7 strategies to support self-service
Technology tips to lower call center volumes and deepen interactions with members.
Wonder where customer service is headed? Just step inside a McDonald’s fast food restaurant and order a Big Mac and fries. In a growing number of restaurants, customers are waiting to be served at registers, tapping their orders into self-service kiosks, and picking up their food curbside after placing orders on a mobile app.
This summer, McDonald’s announced it is installing 1,000 self-service kiosks per quarterand plans to modernize all 14,000 locations by 2020. Cashiers are transitioning to customer experience roles.
A similar sea change is occurring in countless retail establishments across the country.
In the financial services sector, the march toward self-service began more than two decades ago with interactive voice response (IVR) systems. Although first generation IVRs were much-maligned by callers, they’re now indispensable for filtering simple tasks from heavy call center workloads. For example, Wright-Patt Credit Union($4.3, Beavercreek, OH) averages 93,000 calls to its call center every month across member service, cards, online banking, lending, and more. Its IVR system handles up to 250,000 calls a month.
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