“We had 1,000 people use our self-help tool and nobody called afterward.”
He thought that was a success. That’s when I knew we had a problem.
Last year, a leader showed me their self-help tool for scheduling appointments.
To complete a booking, patients had to click through the same chat button four times.
Most gave up before they could finish scheduling their appointment.
But instead of calling, they just went somewhere else.
This is the risk of an unexamined assumption.
Silence after a self-help interaction may look like success.
But you don’t know what it means until you track:
– Did the customer who used your self-help tool get what they came for?
– If not, did they contact you through a different channel instead?
– Or did they abandon you entirely?
Without answers to those questions, low call volume after self-help isn’t a win.
It’s a blind spot.
The goal of self-help isn’t to deflect calls.
It’s to actually resolve the interaction.
Here’s how to design it that way:
First, start by understanding why people are contacting you. Look at:
– Call recording transcripts
– Help article traffic
– Chat logs
Then build self-help around the simple, repeatable interactions first:
– Scheduling
– Basic troubleshooting
– Straightforward account questions
Get those right before you build anything more complex.
A self-help tool that doesn’t resolve the issue isn’t reducing your contact volume.
It’s just moving the failure somewhere you can’t see it.
I’m Mark Danielson, and I help healthcare leaders reduce support costs while improving patient satisfaction.
Follow me for practical insights on cutting contact center costs, improving service quality, and modernizing operations without the tradeoffs.
