Customers take charge
The industry is becoming pervasive, says Kevin Meltzer, the business development director at Consology, a small self-service company born out of the Dimension Data Protocol incubator that recently bought out Didata’s 36% stake in the company to go it alone.
Meltzer says that whereas four years ago the access to online channels enabling self-service was still a problem, that’s changed with the increase in the number of people getting online and the use of cellphones as a connectivity tool. The current biggest obstacle to self-service is seen as companies’ legacy systems.
Apart from the web, other self-service channels include call centres, ATMs and kiosks (such as the self-service digital printing machines in most photographic shops, self-pay parking machines and e-ticket collection kiosks at some cinemas and airports).
SA lags the world in terms of innovation concerning self-service, such as offering instant messaging as an option for people to communicate with the call centre environment rather than over the phone, Meltzer says. But that’s changing. There’s an increasing realisation that self-service is merely another channel to market as part of a broader customer interaction strategy and people feel empowered by being able to serve themselves.
Consology CEO John Ziniades calls it going from "in-line to online" and says self-service is a convenience that most middle class individuals couldn’t imagine living without. Imagine not having access to Internet banking.
Consology, in conjunction with Arthur Goldstuck‘s research company World Wide Worx, conducted a study of the self-service market four years on from their original study in 2003. Goldstuck says there’s a strategic disconnect between companies and their self-service strategies.
That’s particularly evident from the fact that not one of the companies surveyed said it consulted its marketing department before deciding to invest in self-service channels. That despite the fact that most considered marketing the most important method of driving the adoption of self-service offerings (instead of education, which Goldstuck says is key). Few consulted their IT departments, despite the fact that they would be mostly responsible for implementation.
Companies were also rolling out self-service solutions that differed from what they considered the ideal channels, indicating a further strategic disconnect, Goldstuck says. Interestingly, he says that although the value of the customer to an organisation was the primary factor taken into account when designing self-service solutions overseas, that ranked as the least important demographic consideration for SA companies. Instead, they built their offering mostly on income bracket, education and literacy considerations.
Although only 12 companies were consulted, Goldstuck says that was seen as pretty broad, given that those represented almost 50m customer accounts between them. Industries included ranged from banks (Absa, FNB, Nedbank, Standard Bank and Virgin Money) to telecoms (MTN, Cell C, Altech Autopage Cellular and Nashua Mobile), insurance (Hollard and OUTsurance) and retail (Edcon).
Banks rated self-service as most important to them and retailers the least (because they prefer customers to walk into a branch, whereas for most banks it’s less costly to keep customers out of their branches), the survey reported.
The companies saw the reduction of churn in their client bases as a key driver of self-service solutions. Others included client satisfaction, cost savings and attracting customers.
The companies surveyed measured the success of their self-service strategies by the number of customers using them, the reduction in costs and call volumes and levels of customer satisfaction with them, as measured by customer satisfaction surveys.
Ziniades said the best self-service solutions were often customer driven, such as a website starting small and taking suggestions of what other offerings people wanted from them. "Ultimately, the customer knows best." He cited YouTube, which was recently bought by Google, as an example.
With all the companies surveyed forecasting significant increases in their customer care and specific self-service strategies going forward (although difficult to quantify exactly), it’s no wonder than Meltzer and Ziniades had the confidence to buy Didata’s stake in their company.
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