Search Intent: The Firepower for Optimizing Self-Service Experiences

Despite living in the era of quick tech, support teams are almost always swamped with queries and tickets. This avalanche inadvertently makes response times unbearably long. And, in today’s day and age, making customers wait could mean trouble.

“According to Microsoft, 58% of American consumers will switch companies because of poor customer service.”



Since customers are more aware of their needs and wants, now, than ever before they’re not looking for super agents. Instead, they want instant gratification, readily available support combined with the ability to resolve issues on their own.

Fun fact: 40% of people now prefer self-service as opposed to human contact for interacting with a business.

But self-service support brings with it multiple challenges. The time lag burgeoning from scouting for answers and finding a solution that addresses their needs and queries is a big pain point for customers.

This is where intent-based support comes in. Demystifying a user’s search intent can enable you to effectively cultivate the information they’re seeking. And, once users have what they need, they’ll undoubtedly stay, thus boosting your CSAT scores.

But before you get into the nitty-gritty of user intent, you need to get to the bottom of the obstacles organizations face while trying to decipher user intent.

3 Challenges That Impede User Intent Detection

“Customer intent is such a loaded phrase. Figuring out your prospects’ intentions is like finding a flashlight in a mine. If you have it, you can quickly figure out what your next step should be. Without it, you’ll keep stumbling along in the dark.” ~ Forbes

Some of the challenges firms face while gauging intent are as follows:

1. Channel Blindness
A customer interacts with an organization through multiple touchpoints and leaves behind a trail of information after every interaction. But the channels are themselves disconnected and siloed. As a result, there is not enough context of a customer’s interactions from other channels, thereby leading to fragmented customer profiles and sub-par experiences. The need of the hour is to build a unified view of their preferences and interests, then render results that directly answer their queries.

2. Data Silos
The hindrance of data silos comes in a close second and is quite similar to channel blindness. The inability to share information by different departments within the organization renders all the accumulated data useless. For instance, your sales team just upsold a better plan to a customer. A few days later, the customer visits your website to report a problem with the speed and the chatbot is repeatedly asking them to upgrade their plan in order to enjoy faster speed and uninterrupted connection, hence completely missing the point. Disastrous much? I think so, too.

3. Lack of Semantic Search
Language is inherently ambiguous where users have their own unique ways to type queries. The expectation is that irrespective of the words typed, the self-service channels will not only understand their words but also their intent. However, more often than not, self-service platforms lack semantic search and only rely on keyword-based search, thus making it a task to correctly identify the user's search intent.

All said and done, this sorry state of affairs is quickly changing. Organizations are delivering relevant answers and tailored recommendations by taking search intent holistically. Starting from what exactly the customer wants, what is the agenda behind their search to finally, how can you help them? For that, organizations are reading customer’s minds by tapping into the following customer information:


Self-Service Channels Correlated with Intent-Based Results

The most important thing for a customer is convenience. The ease of finding answers each time they come looking is what will help you stay ahead of your competition.

But amidst new content being churned continuously, how can you ensure that relevant content stays put on all your self-service channels? Well, this [blog](https://www.searchunify.com/blog/search-intent-the-firepower-for-optimizing-self-service-experiences/) explains. It lists surefire ways to optimize and drive self-service success across channels by ranking relevant content on your self-service mediums using the magic touch of search intent.