With operating budgets in the manufacturing industry decreasing yearly, organisations are currently looking for ways to increase profit margins, reduce customer support costs while increasing partner and customer satisfaction.

Until very recently, the telephone was the primary communication tool between organisations in the manufacturing industry and their partners and customers. Today, traditional solutions, such as expensive 0800 free lines and live customer support that's limited by hours of operation and agent availability, aren't the only answer.

With the advent of the Internet and its increasing ubiquity, manufacturing based organisations are now able to utilise online self-service tools to help plant engineers, partners and customers help themselves. The Internet is fast becoming the single most cost-effective way to empower staff. This path to problem resolution can help alleviate the costs of providing the excellent support your partners and customers deserve and have come to expect.

In addition to calling a company's free phone number used during business hours or emailing options for customer support, with online self-service partners and customers can find answers to their questions anytime from anywhere via sophisticated customer support areas on a company's Web site. Customer self-service tools are valuable for companies looking to lower costs while extending 24 hour support to partners and customers around the world.

"Self-service applications allow customers to quickly gain access to needed information without the bother of contacting a service representative while at the same time, decreasing enterprise support costs associated with helping customers by phone," said Esteban Kolsky, Research Director for customer service and support strategies at Gartner. "When appropriately leveraged, a feature-rich self-service application can help companies provide a higher level of customer service while experiencing considerable cost savings in their contact centers."

What's driving self-service?

The engine that drives a customer self-service solution is a knowledge base - a centrally managed repository of information made available via the Web or intranet to customers, partners, and/or employees. A knowledge base is a clearinghouse for the valuable information that resides on your staff desktops and hard drives, in filing cabinets, in presentations, and in the minds of subject matters experts. By storing information such as plans and technical information in a centralised location it becomes broadly accessible and easily modified allowing organisations to maintain data integrity, preventing product being manufactured not to specification through lack of correct information.

By tracking and documenting product and company information and employee/customer interaction, a knowledge base serves as a legacy of your company's progress preventing data-loss when key employees switch jobs or leave the company. With time and use, the value of the knowledge base increases. When deployed correctly, a knowledge base is an organic tool that moves information from a static repository (desk top files, manuals, binders and brochures) to a growing body of dynamic information that is easily accessible for those who need it.

Self-service solutions built on a powerful knowledge base provide a cost-effective way to retain and disseminate information about your company, products, services and customers. Too much valuable time is spent on routine queries. A knowledge base allows partners and staff to find answers on their own, whenever they want to, freeing up customer support staff to address more complex queries.

Cut expenses

Customer self service can positively affect the volume of inbound contacts to your contact centre, reducing overall operating costs in terms of technology, total cost of ownership, headcount, recruiting and training. As staff become familiar and adopt the knowledge base, utilisation will increase and direct company contact will decrease.

According to our customers, the average knowledge base deflects about 30% of inbound contacts, which can save an organisation a substantial amount of money almost immediately. The costs of recruiting and maintaining a large customer support organisation run high, so by decreasing the number of customer support representatives (CSRs) necessary to support a growing customer base, recruiting and training becomes less of a burden.

Increase efficiencies

A knowledge base can help increase the productivity of staff dealing with partner and customer queries and improve the accuracy of their responses. With an online knowledge base your partners and customers won't be forced to make lengthy phone calls, or receive delayed or inaccurate information. They can find answers to their questions on their time schedule, not on yours.

Quick, flexible problem resolution is a critical success factor in long-term customer satisfaction. Given that most partners and customers typically ask the same questions, a well-documented knowledge base can immediately satisfy many of the answers partners and customers are looking for. Given the nature of today's global economy, many organisations in the manufacturing industry have partners and customers located all over the world. Many of these will find it difficult to access customer support hotlines during standard business hours.

Many will also encounter slow response times from customer support representatives (CSRs) either over the phone, through online chat or by email. A knowledge base works well as a tool to enable the CSRs to improve response times and get partners and customers answers to their questions more quickly. The overall effect of a knowledge base is to greatly improve the customer relationship and therefore increase the customer retention.

Share knowledge internally

A knowledge base can be a valuable resource used internally, as well as externally. Plant workers and site managers alike can leverage tools to prevent duplication of work, promote best practices, as well as turn subject matter experts into company-wide assets.

A knowledge base delivers no value if unused. Therefore, it's paramount to build one that is easy to use from all user standpoints. Overall, the User Interface should be intuitive and easy to use for any user level - both internally and externally. The administrative control panels should offer sophisticated choices that are easy to implement. Imputing information into the knowledge base and updating it should be as easy as finding answers. Numerous searching options should be extended, to make users as comfortable as possible. 

Personalisation

When you think of self-service tools, you usually don't think of personalised services, but you should.  Today, a good knowledge base can be personalised for usage, whether personalisation takes the form of a customised landing page for administrators or personalised Web portals for partners. By creating one portal for various sets of partners based on entitlements and permissions, the need for administrators to create separate portals for different end-user groups is eliminated. Personalised knowledge bases add convenience for you and tailored support for your partners and customers.

Integration

A knowledge base should extend IT investments instead of creating further silo' systems and seamlessly integrate with other systems such as ticketing systems or beyond including CRM (customer relationship management), ERP (enterprise resource planning), and BPM (Business Process Management BPM).
 
With affordable knowledge bases offering advanced options in customer support, today any organisation within the manufacturing industry can build and maintain a system that helps partners and customers help themselves. While phone support and email assistance should never be completely replaced with a self-service solution, organisations can save money, increase efficiencies and offer better customer service with even a basic knowledge base solution for customer self service.

Whereas the question used to be "How can we afford to offer good customer service?" today it should be "How can we afford NOT to offer a knowledge base for customer self service?"  You'll find, in most cases, you can't.