention, while a sub-par customer service translates into a loss of customer loyalty. Additionally, self-service becomes an integral element of the customer service process as more customers prefer to find answers to their support-related questions independently. Moreover, today’s customers expect to find relevant information independently, at a lightning fast speed, and with minimum search effort. 

To keep pace with the trends and changes in customer interactions, behavior, and expectations, companies must modernize their customer service offerings with emerging and increasingly performant AI technologies.