The core of a company’s success is a happy customer. No wonder great customer service programs focus on treating customers well, answering questions, and exceeding expectations. 

But in the contemporary society where customers don’t always want to reach out for support, and would rather find answers on their own, how do you attend to them at their every need, without delay? Self-service support is your savior, and it needs to be just as good as your agents.

In this guide, we explore the building blocks of self-service customer support. What it is, and why it is the best way to cut down on your costs while still maintaining your customer happy.

## What is self-service support?
Self-service customer support means that the company provides customers with all the tools necessary to meet their needs in full autonomy. In other words, customers use company tools to find solutions to their problems, rather than contacting the support team. This way, customers can quickly find answers to their questions easily, at any time. 

## Examples of self-service customer support
There are several tools businesses can use to offer self-service customer support. Here are a few examples:

### Layerise as your customer self-service software
Layerise is a CRM software that combines technology and data to improve the customer experience. It has several features that can help your company to introduce an excellent self-service support. 

Some of the features include:
- It provides customers demographics like __feedback and scores__, giving the company more insights into the client's behavior.
- It provides a __chat widget__ that provides customers with real-time customer service support using client's data, e.g., demographics.
- It uses highlights to provide visual content using images and videos to __educate the customers__. The video is enabled due to the Youtube Integration that Layerise supports.
- It provides a __virtual assistant__ that makes it easier for customers to search and find your company content on Google.

### Forums
A forum is a large community where customers can share posts about their experience with the product and get feedback from other users who have encountered the same problem and may have already found a solution. The users who contribute with relevant answers get the label of experts.

Forums give users many options to find solutions since most are already suggested by users. On your side, during their free time, your customer service team has to look at the questions asked and respond to the ones nobody answered yet.

Forums work well with companies who have a lot of customer queries or struggle with coming up with other solutions in terms of customer support service, such as knowledge base and FAQs. Forums allow the creation of a community of users and connect the company with its users thanks to direct interaction.

### Chatbots
Chatbots use artificial intelligence and natural language processing to initiate conversations on different platforms like websites, emails, applications, Slack, Facebook messenger, mobile apps, etc. They can be used to offer self-service support in different ways. For instance, chatbots help in displaying common answers to clients when they ask a question, especially the FAQs. 

They play a significant role in automating customer services, saving both the company and users time and costs. On the customer side, they can easily ask for support by writing a message in the chat, it is simple and convenient. On the company side, there is a significant saving in human resources.

When configuring the chatbots, you have to set the company logo as profile picture to avoid confusion among the customers. Examples of common chatbots include Kommunicate, ChatBot, Blue Diamond, and Chatfuel. Remember to ensure the grammar of the answers is correct and the period between responses is adequate. Some issues can get out of hand, and humans have to intervene and help the customer.

![in-articles-chat-bot](//images.ctfassets.net/scrf7o05zai3/4L6fef2axTlbHqvxbAVDiR/6d90ec2376c4a454a0f40182c2248e9c/in-articles-chat-bot.gif)

### Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR) system
If you conduct most customer service by phone, you can create an interactive IVR menu that can automate all the calls. The IVR system allows customers to use an automated voice system that guides them through a variety of service options. This allows the customer support team to focus on critical tasks that require human intervention while automating the standard queries. 

### Knowledge base
A knowledge base is a collection of information about company services or products. This knowledge base includes troubleshooting guides, articles, FAQs, video tutorials, product manuals, etc. Both the customer and the internal team have access to it.

Having a robust knowledge base significantly enhances the self-service experience. Most clients want to fix their issues without involving others. The knowledge base helps them spend little time solving their problem and get on with their day. Especially tech-savvy customers prefer using the knowledge base. 

The knowledge base should be easily accessible, well organized, seamless to navigate, able to solve all the common issues, and up-to-date to address the latest complaints. It should act as documentation, not a boring storyline.

When designing the base, ensure that you understand the main elements of the base, i.e., search functionality, FAQs, and contact details. Cover all the basics and onboarding processes and categorize them into several groups. Structure your content with a good flow and use visuals like screenshots on how the customer can follow the specific steps with the help of arrows.

### Self-servicing portals
Another way to introduce self-service support is by creating a portal where customers can sign up, ask questions, track the response status, communicate with agents, place orders, etc. 

For example, if your customers want to check the status of the service they paid for, they log in and check the status of the estimated delivery time autonomously through the portal. This reduces the calls to the company's customer support team.

### Frequently Asked Questions(FAQ) page
FAQ page is the section on a website that consists of questions and answers to the commonly asked questions by customers. It acts as a manual where users can find all the answers. When designing this page, you don’t use ordinary questions. You talk to your team and tell them to check what customers ask.

Companies use different tools like CRM to check the data of all the previous questions. Customer representatives also know which questions most of the clients ask. Filter the questions and offer several solutions to every question.

After setting up your FAQ page, make sure Google indexes it by applying several SEO tactics so that users find it easily.

## 6 key benefits of self-service support
There are several advantages in using self-service customer support both for the customer and the company. Have a look at 8 key benefits we’ve outlined below.

### 1. Gets rid of repetitive tasks
With self-service support, support agents can focus on important requests instead of wasting their time answering repetitive questions. Having to repeat the same answer over and over can be exhausting and make them feel undervalued. Self-service support eliminates the need to address demands that do not require human intervention, challenges expertise, and increases productivity.

### 2. It improves the customer experience
When a business provides answers to clients without contacting customer service, their experience is incredible since they use less effort to get help. It leads to more satisfaction since there is no burden to receive support throughout their user journey.

### 3. It offers 24/7 support
Customers have a lot of expectations that increase with time. They expect companies to be able to provide assistance at any time to solve their problems. Using self-service support makes all the services available anytime the client wants help, without increasing staff headcount. 

### 4. It provides more insights into your customer's needs
Businesses can use different technologies to analyze customer queries and fix any loopholes the self-service support does not address. The possibility to constantly collect information and insights about cutomers' needs, allow you to improve the self-service experience accordingly, making your customers every time happier to use your products.

### 5. It increases traffic to your business which leads to more sales
If you have a business website, create a section where you list answers to all the questions could customers ask. Customers will visit the section every time they need help, making Google value it as important, thus improving the search rankings. The traffic increase will lead to an increase in inbound leads that convert into customers.

### 6. It increases efficiency
Self-service serves many people simultaneously, getting rid of large queues that would require a big team of people working for customer support. Self-service support gives your company a chance to reduce human resources, which leads to a decrease in costs.

## Best practices for having a better self-service customer support
To ensure that the customers enjoy your self-service support options, you have to use good practices.

Layerise provides features that enable businesses to build resources that can support customers in their user journey. Among the others, is the use of videos and chat widgets.

It is essential to make all the support resources easily accessible to customers by adding the links to your website "home" and "about us" pages, as well as by providing answers using chat widgets, indexing FAQs, and knowledge base on search engines.

Remember to provide a contact link in all the different support resources: FAQs, forums, knowledge base, etc. This way, it will be easier for customers to contact the support team.

After having introduced all the different self-service support resources, makes sure your team is keeping track of the customer activity. And, most importantly, when customers start facing problems in consulting these resources, your team must be quick to correct them accordingly.

On top of that, ensure the content is well presented and relevant. Having a good team for content creation makes sure that the content from the knowledge base, forum, and automated chatbots are high quality.

## Conclusion

Self-service support tools are essential for any type of business, and most customers nowadays prefer them over the other methods of support. Use effective methods to make your customers happy. 

Ensure all your self-service support resources are easily accessible through mobile phones, desktops, and tablets. Having a good self-service support makes the customer's experience great and reduces the number of calls to your customer desk.

Are you having difficulties in managing your customers? [Book a demo](https://www.layerise.com/) to see how Layersie can help you introduce self-service support and improve your customer's experience.


Self-service support: How to make your customer happy

Did you know that the average company loses [35%](https://www.pwc.com/us/en/services/consulting/library/consumer-intelligence-series/future-of-customer-experience.html) of its customers within a month of completing a purchase? And an additional [16%](https://www.pwc.com/us/en/services/consulting/library/consumer-intelligence-series/future-of-customer-experience.html) of customers leave every year after that? You have to create an incredible post-sales experience or risk losing most of your customers.

As you are building and growing your business, it's easy to forget that your customers are the reason why your company exists. You probably have a lot of things in your mind (like where you will get the money to pay for all those new employees), but don't lose sight of the people who trust you when they choose to buy your product.

The post-sales period is crucial to create loyalty among customers and lead them to repeat the purchase of your products. Creating a great post-sales experience is critical for growing your business. 

![in-article-10-tips](//images.ctfassets.net/scrf7o05zai3/veuhByyyzGUf6HtzebUkF/42105315a3bf5cd4d4eaf75b378ef6a6/in-article-10-tips.jpg)

Here you can find ten tips on how to create a great post-sale experience:

### 1. Continue to communicate with your customers after the sale

Helping your customers to get the most out of what they have purchased is important for providing a positive post-sales experience. By keeping them updated on new features and new product releases, you're manifesting your interest in their constant satisfaction. 

Asking for and incorporating customers' feedback into future products shows that you value their input, which will encourage them to keep purchasing from you. Reminding them that they aren't alone and that there is an easy way to get support if something goes wrong with the product, will make their user experience remarkable.     

### 2. Create a space where customers can share their successes with others

A great way to help cultivate a community of happy customers is to create a space where customers can share their successful experiences with the product. By allowing customers to share their success stories with others, you will trigger their sense of belonging and loyalty to your brand and encourage repetitive purchases.   

Customers want to experience personalized support that recognizes them as individuals and not just another number on a ticket. If you are trying to build a strong community around your product, make sure you come across as an active listener and prioritize customers' contributions and suggestions. Don't turn it into another marketing or sales channel.

Also, don't forget to encourage community members to share ideas and solutions regarding the product. This is important not only because it improves the overall customer experience, but also because it allows you to gather important data that can be used when developing new features or completely new products. If this is done right, your brand will be seen as one that cares about its customer base!

### 3. Make it easy for customers to provide feedback, then act on that feedback

It's important to be proactive when it comes to customer retention and satisfaction. You definitely shouldn't wait for customers to come to you.

Make sure you can use the data you have collected about your customers' experiences over time to identify potential issues before they arise. The same applies when identifying opportunities: use existing data points at your disposal and offer solutions before the customer expresses the need for them.

Ask customers for feedback as often as possible. Don't just say you are acting on customers' feedback, do it! It’s the best way to show your customers that you care about their opinions.

### 4. Make it easy for unsatisfied customers to get their money back or return your product or service

You can offer extended warranties, money-back guarantees, or discounts on future purchases. If you need to provide refunds, do it promptly and with as little hassle as possible. The more complicated you make it for customers to get their money back or exchange a product, the less the customer will be satisfied. 

Create a safe environment for your customers. Put them at ease and let them know that they are in good hands so they will feel comfortable enough to come back again and again.

Also, ensure your team is available when customers need help by letting them know the customer service hours, how they can be contacted, and who else to reach out to in case of emergency.

### 5. Proceed with caution if you are thinking about branching out

A smart business owner knows that if you want to keep your customers happy, you have to offer them excellent post-sales service. However, offering great customer service after sale is easier said than done. One of the most common mistakes is branching out into new product lines.

Many people think it's a great idea to expand their business by offering new products or services. But you need to be careful here because changing your product lineup can be way more harmful than rewarding when it comes to providing your customers with a good post-sales experience.

Every time you add a new product, you are taking time and resources away from expanding on what you already have. Those resources could have been used to improve your existing products and services, which would have given your customers a better post-sales experience.

### 6. Show appreciation to your customers 

There are many ways to show your appreciation to your customers for their loyalty and trust. Consider the following:

- __Offer a discount or upgrade on products__ that can fit with what you have already sold them. This shows that you recognize their purchase and want to help them get the most out of it.
- __Send a handwritten thank-you card__. The personal touch is vital for building relationships and making people feel like they matter to you. If you have thousands of customers, consider sending out cards at least to some of them to show your recognition.
- __Host a customer appreciation event__, like a party with free food, drinks, entertainment, and gifts. People love free stuff! This allows you to express your gratitude and learn more about what your customers would like to see in the future.
- __Give away a gift with a purchase over a certain amount of money spent__ during holidays or periods when people are probably shopping anyway, also known as "inflection points". This makes your product more attractive than competitors' ones and builds goodwill at a minimal cost to you. After all, these people were going to buy something anyway!
- __Send gift boxes__ filled with goodies or products related to what they have already purchased on the occasion of a special event for them (e.g. birthday).

### 7. Continually monitor and refine your service offering

Managing the post-sales journey is an ongoing and evolutionary process, so you need to make sure that it continues to be refined and enhanced over the long term. There are many ways to collect customers' feedback about their post-sales experience, but they can differ in their value and insight. 

Methods of gathering customer feedback that is valuable include:
- Customer surveys.
- Customer focus groups.
- Email support tickets raised by customers.
- User group meetings where customers interact with each other and share ideas or feedback related to the product.

It's also important to remember that not all feedback needs to come directly from customers. Input from sales teams (who are in direct communication with clients), account management teams (who follow customers throughout their journey), and even partners can be just as valuable in improving your post-sales experience.

### 8. Prioritize customer retention as much as acquisition

You have probably heard that "[it costs five times more to acquire a customer than keep an existing one](https://hbr.org/2014/10/the-value-of-keeping-the-right-customers)". So why do so many companies focus on customer acquisition instead of customer retention?

Here you can find some tips that can help you to reduce the churn rate:

- __Offer additional products or services__ to existing customers.
- __Build customer loyalty by offering valuable services and benefits__, such as free shipping.
- Encourage customers to purchase from you again by __offering discounts and special offers__.
- __Up-selling and cross-selling__ are both effective methods for increasing sales.

### 9. Build customer loyalty by focusing on adding value

Creating a great post-sales experience enhances customers' loyalty and trust. The better the journey you can provide them after buying your product, the more likely they will engage with you again in the future. So you have to ensure that you are delivering as much value as possible in every interaction.  

To deliver a great experience, you first need to understand the customer journey and identify the so called touchpoints, i.e. interactions between companies and their customers. By strategically leveraging these touch points, you can provide customers with a great experience and increase the retention rate.    

Within the customer journey, the post-sales stage is a matter of living up to the promises made during earlier stages. In this phase the touchpoints include [product reviews, thank you letters, product feedback surveys, up-selling/cross-selling emails, subscription renewals, customer support channels, customer success programs and self-service resources](https://blog.hubspot.com/service/customer-touchpoints). It is very important to add value to customers during each of these interactions to increase their satisfaction and gain their loyalty.   

The entire sales funnel and post-sales experience should be as seamless and involve minimal and easy steps. If any of your processes are too complex, you will lose most of the customers midway. 

### 10. Create a FAQ section on your website

One of the most frustrating moments for customers occurs when, after buying your product, they don't know how to use it. The easiest way to prevent this situation from happening is to create a post-sales experience that is clear and easy to navigate. And with an effective FAQ section on your website, you are well on your way!

To create an effective FAQ section on your website, you need to determine which are the most frequently asked questions about your products. This can be done by interacting with the marketing team and sales team who have the best insights into your products. 

Once you have a clear idea of the most frequently asked types of questions, start writing up answers that are as clear and detailed as possible. With your answers, you should help the customer to use your product successfully, discover the different functionalities, and get the most benefits out of it. Such resources might include templates, cheat sheets, video tutorials, and other resources to help customers save time.

This demonstrates that you're truly listening and paying attention to their needs, which is often enough for an angry customer to calm down if they are upset with you.

### Conclusion

Don't underestimate the importance of a great post-sales experience. Your ability to retain customers and gain their loyaly mostly depends on the post-sales experience you are offering them. Their willingness to repurchase from you will increase if they are satisfied with the overall journey they have gone through with you so far. 

Remember, there is no best way to create a post-sales experience. Every customer is different, and every business is different, so make sure you identify what makes sense for your specific business. 

And if you're struggling to figure out how to add value in this area, consider adopting Layerise solution.

__How can Layerise help you improve your post-sales experience?__

If you are struggling with providing adequate post-sales experience, you can team up with Layerise. Layerise is a powerful brand-specific product assistant that helps brands and their end-users achieve an excellent experience.

Customers can easily access assembly guides, troubleshooting assistance, and warranty and maintenance updates seamlessly. Brands can use this platform to create interactive product assistance using multimedia and in several languages depending on the user's location. 

Businesses can also get actionable insights and deploy customized marketing campaigns to ensure better customer satisfaction, excellent post-sales experience, and better customer retention.

Get started today, [book a demo now](https://www.layerise.com/)!


10 tips on how to create great post-sales experiences

The most valuable knowledge you can acquire is going to come from the customer you have. Therefore, your customers are an essential source of information that will empower you to optimise the performance of your business in a strategic and smart way, if collected accurately and utilised effectively.  

Data is translated into knowledge, will help you understand your performance, and consequently provide clarity to improve your strategic processes where necessary. Understanding your customers, both generically, as e.i. buyer persona, and specifically with deep contextual precision, will, without doubt, uncover insights that will drive your business safely and confidently into the future. On the contrary, not seeking insight through data will potentially contribute to faulty decision-making and thereby the risk of business opportunity implosion. A high gain method to always prioritise data is to assess the outcome of what the cost would be if data is not tracked.  

Below we have collected 10 reasons how data can contribute to your business through the means of customer data acquisition: 

## 1. Make informed decisions

Data is knowledge. Good high-quality customer data provides indisputable evidence whereas relying only on assumptions might lead to wasted resources. Get to know your customers, find out who they are and what they need, and trust in such data when making important business decisions. The more data you have, the better position you’ll be in to make reasonable decisions and take advantage of new opportunities. Being backed up by good data will also give you the justification, evidence, and confidence when explaining the reasoning behind your decisions.   

## 2. Measure customer loyalty

If you want to become one of the most recognised brands and experience long-lasting business success, customer loyalty is what really gets you there and makes you stand out. It increases profits, improves sales success, and allows for sustainable growth. The best way to build an effective and loyal customer base is to segment your customers by gathering and analyzing their data.

## 3. Recognise habitual behavior through customer behavior analysis

By establishing a well-structured data-driven customer base, you can analyse how the personas interact with your company. Performing a customer behavior analysis is becoming increasingly important due to a growing need for highly personalized content that is unique to each customer. By having collected enough customer data, you can identify the most ideal customer characteristics and by targeting them, your business can attract brand-loyal customers before your competitors do.  

## 4. Improve your product by gaining customer feedback

The customers who have already bought something from you are the best persons to approach when you try to gather feedback insights concerning your products and services. By gathering their data, you can get their insights and priceless feedback. You can ask them how they liked the product, their recommendations, and ideas for improvement. By establishing such an interactive relationship you will always be able to target the specific problem and work on its improvement in no time.           

## 5. Drive future marketing strategy   

The information you collect is the ultimate marketing tool that allows you to profile your customers. You can build your marketing strategy around the data you gather as now you know your audience. Furthermore, analyzing trends in a number of new registrations, customers, or conversations during specific timeframes can show you which of your products are in demand, and which ones are losing significance. 

## 6. Make prospects’ targeting easy and time-efficient

The more information you can collect, the more you can use the information to determine if someone fits into your “buyer persona” and if and when they are predicted to make a purchase. The more details you can gather, the more you can focus on the best leads to target.  

## 7. Improve your customer experience

To strengthen the connections between you and your customers, you absolutely have to understand the experiences they are having and discover how to optimize them. It is the most efficient way to get an understanding of how your company is doing concerning customer experience. After gathering a sufficient amount of data about who your customers are and how they experience your brand, you can start to analyze the data, create customer profiles, and map customer journeys. It can tell you in what areas you are doing well and where you need to improve. The more willing you are to listen to your customers and use their critiques to your advantage, the faster your company can grow in value.   

## 8. Reduce the risk of business opportunity failure

One key advantage of data collection is that it increases efficiency and at the same time eliminates any doubt and insecurities. Proper customer data collection and analysis means that you’ll always to able to put your scarce resources where they are needed most. Understanding what area currently needs to be prioritized is essential in helping you locate key insights and identify structural vulnerabilities. Then you can always stay one step ahead of your competitors and make sure no opportunities are being missed. 

## 9. Drive innovation

Data represents an invaluable opportunity for you to innovate. As the current trends are constantly evolving, only forward-thinking brands can survive. You can fuel your growth strategy with actionable insights by collecting solid customer data, finding linkages and hidden patterns. This will lead you down the path of long-term business success.  

## 10. Develop systematic brand-to-customer communication

To build strong, long-lasting relationships with your customers, you need to develop effective brand-to-customer communication. This means that you need to be able to communicate easily and effectively whenever your customers require you to do so. By understanding your customers first, i.e. by analysing their characteristics through data collection, you can create the foundation for the successful long-term relationship.


10 Reasons You Need to Collect Data

If you are looking to create an instruction manual that people would always engage with, you have come to the right place! 

To make customers’ after-sale journey as straightforward and easy as possible, the high-quality user manual should be a fundamental part of the product experience.  In practice, however, no one reads the product manuals. A global survey that we initiated a few years ago confirms this statement. Almost 50% of all consumers say they never read the product manual before using their device. Moreover, the survey shows that almost 80% are mis-using or not using the product completely due to lack of know-how ([Research: The lack of effectiveness](https://www.layerise.com/resources/blog/post/the-lack-of-effectiveness)). 

Do it differently by discharging your idea of the conventional printed instruction manuals and replacing it with something new and way more engaging.

At Layerise, you can serve your customers with a smart interactive and customised Product Assistant that can provide the right kind of information in no time and solve all your customers’ problems efficiently. 

### What is a Product  Assistant?

The Layerise platform ensures that every end-customer gets the most optimal product experience. As a brand, you can create brand and product-specific Assistants for your customers to access.

You can educate your customers about the product features, inform them about changes and maintenance activities as well as fetch warranties through product onboarding, assembly guides, or troubleshooting help. Layerise provides the ability to effectively communicate with your customers, using enriched customer information as customer ownership details, product serial information, product service history, customer language preferences, and much more. 

Creating a Product  Assistant is extremely easy and can be done efficiently. Here is a quick guide to get you started.   

### 5 tips to create the ultimate Product Assistant 

#### 1. Identify the product and the end-customer

Think like your customer when selecting and establishing the right content experience. To create an effective user instruction manual, you need to make sure it’s easy for your customers to find what they need as soon as possible while keeping them engaged with your Assistant. Don’t go overboard with unnecessary features. Think from your customers’ point of view - people who are engaging with your product for the first time. You should always make sure they can find everything they need within few seconds after opening the Assistant. 

#### 2. Make product information available

Collect all the information about your product and carefully decide what type of content you want to include in your Assistant. Make sure you have a clear structure in mind! Next, create a checklist for yourself and make sure you don’t forget anything essential your customers need in their after-sale experience. 

#### 3. Create Highlights, Topics, etc. for the end-customer product needs

Start by making it easier for your customers by creating shortcuts for any important highlight, topic, or specific area of the Assistant, or by connecting the Product Assistant to any of your vital existing destinations. Moreover, make sure your customers stay engaged with your product, and thus, don’t forget to define recurring actions they need to take, for instance, maintenance or product care. Lastly, make your mark - sharing your social media outlets, as well as your carbon offset, will captivate the interest of your customers. This Personal Assistant is now on its way to becoming the only type of manual that actually provides an enjoyable experience!

#### 4. Build unique, easy to understand and localized experiences

Visuals first, text second! Make your visuals powerful enough to stand on their own. Images or videos - they need to answer questions, not draw more out. Make sure they are clean, clear, self-explanatory, and comprehensive! That’s just the perfect way to enhance engagement and help customers effectively.    

Educate and storytell. Your customers should be able to understand what you want to tell them even without reading the accompanying text.

#### 5. Improve and optimize with customer feedback

Since your Personal Assistant will play a determining role in helping your customers understand your product, it is absolutely essential to always keep on improving it with the latest features. Make sure your customers are being heard by updating the Assistant based on their needs! User manuals have never been more interactive - see your customers’ experiences with your own eyes.

5 tips to create the ultimate Product Assistant

Do a simple mind experiment and think about the number of times you actually read the product manual that came along with the product you had bought. Your attempt to count the occasions is most likely going to result in “I can’t remember”, “Very few times” or even “I never read them”.  Now, consider extending your mind experiment to include your friends, colleagues, or family members. At this stage, you can be more than sure that you have recognised a pattern, as the results of your experiments, will mirror the behaviour of the vast majority of consumers who do not read the manual. 

The lack of customer product manual usage is a problem not only for the uncalled resources spent on producing them, or the lack of ability to onboard or support customers efficiently, but more importantly very significant and yet avoidable exploitation of natural resources. Have you ever thought about the environmental damage that is directly linked to the production of such hard copy manuals? From deforestation to air and water pollution through the manufacturing processes and waste containment. After all, the issue of climate change is an issue of consumption. And such a problem can’t be solved with the same thinking we used when we created it.

Why should we continue exploiting our planet for something so inefficient and unnecessary when we can take advantage of today’s digital world? At Layerise we focus on reducing the environmental impact for businesses by introducing better, environmentally-friendly, and highly efficient consumer-tailored digital Product Assistants. The digital and always present assistant your customers would want to “engage with” and at the same time have a clean conscience that no tree has been cut down because of them!

Looking at the environmental footprint there are several detrimental impacts of paper and ink production. Only the paper industry alone emits around 0.3 billion tons of greenhouse gases each year. What’s even more stomach-churning is that the same industry is responsible for almost half of the “football field of the forest” lost every single second around the clock. With the current pace of deforestation, the world’s rainforests will be gone by 2100. No one would prefer seeing their grand or great-grandchildren living in a world without oxygen or protection from destructive extreme weather events.

Besides, paper pollution from paper waste is another serious problem. When paper rots, it emits methane gas which is 25 times more toxic than CO2. What’s more, producing only a single page of A4-sheet of paper takes 10 liters of water, which sounds mind-blowing if we know that we have less than 19 years left till the world runs out of freshwater unless water use is drastically reduced. 

![April river](//images.ctfassets.net/scrf7o05zai3/719H1I3RGCfRvnzDT8GszH/2d316022a543c5f3fb56e04dcbd9a32b/body_april_adj.jpg)

There is no doubt that a significant amount of freshwater is being used during paper manufacturing processes, but what adds to the disastrous effects even more, is that most of it is thrown out as wastewater highly contaminating surrounding water bodies. Just the thought of a life without clean water to drink is difficult to conceive. Perhaps, it’s a good time to consider these effects the next time you are deciding whether you keep utilizing conventional paper-heavy methods or going environmentally friendly with digital options.  

In addition, compared to paper production, ink cartridges are considered to be a much smaller global issue. Still, in our opinion, even minor issues deserve attention - especially when we have superior alternatives. An overall approximation of CO2 emissions per average ink cartridge production is 8kg.  With more than 1.1 billion inkjet cartridges used around the world every year, this amount does not sound so insignificant anymore. Nevertheless, the real environmental issues with the printer come when disposing of a printer, with contents primarily composed of plastics and resins, cartridges take a significant amount of time (between 600 and 8,000 years!) to decompose. With almost 350 million printer cartridges disposed worldwide each year, we are slowly building the world’s growing plastic mountain. It is hard to imagine that is the place you would want to spend your winter vacation or your hiking trip. However, if we want to make this mountain smaller, we need to burn the waste. When burned, toner and ink cartridges are hazardous to the environment as well as humans.  This seems like a dead-end - how can you help solve this issue? Once again, it’s time to  “dig out the roots of the problem” by promoting digital transformation over printed conventional manuals. 

Let’s face it, in today’s fast-paced life and busy schedules, people are increasingly more dependent on digital solutions that have a fairly simple interface instead of “wasting” their precious time reading the manual page by page. Who has time to spend 30 minutes reading the instructions when we can get the same amount of information in a 1-minute long video? People need something that is time-efficient, easy, universal, and effective. Moreover, the unnecessary production of conventional manuals and their environmental impact is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s not just about pouring time and money down the drain. It’s about real-life consequences as one thing leads to the other. It starts with you making a choice of producing such manuals, which leads to deforestation, air and water pollution, and scarcity. This leads to climate change and consequent destruction of our livelihoods as well as the well-being of future generations. It’s a butterfly effect - the concept imagined with a butterfly flapping its wings and causing a typhoon. If you want to prevent this “climate typhoon” from happening - make a choice again. This time opt for not only environmental neutral, but also more efficient and time-saving solutions like the one offered by Layerise. It’s a “win-win” situation - playing a part in saving the planet and making customers happy by assisting them in an interactive, effective, time-saving, and content-rich manner. 


Save a tree, go digital, and paper-free!

We all know the feeling. The weekend has arrived and the day will be spent hunting for IKEA furniture and products as one of the rooms at home or work needs a new look. While a trip to IKEA with the endless arrows on the floor can result in a feeling of disorientation, the real challenge starts at the point of furniture/product assembly. 

Now, within the Layerise team, we have huge respects for what IKEA has achieved and how they constantly improve their business. On the other hand, we also recognise the challenges that occur when the DIY process starts. While you may be the person who reads an instruction manual meticulously, or who enjoys DIY every day and to whom IKEA furniture assembly is pure joy, the promise that the IKEA instruction is there to compensate for the lack of assembly abilities for a lot of people is shortlived. In fact, some go as far as to say that the Swedish furniture manufacturing company has a dark side: its furniture is really hard to assemble. As shown in the image below it's not always clear what exactly the customer should be doing. 

![instructions IKEA billy](//images.ctfassets.net/scrf7o05zai3/5Br6wKT6CBa2wLjuZmaB1M/69c05431baff74658a20db3a927b64d7/instructions_IKEA_billy.jpg?w=1200&q=80)

IKEA has good business reasons for creating their instruction manuals without any text, images or in-depth explanations. This allows them to in-return cut costs and at the same time easier reach global instruction applicability. On the contrary, this comes with a number of setbacks for customers as the furniture assembly guidelines become less helpful and explanatory. 

The question is then, what could IKEA do? To start out with, IKEA could perhaps provide a better assembly experience by simply digitalising the experience, while remaining truthful to their instruction manual ideology. This would allow them to provide a more immersive experience, updates, track assembly issues, and additionally cut costs on print and paper. A concept to such an IKEA assembly experience is presented below.

![ikea concept](//images.ctfassets.net/scrf7o05zai3/6gAUkCWOX6VUduJ9zlFS4q/5398c5b88205c7df78f1c2811c4f33ec/ikea_concept.gif?w=1200&q=80)

At Layerise, we are working hard on providing solutions that improve any assembly or product use. In fact, deep in our core, we believe that a standard instruction manual should be a product assistant; always present, always ready to help and provide a great experience. 

*The concept is provided in cooperation with [Calin Doditoiu](https://dribbble.com/calindoditoiu).*


What could IKEA do? 

The last decade alone has provided a tremendous technological enhancement of consumer goods. Everything and anything is being reshaped by the strong technological force, providing even greater overall value to consumers. However, there is a catch. Modern day consumers are required to understand and remember how to operate and engage with tens or hundreds of different products during their daily routines. A task -  too big and too cognitively heavy for a trouble-free product experience. 

Moreover, products have never been more complex then they are today. A decade or two back, product lines regardless of the B2B or B2C nature aimed to do one thing. One thing only with few bells and whistles. In contrary, products that are marketed today are SMART, IOT powered, driven by sensors and can provide a lot of added value benefits. It is at this conjunction of strong growth in beneficiary product offering and consumers' lack of cognitive free capital that the product experience and customer success declines rapidly. 

In parallel with the above, marketers, product managers, service leaders and technical content writers are to this day focusing on providing customers with printed instructions, hard copy owners manuals, physical brochure or quick start one how-to pager to minimise the broadening knowledge gap between product abilities and customer knowledge. Based on our research, which we have documented throughout 2018 in a 3 piece article, it is clear that providing customer product experiences through a one-time medium as a printed product instruction manual is a loss giving knowledge transfer.     

As evident in the graph below, an illustration of the phenomenon that we call customer knowledge gap is provided. In detail, the graph demonstrates how the returning value of printed product manuals over time is decaying while the product complexity is rapidly growing. In the widening gap between these trends customers are left stranded and without the right tools to maximise the satisfaction value of their purchase. 

![kn 2019 art](//images.ctfassets.net/scrf7o05zai3/5MxSabAFhPAsMnJ3TuhSAb/a52288c5fdc3022d818973c8b453ba51/kn_2019_art.jpg?w=1200&q=80)

Our final remark to this matter is that brands and all domains within the organisation who seek to establish a bullet-proof customer product experience, from the stages of onboarding and all the way throughout the product/customer lifespan, need to pivot into long-term product education activities rather than focusing on information off-loading. It is by focusing on being present and always at hand available for customers, that the seeds for product satisfaction can be established. Now, how this can be done is something we look forward to sharing with you in a couple of months.

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