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I’ve worked on many successful self-service projects in Socialhousing, repairs and other areas. Software suppliers have also had me in as Critical Friend, to critique and design some of their web portals and other offerings.
In everyday life, we all encounter self-service web portals for all manner of things. Banking, shopping, interacting with our local council etc. It’s fair to say after a decade or more of interacting like this, there are certain expectations, everyone has. I say this whether you are a social housing tenant, customer, member of some organisation, refugee, homeless person etc, having to navigate ‘digital first’ solutions.
The initial signup is crucial to get right, as is providing alternative channels, for anyone incapable of signing up, people with disabilities or without the means. Swiftly identifying a person to register is crucial and to securely/easily make this possible.
Famously in the cult 1970s TV show, The Prisoner, Patrick Mcgoohan stated, “I am not a number, I am a free man”. However, Increasingly we are all acquiring more & more numbers, such as an NI number, NHS ID, unique taxpayer reference, as well as separate usernames etc that help Google, Meta, Amazon and others track our every move, for the benefit of their advertising revenue.
Last week I applied to the Student Loans Company, to register as a parent, for my little fella, who hopefully will be starting Uni in the autumn. Following an emailed link I landed at a signup/sign-in page, looking for my name, place of birth, DOB and NI number. Imagine my surprise when the response that came back was that I already have an account and I should call them for 30p a minute. On trying to ‘retrieve my previous details’, I was presented with a question, ‘Is Alans****@gmail.com still your email address’? Needless to say it is not!
He said he would ‘log a support call’ and ‘My account might have to be set up manually’ (i.e. not via self-service that promises ‘it can be done in 30 minutes or less’. So that wasn’t good. I asked him if he could cut out the middle man and start a manual account, so I could log in and continue adding details on-line. He said he couldn’t as I needed to put my own personal details in. I did remind him I had already shared them all with him already on the call. Very disappointing.
The help desk call must have been logged, as I received a PDF form by email the following day. It could be completed digitally and signed. However, it stipulated that a digital image of a signature cannot be used, also that it cannot be emailed back to them for automated consumption. Ten pages of it needed to be printed, an ink signature added and posted by snail mail the next day.
I did think this sort of stuff disappeared back in 2005. It clearly didn’t. Its rubbish, amateurish and unprofessional, as well as being inherently inefficient for everyone. It’s a great example to examine elements that can be improved, pitfalls we can avoid ourselves in our self-service to customers. Lots to unpack and learn here.
1-Make it as easy as possible for customers to signup and start interacting.
If ‘unique information’ is requested, use it to correctly identify and validate customers. EG NI Number, Account ID, Property ID, DOB, Address, Mothers Maiden name etc. Aim for it to be friction-free, with no human interaction. Just like Amazon. Know what unique identifiers you can work with
2-For customers who can’t get started themselves, have a strategy to help
Don’t keep them on hold for yonks, they might never sign up to self-service at all, and we have lost them. Have a way to speed to the on-boarding if we have proven their identity. Allow front of office/CRM customer service agents to set/reset online accounts, communicating login links etc that can be verified as ok for the customer before the call is ended. Have staff trained to a level they can be ‘self-serve evangelists’ and introduce/convert customers to self-servers in their homes (or in your reception area).
3-Don’t resort to providing a form that just needs printing off & posting.
Not everyone has a printer at home. (don’t get me on “plug and play WiFi printers”. There’s perhaps a whole blogpost there to vent my spleen on!). Public libraries etc are becoming an endangered species, even if you have one nearby and can pay 50p a page to print that form. How eco-friendly is it to be always printing stuff anyway?
4-If you provide a PDF form to download, allow it to be completely filled in digitally
Digital signatures have been acceptable for a decade or more now. This is the first form I can recall printing and signing for over 10 years.
5-Provide a means of emailing completed forms back securely (or complete online) and set up methods of automatically extracting the data.
This allows efficiencies to be leveraged, data to be reliably consumed in seconds, not 10-20 minutes per form, possibly re-keyed by temporary staff.
6-Provide a means of checking progress
With anything submitted, give a means of checking how its going, even if ‘no news’ is no news.
Any self-service initiated, which results in anyone calling in manually to check ‘did you get my request’, ‘where is it up to’, ‘when will it be completed’ etc, is a fail. Everyone of those is a waste call. I have engaged with many tenants via Twitter and social media, that log repairs using self-service without either being offered appointment slots or given a target completion date.
Guess what? That leads to more waste calls, in some cases stress, worry and complaints, carrying with it bad publicity (especially around repair fails).
7-Think of the consequence of the self-service offered (& what customers will want/do next)
Fail to do this and possibly push up conventional interactions with customers. Much like an experience I had with a bank, some years back.
Our organisations and software suppliers, particularly the integrated HMS ones, need to be heeding some of the above points and making improvements available. Its no wonder we have a whole industry around good third party web developers, polishing some of the self-service turds, provided out of the box.
If we can help your organisation with any aspect of self-service setup, transformation issues/procurement, please just get in touch, for a chat over a brew.
I will bring the chocolate covered gingers 😉
Related Post: Can we manage to have self-service so good, its always first choice ?
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The Fall - Hey Student!.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009
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