Here’s my number, don’t call me maybe.

If this was 2012, this blog title would have made perfect sense. “How timely,” you’d have thought. “How on the pulse of modern culture.” But it’s not 2012, it’s not timely, and I’ve never been on the pulse of modern culture. What I have been, however, is very good at stopping people calling numbers, thus making the headline make sense after all.

Here’s a bit about why I’ve been asked to do that, and how I go about getting it done.

My name’s Ash, the self-serve saviour

Think about the last time you encountered a problem. What did you do to try and fix it? My guess would be that you Googled it, and you wouldn’t be alone. According to some data I myself just Googled to back this point up, 73% of people prefer to self-serve instead of talking to another human. Self-service is great. It’s often loads quicker than talking the problem through, saves you any time waiting on hold, and avoids the awkwardness of human-to-human conversation. Who needs that noise?

Talking to someone can be a huge source of anxiety and frustration for many. If the copy on your self-serve pages is doing its job, that’ll cause no anxiety or frustration at all.

Calls take time, time is money

If you have to pick up the phone every time you need something, you’ll be relying on someone at the other end of that phone having all the answers. That person requires training, resources and a salary. They’ll also have a long queue of people waiting to talk to them, gradually getting more frustrated as their hold time grows longer. If you actively want to make your customers angry and your staff unhappy, this is a fantastic policy. If you’d rather not, self-serve content is the way to go.

Self-serve saves your customer time and your business money. But only if you do it well…

Now I’m not saying you should ditch human interaction entirely. People needs jobs, and some crazy people would much rather talk to someone about their problem than attempt to fix it themselves. But if you do self-service well, the people on the phones will have more free time to talk to customers who really need them, and they’ll likely be much happier doing it.

What happens if you do self-service content badly, Ash?

Glad you asked! Shit self-service only INCREASES your customers’ frustrations and your staff’s unhappiness. That is not what we want. Here is a real life example that will show you what I mean:

A client got me in a few years back to sort their tone of voice out online. Easy. But their bigger problem was their online help and support content. It was a right mess, and it was driving huge traffic to their call centre. Fun fact: Their call centre staff at the time made up a higher percentage of the local mental health waiting list than any other career, and you could see why. The product had a pretty shoddy reputation, the website wasn’t doing its job to solve the issues, and people were taking their issues out on the people answering the phones.

Self-serve content is only any good if it actually allows people to self-serve. If it only makes the problem more confusing, it’s just a waste of words.

So what can you do about it?

Good self-service doesn’t just happen over night, but the only way to get to the end of a race is to cross the start line. Is that a well-known metaphor? No. But let’s run with it.

1. Understand your product SO MUCH
   To start you need to know your product inside out, ‘cos you never know what a customer might want to know about it. Read the user guides, use it, play with it, break it. Figure out anything that could go wrong with it, then you’ll understand any questions your customers could ask about it.

2. Do your research
   If you’ve got a call centre, they’ll already know the questions customers are asking. If you don’t, you can look on social media, send out surveys, do face-to-face interviews if the opportunity arises, and generally make some decent assumptions to get you going. For example, if you sell hats, you could safely assume people will ask questions about sizes, styles and materials. Go from there and build on it when other questions come in.

3. Write some stuff
   A one-pager with a few common questions is a great place to start, or if you offer multiple products with many possible variations, make a landing page that links off to other sections. Just getting anything on your site that gives people somewhere to go is better than nothing, and your customers will thank you for it.

4. Make it easy to find
   Stick the page in your main navigation menu. Don’t hide it under a contact tab or in the footer. You want people to go here first, and the longer they have to hunt for it, the more likely they are to call annoyed. Call it something clear like ‘FAQs’ or ‘Help’, and link to it from all your product pages. Make the journey simple.

5. Don’t forget your tone of voice
   Finally, it’s important you don’t slip into a different personality. It can be easy to assume self-service content doesn’t need to sound the same as your marketing copy, but everything is branding. You’re still selling here, just as much as you’re selling on a radio ad or a social media campaign, and while you might dial the tone down a little if you’re usually a bit silly, it should still sound like it’s you saying it.

Need some help?

My version of self-service content is to write you some kick-ass copy to make your customers’ lives easier. If you want them to be happy, to stay with you for longer, and for your staff to enjoy their jobs more, get in touch and we’ll get the ball rolling.

I’m here to help you help others, and ultimately help yourself. Helpful, right?