Kate Leggett and Diane Clarkson, leading online customer service experts from Forrester Research, share some of Forrester’s recent findings that reveal what customers expect from the service experience online, and what you can do to make improvements in the increasingly vital area of online self-service.

1. Does Your Online Self-Service Make the Grade?
Tipsheet Featuring Best Practices from Forrester and IntelliResponse
Kate Leggett and Diane Clarkson, leading online customer service experts from Forrester Research,
share some of Forrester’s recent findings that reveal what customers expect from the service experience
online, and what you can do to make improvements in the increasingly vital area of online self-service.
Why is online self-service important?
•90% of customer experience decision-makers tell Forrester that a good customer
experience is critical to their company’s success
•63% of companies believe that the importance of delivering a good customer
experience has risen
•But Forrester Customer Research data consistently shows that just over one-third
of companies actually deliver a “good” experience
With more and more customers now choosing to serve themselves via the web (which
includes the mobile web) improving the customer experience online will yield the
greatest results for most companies.
9 out of 10 companies say
a good customer experience
is critical to success
Why is it important to get the online experience right?
•Customers now demonstrate a clear and significant preference for serving
themselves online
•60% of consumers attempted to use Help or FAQ pages online in 2011
•Just 51% of consumers who used these Help or FAQ pages were satisfied with
the experience
•45% of customers say they are “very likely” to abandon an online purchase if
they can’t find a quick answer to their question
•66% of customers say “valuing my time is the most important thing a company
can do to provide me with good online customer service”
51%
Only 51% of consumers are satisfied
with FAQ and Help tools
Why are good customer experiences good for business?
Forrester data shows that a satisfied customer...
•Has a greater propensity to consider your company for another purchase
•Is more likely to stay true to your brand
•Is more likely to recommend your company to friends and colleagues
•Correlates to a loyal customer – and loyal customers spend a larger wallet share
with a company over a lifetime
“Customer satisfaction
correlates to loyalty.”
- Kate Leggett, Forrester

2. 2.
Does Your Online Self-Service Make the Grade?
What can you do to provide a successful online self-service experience?
FOCUS ON CONSISTENCY
•Customers expect to find the same content and the same interaction processes in each channel
•Ensure that you are delivering a consistent customer experience across all touch points, including your website,
mobile phone, contact center and social channels
STRIVE FOR ACCURACY
•Rather than overwhelm the customer with pages of irrelevant content during their online experience, it’s essential
to be able to quickly deliver precise answers to their questions
•Offer contextually relevant follow-up information that intelligently matches to the initial question asked.
•Have a customer insight mechanism in place so you can know that your content is staying accurate with the current
needs and questions of customers
INSIST ON MEASURABILITY
•Being able to objectively measure your online self-service performance is essential
•Employ a measurement tool that lets you see where your strengths and weaknesses are, so that you will know where
to focus your improvement efforts and resources
•Take advantage of the newly released Online Self-Service Assessment tool from Forrester and IntelliResponse, which
measures your online self-service performance against key best practice criteria from Forrester
Get a Free Assessment of Your Website’s
Online Self-Service Performance
The Forrester-IntelliResponse Online Self-Service Assessment Tool
Includes:
•Your website evaluated against 14 criteria based on best practices from
Forrester Research’s Online Customer Service Functionality Benchmark
methodology and published research
•An unbiased, vendor-agnostic assessment of your online customer
service performance, presented as an easy-to-read visual dashboard
•Actionable recommendations on which areas of self-service experience
you should focus on, and where self-service technology can yield the
greatest improvement for your company
To book your free assessment send an email to:
eval@intelliresponse.com
About IntelliResponse Systems
IntelliResponse is the leading provider of virtual agent technology solutions for the enterprise. Our patented Enterprise
Virtual Agent solutions create profitable online conversations for our private and public sector customers around the world.
For more information about IntelliResponse, visit www.IntelliResponse.com.
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To learn more about creating profitable
online conversations with your customers,
visit www.IntelliResponse.com.