Donna
Siegel

Use Your Web Site To Deliver Excellent Customer Service

Personalized service is important. It can also be quite expensive, which is why many companies are trying to reduce the size of their customer service staff. You may find it practical to keep that staff small, without a loss of service quality, if you Use Your Web Site To Deliver Excellent Customer Service.

While Web sites are most often thought of as tools for the sales and marketing departments, they are also major assets for the customer service department. Here are some ways customer service departments can take advantage of the Web to serve their customers faster and more completely.

Why Customers Turn To Web Sites

The Web offers customers self-service for a number of activities. Want to find out how many hours of Internet service you've used this month? Check your account on the Web site. Want to find out if that book you ordered has shipped? Find out its status on the Web. Have a question about the procedures for recharging your laptop's battery? Look at maintenance tips on the Web site. Want to move money from your savings account to your checking account? Use the Internet banking service.

These and other questions customers ask about a company's products and services are easily handled by effectively designed Web sites. Customers go to Web sites for the status of orders and the answers to specific questions because they know the information will be available easily and quickly. And more importantly, customers feel they are in control of their own process -- they don't have to answer questions customer service reps might ask, and they don't need to have others see or hear what they are doing.

Design Features Of A Web Site To Help Customers

If your company is going to make its Web site an effective tool for customer service, you need to provide customers with the following:

• Easy navigation through the information
• Answers to most frequently asked questions
• Access to customer service reps
• Internet-proficient customer service reps
• Information about the company's Web site

Easy Navigation Through The Information

If customers are looking to find answers to their questions, then it's the job of the Web site designer to make sure that customers can find the information quickly and easily. The Web site must be designed to follow the logic that the typical customer might use in seeking information.

For most sites, that means following an application rather than a product orientation. How are customers most likely to look for the information? What are the foremost questions on their minds? How should information be assembled?

Customers are looking for the answers to the questions, "How do I do . . . " or "What is the status of . . . . " They don't look for information by product number or issue number, or any of the other ways that people very familiar with the product line are apt to use. Before designing the Web site, think about the questions customers are most likely to have and then let that dictate the flow of the information.

Answers To Most Frequently Asked Questions

For every company, there are questions that come up again and again from customers who are using their products and services for the first time, or even from experienced users. Customer service departments often have lists of these questions which have been gathered from previous interactions with customers. Sometimes, these questions and answers find their way into user manuals and product literature.

Whenever possible, the answers to these questions should be placed prominently on the Web site. That way, customers can look for the answers they need right now, find the information and begin using that information immediately.

The list of questions and answers needs to be updated frequently. As products and services evolve (and customers become more skilled), some questions and answers are no longer needed, while others must be added. It wasn't very long ago that user manuals for computer products contained definitions of such features as function keys, menus, dialog boxes, etc. Today, those terms are easily understood and can be eliminated from a list of questions and answers to serve users of these products.

If customer service reps find that customers are calling and asking the same question frequently, the question and the answer should be added to the information on the Web site. It's often useful to build a form or other system for capturing this information so it can be passed to the Web designer for updating the site.

Access To Customer Service Reps

Sometimes, customers have questions on their minds that cannot be anticipated. That means the answers they are searching for cannot be put out on the Web site. For such questions, it's important that the customers have easy access to customer service reps.

The Web site should prominently display information about how customers can reach reps for the answers to these questions. In most cases, the customer should be able to make the choice between e-mail and phone contact. Some customers will prefer to use e-mail, especially when they can describe their question in detail and they don't mind waiting for a response. Other customers need the interaction with a customer service rep because they can't articulate the exact nature of their question or they are reluctant to wait.

Internet-Proficient Customer Service Reps

Customer service reps need to know the types of information on the Web site that can be helpful to customers, the structure of the site and how to navigate through the site to find the right information. While customers may need to talk with reps when they cannot find their own answers, it is useful for the reps to integrate appropriate Web information into these conversations. That way, if the customers need to check this information again, they can go directly to the Web site on their own.

Service reps should walk customers through this information by first finding out if the customers have access to the Web, and then by offering customers, "Let's look at that together." Using Web information should become part of the typical approach reps use to help customers.

Information About The Company's Web Site

To help customers use the Web site to get answers to their questions, you have to make sure that customers know that the Web site exists and, more importantly, the types of information to be found there. Include announcements of this information on all documents that go to customers including product/service announcements, customer event announcements, invoices and statements, product documentation, registration forms and everything else that they are likely to see.

SeaBird Associates Inc
3011 NE 7th Drive
Boca Raton, FL 33431
Phone: 561-750-9233
E-mail: Donna Siegel

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