Why Business VoIP Matters in the Customer Experience

Building a website is an important step in the marketing strategy for any business. It provides a self-service portal into information about the company, its products and/or services, its placement in the market and the value it can offer to the current or potential customer. But how many sites actually do all of these things using a customer-centric approach?

The website designed to impress instead of inform may actually produce the opposite results of what the company originally intended. This is not to suggest that the website shouldn’t impress; it just needs to impress with a purpose. For instance, impressive graphics and technology enhancements are great – as long as the consumer can still find the information they need. If they get frustrated, they’re going to move on to the competition.

Business VoIP provider, Nextiva, recently covered this topic in a blog, highlighting the importance of building a site for the consumer experience. To measure whether or not the site is serving the needs of the customer base, it’s important to ask four questions: 1) Can the customer quickly find the best way to contact you? 2) Can customers easily find the information they need? 3) Are there a range of communication options offered? 4) Does the site load quickly?

Contact Information

At a very minimum, it’s important to put some sort of “Contact Us” link or tab at the top of the page where it is clearly seen by any viewer. Depending upon the business or market, it may even be necessary to include the actual phone number of e-mail on the home page. A click-to-call feature is also a viable consideration if the majority of customers will be on mobile devices.

Finding Information

Customers come to a website for a reason. If they can’t find the information they need within the first few seconds of their arrival, they may just click on through to the competition. Identify the information potential customers’ most likely want to find on your site and make that information easily accessible – visible as soon as they land on the page.

Communication Options

Don’t assume that one channel for communications is all that is needed to keep customers connected. Some may prefer to pick up the phone, while others only use e-mail to make connections. Still others may prefer chat. Providing access to preferred methods of communication is critical to keep customers happy.

Site Loading Time

The consumer is trained to want it now and likely has little patience for a slow site to load. Sites need to load immediately to keep customer interest and promote the value of the brand. A site that takes a while may give the impression that the latest technology was not used in deployment and therefore the brand may be a little behind the times.

So what does website design have to do with business VoIP? Both are deployed as an effort to engage the customer through a cost efficient method. A recent CTI Technology blog reinforced this concept, highlighting that the customer experience relates to the overall association a consumer has with the company’s brand. Understanding how to truly maximize the customer experience to ensure optimal performance, however, is a challenge for any business.

The adoption of certain initiatives can certainly help, including business VoIP phones. This type of access provides employees with the ability to view the customer’s entire history with the company, empowering call centers and customer service representatives to appear more helpful and authoritative. Such a presence in the market can build the value of the brand according to customer perception. The key then is to maintain that perception for long-term success.