Customer Service Online

Web Hosting Provider Offers Tips on Good Customer Service

A smile, a handshake, reading and using body language...you don't have any of that online. Neither can tailor your presentations based on customers' responses. So how do you provide good online customer service?

What is customer service? Web hosting provider explains...

Search engine optimization is about bringing people to your website. Good website content and usability helps keep them there. And as with bricks-and-mortar stores, good customer service helps make sales and bring customers back.

Customer service is contact between customers and a company that leaves them with an impression of the company. Both offline and online, it's making a human connection with the people we serve. Good customer service leaves a good impression, and it starts with the attitude that our job is to meet customers' needs - web hosting provider explains.

Some key elements of good customer service:

• A thorough understanding of your company's products and services and of your customers' needs
• Prompt service
• Good listening skills
• Good communication skills
• Courtesy and respect
• Ability to stay calm and defuse anger
• Ability to develop a rapport with other people
• Commitment to providing quality service with each customer interaction

All of the above elements can be used in online as well as offline customer service.

Advantages and disadvantages with online customer service

A customer is looking through a catalog and wants more information about a product. The company has a store in town, and it has a website. The customer could go to either and get the same information and product, and each one will have advantages and disadvantages.

As online customer service representatives, our understanding of those advantages and disadvantages can help us understand our customers' needs and provide them with better service.

Advantages with online customer service

• Additional tools are available: informational web pages, online ordering, online chat.
• Customers can visit your online store and place an order at any time.
• Email can be more efficient than phone conversations.
• The cost of providing customer service is lower.
• When customers are satisfied, it can be easier to retain them because online shopping is easier than shopping in person.

Disadvantages with online customer service

• Customer service staff needs to know how to use online tools and be very familiar with the company website.
• While the cost of providing customer service is lower, setting up a storefront website is an initial investment.
• Many customers expect instant answers online.
• Without visual or auditory cues, understanding customers' concerns can be more challenging.
• Offering personalized service is more difficult when you don't meet the customers in person and often communicate with them only by email.

The methods of providing customer service online may be different, but the goal is the same — to make customers happy.

How to offer quality customer service via your website

Your website is where your customer service starts.

Customer service and web design and function

• Check your site regularly to ensure that everything is functioning optimally. Do pages and images download fast? Do all the links work? Does the shopping cart take customers through the ordering process without any problems? Are databases displaying the right information?
• Use clear navigation, especially between product descriptions, related information, and ordering.
• Make sure that your site search is helping users find what they're searching for. Check your search logs and map alternate search terms and misspellings used so that they return the intended results.
• Offer cross-purchasing suggestions.
• Make contact information easy to find from every page, including the hours for your phone and online chat support.

Customer service and website content

• Provide detailed information about your products and services. If you don't have the information that site visitors are looking for, they may move onto the next site instead of asking a salesperson for help.
• Record questions that customers ask and add the answers to relevant pages. Save the FAQ page for topics that don't have their own pages, and organize and update it regularly.
• Include a privacy statement indicating that you will not share any customer data with third parties.
• List memberships with any professional associations you belong to.
• Display buying incentives such as discounts and free shipping prominently

Customer service through online interaction

As an online customer service provider, you have several ways to be in contact with your customers.

Online chat

Chat programs allow salespeople to help more than one person at a time, and the salespeople can be working from various locations.

Online chat can help save sales when customers have questions or difficulties. Some chat programs can be configured to launch chat invitations at various points in the shopping process, such as if the customer gets an error message. With someone to talk to at the right moment, that customer may stay, ask questions, and make a purchase instead of exiting.

Automated email

Email confirmations provide assurance that an order has been placed or shipped, and they can also provide customers with useful information.

In order confirmations, you can include the estimated time until shipping, your contact information, and other details. You can also thank them for their order and invite them to sign up for your mailing list.

When orders are shipped, emailing customers tracking information is useful for them and can save you from having to trace orders yourself. As an added touch, you could include information on special offers or a coupon code for their next order. You may want to invite them to participate in a survey or questionnaire about your products and services, with a bonus of some sort for those who take part. The feedback you get from surveys and questionnaires can help you improve your product line and your service.

Personal email responses

When responding to customer emails, be courteous, helpful, and prompt. A collection of boilerplate messages can be useful as long as each email is still personalized for each customer. For example, include the customer's name and the product or service ordered in the email body.

When customers contact you about problems with orders, continue to be helpful. Turn the problem into an opportunity to give customers reasons to do business with you again.

Related blog articles

• Customer Service and Satisfaction
• How to Research Customer Satisfaction
• How to Keep Buyers from Going to the Store
• Customer Retention: How to Keep Customers
• How Important Is Website Usability?
• Test Your Website's Usability
• Use Site Search Results

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How to Research Customer Service Satisfaction

You get the occasional email praising or complaining about your service. Perhaps some customers leave feedback at your site. But do you really know how satisfied the majority of your customers are with your service?

If your sales are steady or increasing, those sales numbers are an indication of some degree of customer satisfaction. If a large percentage of those customers are repeat customers, that's even better. They like your products or services, and they may have developed a loyalty to your brand. But look also at the number of customers who bought from you once and never returned. Some of them probably needed your products or services only once, but others may be shopping elsewhere now.

It costs far more to acquire new customers than it does to retain existing ones. It's worth our time and money to find out what works and doesn't work to retain the customers we already have.

The usefulness of research into customer service satisfaction depends on these factors:

• The percentage of your customers who are part of the research
• The types of questions you ask your customers
• The ability to measure and use research results

What you can find out about customer satisfaction online

Many people write their opinions about companies, products, and services online. With Google Alerts, you can create alerts to be sent for you for the search terms you specify. You can set alerts for the Web, news, blogs, groups, or comprehensive (all of the above). Enter your company and product names, and you'll be notified whenever someone is talking about them online.

An advantage of doing this is that you may find out what a variety of people think. That is, if people are talking about your company. A disadvantage is that that variety, if it exists, is a small sampling of customers. Only one percent of people who visit online communities post regularly. And while the Web has (as of July 2006) over 50 million blogs, fewer than one percent of bloggers post daily. In addition, people who are unhappy about something are more likely to voice (or publish) their opinions than people who are happy, and the results aren't easily measurable.

What you can learn from talking to people

If your business is a bricks-and-mortar business as well as an online business, you have the opportunity to talk to customers in person. If you offer customer service by phone, you have another way to talk to customers. While you're processing orders or discussing products or services, take the time to ask your customers what they think about your products, pricing, speed of delivery, any problems, or whatever you want to find out.

One-on-one conversations let you provide a personal touch for your customers. Also, the responses you get may have more information than set survey response choices do. On the other hand, each conversation is different. As with researching online commentary, the results aren't easy to measure.

How to use customer satisfaction surveys

Customer satisfaction surveys allow you to choose the questions and possible answers and to ask all participants the same questions. You can easily measure and interpret the results. But for the survey to be useful, you need to have useful questions, of course.

Figure out what you really need to know, and focus on that. Keep the questions simple.

According to research, the most important question to ask customers isn't about their opinions but about their behavior: would they recommend the company to a friend? The answer to this question answers a number of questions at once. Customers will recommend a company only if they are satisfied with it enough to put their own reputations on the line.

Beyond that question, choose survey questions that assess not just whether you're as good as the competition, but ways that you're trying to stand out from them. How do your customers perceive your brand? Do they plan to buy from you again? Why or why not? Whatever your specific aims are, find out if your customers think that you've reached your aims.

While a space for optional comments is useful, most questions should be multiple-choice questions, such as ratings on a scale of one to five or choices from a list. You'll be able to measure these results and see how each response compares to other people's responses. If you use the questions again in a future survey, you'll be able to compare results.

How to maximize survey response rates

A long survey means that fewer people will complete it. How many questions do you really need to ask?

If your survey will take customers more than a minute or so to complete, consider breaking the questions into different surveys and having the different surveys rotate. That way, each customer will have only a few questions, and you'll get responses to all the questions but from different people.

Offer an incentive for customers to complete your survey, such as entry into a prize draw. It's human nature to be more willing to give when you get something in return.

Do a survey yourself or go professional

If you can set up an online survey or know someone who can, you can create a customer service satisfaction survey yourself. Alternatively, you could hire professionals to create and manage the survey for you. An online search for search terms such as "customer satisfaction research" and "customer satisfaction survey" produces links to companies that handle customer satisfaction surveys.

Related blog articles

To learn more about meeting the needs of customers, see these blog entries:

• How Behavioral Targeting Can Work for You
• How Important is Website Usability?
• Test Your Website's Usability