Top 7 Customer Self Service Tools in 2023

Traditional customer service methods are struggling to keep pace with increasing customer demands, often leading to longer response times, escalating costs, and dissatisfaction among customers. Customers are now looking for self service options to handle their problems on their own–a self customer service in a sense. However, while 53% businesses are under the impression that their customers are highly satisfied with their self-service options, a mere 15% of consumers share this sentiment.

Customer self service tools empower customers to find solutions to their issues independently, reducing the load on customer service teams, and improving overall customer satisfaction. In this article, we will delve into the top 7 customer self service software tools.

Customer self service software refers to digital tools and platforms that enable customers to find answers and resolve their issues without the need for human intervention. These solutions are often used by businesses to improve customer service experience, to reduce the pressure on customer service representatives and to increase customer satisfaction.

Customer self service solutions have a variety of use cases, depending on the specific needs and goals of the business and their customers, such as:

What are the main features of customer self service tools?

1- Customer self service portals

A customer self service portal is a specialized website or a part of an existing website that provides customers with personalized information and resources. It acts as a digital hub where customers can manage their interaction with the company at their own pace and convenience.

A self-service portal can enable many actions for customers, such as:

Figure 1. A customer self service system on mobile app and computer

Source: Salesforce

2- FAQs and knowledge bases

These are detailed sections on a company’s website where users can find answers to frequently asked questions or explore tutorials and guides that help them understand a product or service. Moreover, an optimized FAQ or knowledge base can also improve a website’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization), as they can provide answers to questions people are typing into search engines, driving more organic traffic to the website.

3- Chatbots

A chatbot is an AI-powered tool designed to interact with humans in their natural languages. These interactions can occur via messaging applications, websites or mobile apps. Chatbots are typically used in customer service environments to automate and streamline certain tasks.

In a customer self-service context, chatbots can handle a variety of tasks. For instance, they can:

• Answer frequently asked questions
• Help users navigate a website
• Provide product recommendations
• Assist with the checkout process
• Help troubleshoot basic problems.

4- Intelligent virtual assistants

An intelligent virtual assistant (IVA), an advanced form of artificial intelligence, has the capability to handle most customer interactions autonomously. Two principal machine learning elements, namely natural language understanding (NLU) and artificial emotional intelligence (AeI), underpin these virtual assistants. As such, IVAs are adept at accurately decoding user requests, even when faced with challenges like sarcasm, typographical errors, or inappropriate language (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Virtual assistants can understand user queries even if there are multiple spelling errors.

Source: Haptik

5- Interactive voice response (IVR) systems

These are telephony menu systems that use either speech-recognition or touch-tone keypad selection to navigate, manage, and route calls without a live operator. With IVR, customers can access information, perform tasks, or even make transactions outside of normal business hours. Also, IVR can provide pre-recorded information such as product details, service updates, FAQs, or account balances. 

6- Forums and community platforms

These are online discussion sites where customers can interact with each other, share their experiences, and provide solutions to common problems.

Customer self-service tools offer several benefits, not just for the business, but also for the customers themselves. Here are some of the primary advantages:

Improved efficiency

Self-service tools can significantly speed up problem resolution. They eliminate the need for customers to wait for customer service reps, allowing them to access information and solutions immediately. Therefore, they reduce response times, which eventually increases customer relationships and satisfaction.

Reduced support costs

By deflecting a significant volume of inquiries that would otherwise require live agent interaction, self-service tools can dramatically reduce the overall cost of providing customer support.

24/7 availability

Unlike a customer service team, self-service tools are available around the clock. They provide customers with the ability to find answers and resolve issues whenever they want, regardless of business hours.

Customer empowerment

Many customers prefer solving their issues independently. Self-service tools empower customers by providing them with the resources to resolve their problems without needing to contact the customer support team.

Scalability

Self-service tools can easily handle large volumes of inquiries simultaneously, something that would be incredibly challenging and resource-intensive for live support teams to manage. This is especially helpful for companies that interact with a high number of customer interactions.

Data collection

Businesses can gather valuable insights from self-service interactions to understand common customer issues, which can be used to improve products, services, and the overall customer experience.

Consistent information

Since self-service resources are designed and maintained by the company, the information shared through these tools is usually consistent and reliable.

Top 7 customer self service software

Based on the features we explained above, we list and compare top 7 software that offer customer self service options. While selecting these platforms from a wide range of options, we focused on their company size, popularity, and ratings on software review platforms. 

The table below lists these software solutions in terms of the features and criteria we explained. 

Transparency statement: AIMultiple serves numerous tech vendors such as Salesforce, the reason why we place such vendors on the top of the vendor lists.

Software	Self-service portal	Knowledge base	Chatbots	Virtual assistant	IVR	Forums/community
Salesforce Service Cloud	Available	Available	Available	Available	Available	Available
Zendesk Guide	Available	Available	Available	N/A	Available	Available
Freshdesk	N/A	Available	Available	N/A	Available	Available
Zoho Desk	Available	Available	Available	N/A	Available	Available
Intercom	N/A	Available	Available	N/A	N/A	N/A
Help Scout	N/A	Available	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
LiveAgent	Available	Available	N/A	N/A	Available	Available

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