Customer Service
How to: Enabling a self-service retail experience
Eric Prugh, chief product oand co-founder of PactSafe, believes retailers need to embrace self-service and in exploring self-service workflow possibilities they should take a stock of their contract ecosystem and evaluate where they can make changes to improve efficiency and give customers the self-service workflow they want.
July 31, 2020 by Eric Prugh — Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, PactSafe
Several industries, including financial services and health management, have adopted the idea that the world is going digital. Transitioning to the digital space encompasses several key factors, but for e-commerce specifically, ensuring the user experience is streamlined and fast is crucial. Focusing on users having an efficient and satisfying self-service flow is what sets the benchmark. If you have a poor purchasing experience, are you likely to purchase from that vendor again?
Brands need to be looking at the success factors of fast, high-velocity transactions. Take a look at Amazon's Subscribe and Save purchasing workflow, for example. Purchasing can take a singleclick, and after purchasing, users can easily go into their account and see all ordering details, like:
- What they purchased
- When they purchased
- Their order number and full invoice
- And more:
To view any of the above, all a user has to do is login into their account. They don't have to contact, support, email support, or contact a sales rep. This is an ideal self-service experience. Think about other online purchasing experiences (even your own business'): Is it this easy for customers to login and view allorder history, for any order they've made with your company?
There are two key things for businesses to prioritize when building out their self-service model: online account management and simplify purchasing with subscription options. Let's take a look at both.
Online account management
The goal for an online account management tool is to have a single place to view orders and transaction history. With that, it's important to be able to view what subscriptions are associated with those orders without having to go through support (via email or phone) or through a sales rep.
An online portal shouldn't be valuable through third-party apps. Its value lies in its streamlined, efficient out of the box capabilities, like a central location where users can view orders, transaction history, contracts, if any subscriptions are associated with that — and if so, when they end. Online account management should be about removing friction, not have several their-party tools that are necessary in order to view important data.
The other key value to an online account management tool should be to eliminate disputes before they happen. Traditionally, order history pages provide little to no value in that they provide zero insight into any key terms. If an online account portal doesn't provide any visibility into what terms a user agreed to and why, then what value is the tool really providing?
An order history page should include any and all important terms from a customer's transaction, so they receive transparency into what they agreed to and signed up for before they make a purchase. An example of this would be showing the terms that the user accepted for each order, because it could be different per order. Not every transaction is exactly the same and should not be treated as such. Each time a customer goes to purchase, they should be shown the terms and conditions relevant to that purchase.
Simplifying purchasing with subscription options
The second most important factor to a successful self-service model is simplifying purchasing with subscription options.
Evaluate products or services that are bought repetitively by customers (refer back to Amazon Subscribe and Save, for example.) The benefit and value of this is that the customer still gets what they want from you, without having to go to your website and inserting their credit card information, or having to talk to a sales rep that drafts up an order form. Roadblocks like that diminish user experience.
By avoiding self-service workflows, some businesses ultimately limit their growth, potential for innovation, and ability to expand into new markets. Contract processes that go beyond the traditional, the linear, and the manual empower their customers to move quickly and serve themselves, which increases customer loyalty.
When exploring self-service workflow possibilities, businesses need to take a stock of their contract ecosystem and evaluate where they can make changes to improve efficiency and give customers the self-service workflow they want.
Eric Prugh is the chief product officer and co-founder ofPactSafe.
About Eric Prugh
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