Give Them Online service with a Smile
The internet has increased competition. But it also offers new ways to deliver customer service. Here’s how to use the web to help your customers help themselves.
Your goal is to make sure customers can get the information they want quickly and easily without having to pick up the phone and speak to someone. Your customers will be much happier getting answers to their questions any time of the day or night. Your business will be able to keep its service costs in check by reducing the time and money it spends answering telephone queries or printing and mailing information brochures.
Here are six ways you can help your customers help themselves.
FAQs
Frequently asked questions (FAQs) have become an online self-help must-have. To be as valuable as possible, FAQs need to address the questions your business most often receives from customers. These might include product attributes, contact information, or ordering options. It's fine to underscore a benefit of one of your products or services in FAQ copy, but keep in mind that these questions and answers should be primarily a source of objective, reliable information for visitors.
Information and Updates
What kinds of service materials do you have that you can post to your website? Assembly instructions, product manuals, standard forms, how-to articles and the like can all be made available to your customers online. They can be posted as .PDF file downloads. Similarly, if your product can be delivered electronically, consider using the web as your distribution vehicle. Software companies have done this for years. Instead of mailing out updates and patches to their thousands of customers, they simply post them on the web and encourage users to visit their sites regularly to download.
Policies
Clearly spell out your company's policies regarding issues affecting your products or services. For example, if you sell products, make it easy for customers to locate your shipping and return policies. Do you offer a money-back guarantee? Explain how customers can take advantage of it.
Order Tracking
You can reduce the number of calls you have to deal with by allowing buyers to track the progress of orders online. This kind of self-service means your call centre is left to handle only critical calls, such as those where shipping errors have occurred.
Order Histories
Your frequent customers will appreciate the opportunity to access the details of orders they've previously placed with you. This will help them quickly identify products they regularly order, rather than searching through your catalogue for them. You can also enable fast reordering by allowing customers to place items from previous orders into new shopping carts.
Contact Information
Encourage self-service, but make it easy for customers to get in touch with you when things go wrong. Because even the best websites in the world go wrong occasionally. Conspicuously post email addresses to reach your customer service department, and also provide phone contact information. Make your customers feel special by anticipating their needs and giving them an easy-to-locate outlet to get those needs met.
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