CRM Tips For Christmas From RightNow

Here's an early Christmas present for British retailers from your friends in Bozeman, Montana, RightNow Technologies, some free advice on how to provide the right sort of customer service during the Christmas holiday season:

Recent studies suggest that internet sales in Britain will top £7 billion, compared with £5.5 billion last year. And since online is generally considered the least stressful way of completing the Christmas shopping, let's keep it that way:

First, provide self-service. Customers need to get knowledge when they want it -- even on Christmas Day. Make sure your site is easy to navigate and your Frequently Asked Questions section isn’t just a static portal of data.

Secondly, watch your in-stock notices. Ensure that your site is clearly marked with the availability of products and information such as how long delivery will be. This will help to reduce stress levels when a product customers were expecting doesn’t arrive.

Thirdly, spruce up your order process. Does your site enable customers to see where they are in the order process? Are they able to get help at every step of the purchasing process? You need to ensure that the order process is transparent so customers know how many steps they have left, enabling them to gauge how long the process is going to take.

Watch the context-sensitive help. Does your site support your customer to enable them to go from ‘browse to purchase’? By providing context sensitive help; knowledge relevant to each page, you will ensure that the online experience is positive for your customer and abandonment rates are lowered.

And finally, let's talk about live chat. Does your site enable your customer to have direct contact with your contact center via an instant messenger capability that remembers your last live chat conversation? This will enable your customer to raise any incidents that can be immediately resolved via an online agent that knows the customer’s interaction history.

Recently Nikon Europe has extended its relationship with RightNow Technologies and deployed RightNow Marketing as its out-bound customer communication system, according to RightNow officials.

The new deployment gives the camera manufacturer "increased capabilities and capacity for all types of communications including information about latest offers and promotions, training and seminars, and newsletters," RightNow officials say.

Individual countries will be responsible for driving local marketing campaigns and will be able to segment the registered user base as they please. In France a promotion for Nikon's new D80 camera is already underway.

Nikon Germany and Austria are using RightNow to run a sales promotion to target eligible customers with either a six month 'all risk' insurance policy or a cash back incentive.

Deployment of the system is still in its early stages; however projections suggest that the original specification of 2 million e-mails per year may fall short of actual usage, with Nikon Germany already anticipating that it will send 1.5 million emails to customers in 2007.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims' columnist page.

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