Having a great help centre is an easy way to improve the customer experience. An effective help centre empowers customers to find solutions to their problems, but it also enables them to do so simply and easily.
In an age where time is a prized commodity and attention spans are short, effective help centres should provide a frictionless experience. But how can businesses create good help centre content? And how can they make sure that their help centre is providing their customers with the best possible experience?
What is a help centre?
A help centre is an online resource that enables customers to get help for any issues they may be having. Most help centres are self-service portals, where users search for their own solutions. Offering dynamic, hands-on customer service is also important, but help centres can provide quick answers to frequently asked questions.
The top 5 benefits of a help centre
The biggest benefit of a help centre is efficiency. Customers don’t want to queue for the next available agent when a good help centre can answer their questions immediately. In turn, help centres free up service agents to concentrate on more complicated or unique issues.
Here are 5 key benefits a help centre offers:
- Stay on brand: Not all help centres will look the same. Creating help centre content enables businesses to highlight their unique voice and build their brand across all aspects of their website.
- Handle high volume: In times of crisis, 24/7 help centres are crucial for handling increased traffic and improving resolution time.
- Drive down support costs: By providing users with fast and accessible self-service solutions, businesses require fewer agents.
- Connect the community: Some companies have chosen to let their own customers ask questions and provide answers. By providing a platform for their community, businesses can discover new brand advocates. They can also get valuable insights into what people actually think about their products or services.
- Offer innovative content: One place where help centres can really shine is in providing supplemental content. People want to find quick, easy solutions, and help centres can offer those solutions in new ways. As a matter of fact, creating help centre content is the most important aspect of building a great help centre. It helps boost retention rates and customer loyalty.
Tips for creating help centre content
Imagine using an augmented reality app on your smartphone to carry out auto repairs, or to see how different furniture looks in your home before buying. Imagine no more: Hyundai and IKEA are already providing those experiences.
Other companies are offering self-service support through augmented reality (AR). Users simply point their phone at a product to bring up an AR overlay with self-service tools. Amazon is skipping websites altogether, equipping its AI-powered Alexa with all the tools it needs to respond to and handle different service issues, simply through voice commands.
All of this is to say – the future of self-service is already here, and it’s empowering the consumer.
First and foremost, help centres should provide an efficient, easy experience across channels. Allowing the customer to get in and get out quickly, with all the info they need, is crucial for building customer satisfaction. But when creating help centre content, providing a useful differentiator can really build a brand.
More tips for creating help centre content:
Meet customers where they are
Analyse customer data, including frequently asked questions across other channels, to find out what customers want when they contact your company. Creating a robust knowledge base is the foundation of any good help centre – making that knowledge base sleek, intuitive, and efficient is the next step.
The Customer 360 Platform from Salesforce helps businesses optimise their help centre through AI, voice, and automation tools.
Offer intuitive step-by-step workflows
Employ intelligent workflows to guide customers through processes step by step, with support from field agents if needed. Enable customer comments to solicit feedback and find out if any steps are confusing.
Ensure that content is up-to-date
As processes change, update the content to stay current. Make sure the content is SEO-optimised, and consider using chatbots to improve the customer experience when viewing articles.
Provide different self-service options
Utilise various self-service options such as web forms, support forums, and knowledge-based articles. Also think about taking the opportunity to add those supplemental differentiators, whether it be AR, VR, videos, GIFs, community chat, or something completely new.
Check out the Salesforce Platform to create the solution that’s right for you: simply drag and drop to build the perfect app.
Create a better help centre right now
It’s evident that empowering the customer is liberating, both for the customer and the service agents. Creating help centre content not only enables consumers to get in, get out, and get on with their day – it allows businesses to showcase their voice.
Be helpful, be innovative, and be ready to go right now: today’s customer doesn’t want to wait until you’re available.
For more tips and insights on how companies are evolving to face the changing landscape, check out The Service Leader’s Guide to Resiliency.
