10 Digital Support Solutions to Transform Your Customer Journey
Transforming your digital customer support journey to include a combination of solutions can create the best customer support experience possible. Customers prefer to access support in a variety of different ways, and they expect you to accommodate their demands.
Types of Digital Support Solutions
When looking at the options available to transform your digital customer support journey, there is a wealth of different opportunities for you to choose from, each with its own unique set of benefits and challenges. It can’t be emphasized enough that your customer support journey should include a combination of different options in order to ensure that all your bases are covered. Let’s take a closer look at what these options are.
1. Chatbots
Also known as virtual assistants, these AI-powered tools are great at handling frequent and low-level common questions. Chatbots draw from the repository of stored articles and knowledge using keywords to help provide the customer with the support needed. As AI technologies continue to evolve, chatbots will get better at providing support because they learn from their experiences.
2. Online Community Forums
An online community forum is an online space created by an organization or a brand, where members, customers and fans alike can congregate, ask questions, receive peer-to-peer support, discuss interests surrounding the brand and make social connections. Online community forums are a great space to provide customers with peer-to-peer support; essentially, this allows your customers to do the heavy lifting for you.
3. Knowledge Base
A knowledge base refers to a centralized location for the storage of information about your products and services, usually for the purpose of customer self-service support. Generally speaking, a customer-facing knowledge base functions as a part of an organization’s website, or as part of an organization’s customer self-service portal. Knowledge bases can also function as an internal tool as well, for employees and staff to access information and knowledge whenever they need it. That being said, internal knowledge bases are largely used to provide guidance and training to employees to improve their customer support, whereas external knowledge bases provide effective, frontline self-service support to customers.
4. FAQ
An FAQ is a list of frequently asked questions (FAQs) and answers. The questions found in an FAQ include the most common questions that customer service and support receive, thereby providing quick and easy support so that customers don’t have to contact the organization.
5. Help Documentation (wiki articles)
Help documentation refers to articles that the organization collaboratively creates and edits to troubleshoot issues that are generally more complicated than the ones found under the FAQ section. Help documentation tends to be long-form and is usually written by a product manager or customer support manager.
6. How-To Videos
How-to videos refer to content that is created to visually illustrate step-by-step processes on how to troubleshoot or address common customer support questions. These types of videos are usually found on YouTube under the organization’s account, or can be made by individuals, as peer-to-peer support content.
7. Ticketing Service
A ticketing service is an extremely common method for organizations to manage and queue customer support requests. Ticketing service software provides customers requesting support with a “ticket” that explains their issue to the service rep and usually categorizes the request. These tickets can be analyzed at a later date to identify common issues and customer support requests.
8. User Manuals
Most organizations offer user manuals, which are essentially guides intended to get the customer started with their new product or service. These types of manuals outline how to get the product or service set up, how to operate it, how to maintain it, and usually provides customers with tips on how to get the most value from it. User manuals serve as a proactive approach to customer support issues by outlining proper use of the product or service from the point of purchase.
9. Online Chat
Online chat provides customers with a real-time conversation with support agents, but through chat, usually on the organization’s website. This support method is, generally speaking, similar to call center support, but online.
10. Social Media
Organizations with social media channels can provide customer support by responding to posts and inquiries. The most common social media channels for support are Facebook, Linkedin and Instagram.
There are, however a ton of other considerations that should be thought through before you determine to use this as one of your primary channels, notably, privacy and control issues. In short, this is an option that you won’t own since it relies on other platforms to survive.
Available Digital Support Solutions: Pros and Cons
Now that you’re familiar with the types of support solutions available to transform your digital customer support journey, you might be wondering what solution, or combination of solutions, is the best for your organization.
To help you address this question, see the table below, which outlines the pros and cons of each digital support solution.
| Solution | Pros | Cons |
| Chatbots | Learns and iterates to improve services over time Offers immediate assistance wherever and whenever the customer needs it |
Has difficulty solving more complex support issues Can only draw from the knowledge inputted by staff Difficulty understanding words or requests that are uncommon or infrequent No SEO benefit, not searchable |
| Online Community Forums |
Real time curated content by actual users in their own words Offers more benefits than just support, such as engagement, feedback and brand loyalty Searchable, with SEO benefits (if open to the public) Collects stats on common searches and customer issues |
Some support issues will require escalation (we recommend ticketing) If left unmoderated and unmanaged, can become unwieldy Out-of-date content can surface Harder to build a community, as users will come and go after they solve problems |
| Knowledge Base |
Offers a controlled experience for customers to find answers to their questions Collects stats on common searches and customer issues Searchable, with SEO benefits |
How the customer asks a question might be different than the title of the help document, which affects searchability Needs to be frequently updated May miss unconsidered use cases |
| FAQs |
Searchable, with SEO benefits Deflects tickets by addressing common support questions If done right, scannable, concise, customer-centric |
Static Usually written by people who don’t interface with customers May use technical jargon and highfalutin language Worst: just a copy-paste from the longer user manual |
| Help Documentation | Searchable, with SEO benefits | How the customer asks a question might be different than the title of the help document, which affects searchability |
| How-To Videos |
Easy to understand visual explanations for complicated concepts Quick to consume Easy to share Searchable |
Pain to consume on mobile devices (high data usage if on cell network) Gets out of date quickly Can be expensive to produce If poorly produced, will have a negative impact on the brand Limited SEO benefits |
| Ticketing Service | Offers a direct, trackable way to escalate and follow issues to completion |
No SEO benefit, not searchable Repetitive questions harder to avoid Relies 100% on your company to provide support |
| User Manuals |
Complete resource that should answer all the possible questions and considered use cases Searchable, with SEO benefits |
Static Blind spot on unanticipated questions or issues Written in company voice, might be hard to search for |
| Online Chat |
Immediate response to customers when available Pushes inquiries directly to the CRM/ ticketing system |
Not scalable No SEO benefit, not searchable Relies 100% on staff and their ability to provide great customer support |
| Social Media |
Finds the customer where they are Publicly demonstrates responsiveness of a brand |
Can quickly degenerate into a negative vortex Can be missed if resources are not dedicated to social listening Doesn’t scale No SEO benefit, not searchable |
Given the vast amount of options available, it can be difficult to select the best combination of tools to digitize your customer support journey—but is there a “right” combination? Further, how do you approach implementing these tools in a way that makes them accessible and easy to find?
The solution is to create a customer self-service portal; one, central hub where all support channels can be found. A self-service customer portal serves as the entry point to your unique collection of customer self-service options, made up of a number of the solutions outlined in the table above. And while not all the options are required, statistics show that customers use at least three, so make sure that you weigh the pros and cons of each and implement tools that cover any shortfalls you may have.
But in terms of the “right,” combination, yes, there is a powerful combination of two of the options outlined in the table that garner amazing results. By combining a knowledge base and community, you can create a best-in-class self-service support experience.
Be sure to download some of our recent research to see the proof on just how powerful these two tools can be.
