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Self-service Support to Allow Users to Solve Problems on Their Own
Self-service Support to Allow Users to Solve Problems on Their Own
Serve with 24/7 support readily available whenever users need it.
Efehan avatar
Written by Efehan
Updated over a week ago

Use Case

Self-service support is a collective of options focused on providing your users with contextual support exactly when they need it. It allows your customers to help themselves, so you can retain them by quickly solving issues causing churn.

How? By:

  • Helping users complete a specific task by giving users all-time access to answers they need.

  • Providing contextual support for users while they interact with your product on a deeper level.

  • Reducing the friction around learning a process and reducing the burden on your support team.

This guide will focus on creating a collection of experiences for users that will allow them to solve their problems on their own when they need help. We'll cover:

  • Creating the contents (Hotspots & Guides)

  • Placing Guides into a Resource Center

  • Targeting the correct users

  • What metrics will these impact?

The final look of one of these self-service support contents (help hotspot) will look similar to the example we created below:



Creating the contents (Guides, Hotspots, and a Resource Center)

Let's begin by creating the actual content.

1-) Create the Guides to place into the Resource Center

  • Navigate to the platform page where you'd want your walkthrough to start and open the Chrome Extension.

  • Then, click + Guide, give a descriptive name, and select the "Click Element" template under the Tooltip section.

  • If you do not want your users to click on the highlighted element to proceed to the next step, you can change this setting to "Button".

2-) Create the Hotspots for contextual help

  • Navigate to the Hotspots tab in the Chrome Extension.

  • Click create a new Hotspot and select a template.

  • Highlight the element in your UI that you want to attach to the Hotspot and provide resources that'll help your users.

Pro tip: You can insert a custom button in the Hotspot and set the action to Trigger a Guide to provide it as an option.

3-) Customize

UserGuiding gives you the ability to customize the walkthrough fully.

  • Visuals draw users' attention and can give a visual tip related to the content.

  • You can also fully customize the look & feel of the Guides, Hotspots & Resource Center with Customized Themes.

  • If you have a Theme you're ready to use, make sure this walkthrough is using it.

Placing the guide into a Resource Center

You can provide the resources within an existing Resource Center or create a new one. This way, your end-users will be able to self-support 24/7.

1-) Create and customize the Resource Center

Guides, Checklists & external URLs can be inserted as modules within a Resource Center. Once you are done with creating the Guides, you can add them to a Checklist and put the Checklist into the Resource Center.

Protip: In Checklist settings, you can disable the "Unlock Checklist Items in Order" to display guides in order, regardless of the completion status of the previous one.

2-) Integrate your Knowledge Base

In Resource Center settings, you can integrate your Knowledge Base to provide users with answers by including access to knowledge base articles or FAQs.

  • To achieve this, navigate to the Search Function.

  • Type down the domain of your Knowledge Base.

  • If you are a Zendesk user, select Zendesk from the dropdown menu.

  • Enable "In-Widget Display" and click on the blue Play button to preview the functionality.

Targeting the correct users

While displaying self-service support to all users is a valid option, for instance, you can target users based on their familiarity with your product.

If you think a certain resource or guidance will benefit only a specific group of users, you can segment by user type. You can achieve this by sending property to UserGuiding.

Once you decide on the segment, don't forget to set it to the support content you've created.

Pro tip: If you want to use the same Resource Center displaying relative content for different user segments, you can select a custom segment for modules inside the Resource Center so that users will only see what they are eligible for.

Testing the experience

Setting the audience to Only Me will limit the content to display for you and your colleagues.

You can navigate to a page where the support content should display, test it to see what it will look like, and publish it when you're ready.


What metrics will this impact?

  • Decrease in the number of support tickets and eventually the cost of customer support operations when compared to the total revenue.

  • Customer satisfaction & engagement as they'll be able to find answers to their questions quickly and within the product.

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