It’s official...consumer expectations of customer support has reached new heights that nobody believed possible. What’s worse, is that fast-growing companies are feeling the brunt of this force as their rapidly-growing customer base has forced management teams to make massive adjustments in a short amount of time. 

One form of customer service on the rise is self-service support - a cost efficient and effective form of customer service that provides accurate product information to customers. As management teams of fast-growing companies perform a balancing act of growing their company and answering all customer questions as quickly as possible, they need to consider self-service support as a cost-effective, reliable solution. Below are four, powerful reasons as to why this is so important to them.

1. Self-Service Support is the most cost-efficient customer service channel

A well-built support center that is maintained by a company and is highly utilized by customers has the potential to be a huge cost-saver for support teams. As customers resolve their own problems, calls and emails are "deflected" - meaning customers don't need to contact a company's support team - and ticket volumes are reduced. This is a huge cost-saver as support agents are free of answering repetitive questions from customers.

To drive the point home, take a look at the table below from Forrester (Source). Their study represents approximate costs of specific customer service channels per customer contact. A self-service contact from a customer is easily the most cost-efficient at just 10 cents per contact.

2. Customers want to serve themselves

Here's the deal...customers hate contacting support teams. Resolution times can be slow, problems may occur outside of work hours or they may not want to talk to a support agent. Customers want to serve themselves on their own time. In fact according to Forrester Research, 72% of customers prefer self-service to resolve their support issues over picking up the phone or sending an email. (Source)

Fast-growing companies want a competitive advantage over their opposition. Why not invest in self-service support - the most cost-efficient customer service channel - and provide a great customer experience?

3. Agents become faster and more agile

Unfortunately for fast-growing companies, the rise of customers means the rise of ticket volumes - a huge problem when executives are juggling the massive growth of their customer base as well as answering all of their questions as quickly as possible. Agents are required to be fast and agile in this kind of business environment.

Fortunately, increased agent efficiency is a huge benefit when it comes to providing self-service support. As customers are able to serve themselves on their own time, ticket volumes decrease and agents are able to focus more demanding issues as well as resolving tickets as quickly as possible.

4. Ticket volumes and repetitive questions are reduced

Fast-growing companies that create a well-designed online support center see huge benefits within their support team and their customer base. It serves as a major call/email deflector as well as provides a wonderful experience for their cusotmer base. Companies on the rise should not miss an opportunity to evaluate these levels of support.