How is the trend toward self-service options affecting the overall perception of the customer experience?
A | It depends on the customer, and the self-service options. Bottom line, the customer has a good experience if they have easy access to the correct information. However, some customers, particularly those over 35, require some personal contact to establish a strong positive feeling toward a company and its products. Using just electronic channels may solve their question or problem, but the overall experience is lacking. Alternatively, there are so many bad self-service sites out there (or at least I find most of the companies I interact with as a consumer, particularly my cell phone provider and DSL service provider, have horrible self-service sites!) that few customers have a positive experience using them. I believe that as technology advances, self-service will become a fuller experience, more closely matching the agent assisted experience. Embedded analytics allow e-interactions to be highly personalized and accurate. Companies can even offer dynamic micro-sites for customers, c
