5 signs your customers call about something they could have looked up themselves

As a service provider you know it: the phone rings, and it is someone asking when the appointment was again, or who needs last month's invoice one more time. Small in itself, but added up it costs hours every week. Five signs that this work can be taken over:

You regularly get the same question back, such as when an appointment is or what the status of a request is. You often send the same invoice or document again because a customer lost it. Customers do not know where they stand in a longer process, and therefore ask for an update in between. You retype customer details from one place to another, for example from an email into the bookkeeping. New customers ask about things that existing customers could have seen long ago if they had been able to log in somewhere.

None of these signs is a problem on its own. Only when together they add up to a few hours of answering questions that do not really need a personal answer is it worth looking at a place of their own where customers can view their details, invoices or appointments themselves. Not as a replacement for personal contact, but as a way to keep that contact for the questions that do deserve it.