Thus, visitors have much more freedom of choice online. Jim says the challenge for the customer service is therefore very clearly to focus on one customer, one purchase at a time. E-customers expect great service, a direct interaction with little or none. Some errors are tolerated, but not many. Jim offers five rules for effective online customer service: 1. Be accessible.
They show very clearly in place all the ways your customers can contact you – including e-mail, telephone and fax numbers, and office hours. And, if practical for your business, be personal – give your visitors a real person to call that has a name, unlike, of course, if you’re really fancy, you can include a “Call-me” in his site. 2. Return every e-mail or phone call on the same day, as far as possible. This may seem simplistic, but a recent experiment with the top Fortune 100 companies showed that almost one third did not respond to emails sent through their web site within one month! Some of these companies still do not offer a useful email address on their sites at all. 3.
Acknowledge all orders. Send e-mail confirmations (this can be done very effectively with autoresponders), and if I send the actual products, tracking numbers and the expected dates of delivery. 4. Provide a clear return policy, honor and learn from it. This may give more information about what works and what does not. Jim products are sometimes returned with no explanation, so his staff always call the client to establish and solve the problem. 5. Expect more phone calls. Jim says: “Customers can not read or write!” If Web site traffic and response rates grow (which is, of course, what we want), so is the volume of phone calls, whatever their business or industry. Regardless of the quality of the site becomes clear and privacy policies, secure servers, etc, people still require human interaction. All my clients report talking to customers over the phone, and walking through the website, where questions are clearly answered. Maybe these psychological barriers will fall, but now are a lot there. If you can get the customer service aspects of their business works well, there will be a definite impact on results. Jim is very clear that his business has grown substantially through repeat business and referrals from satisfied customers. In contrast, we can see the impact of poor customer service and compliance procedures in many of the edot.com failed. Jim says that people buy things online in the hope of getting something more valuable than the actual money they spend. Does your website do this?