Call Center Management Featured Article
Getting Online Customer Service Right
While there are lots of best practices when it comes to attaining excellence in telephone-based customer service, the file is a little bare when it comes to online customer service. For starters, it’s more complex than phone service, and there is a far larger combination of factors that could affect operations and the quality of customer service.
But it’s critical to get right. Customer expectations are rising with no end in sight, and too many companies continue to hope that putting up a static Web site with an FAQ list and a generic contact e-mail (messages to which may or may not be answered) will cut it. It won’t.
According to a recent white paper from virtual agent and knowledge base management solutions provider IntelliResponse, most companies understand they need to improve online customer service. The problem is, they have little idea how to go about it, and often approach making changes with the same stale, old-school thinking that failed to inspire customers in the first place.
IntelliResponse offers a “recipe” of sorts for a plan to improve online customer service: for starters, it’s important to make the customer service experience enjoyable. Next, it’s critical to make the process easy. Finally, it’s important to meet customer needs. With these goals in place, the next step is to follow a “checklist” the company has put together.
Make it accessible. If customers have to hunt to find your online customer service tools, they’re going to log off and go elsewhere…guaranteed. Don’t bury communications tools such as click-to-chat buttons where customers can’t find them in the vague hope customers won’t use them. Customers probably won’t use them, but not for the reasons you imagined. It’s simply that they will no longer be customers. Put a tool such as a virtual agent interaction box right at the top of the page where customers can see it right away.
Make it effective. Displaying it prominently is a good first step, but equally as important is ensuring that it works well and can find customers the answers they require. Extensive testing and monitoring, plus customer feedback, helps ensure that you’ve accomplished this test. If a customer is searching for an item of clothing, for example, with a pattern of “ships” on it, don’t send the customer to the “shipping” information page.
Make escalation prominent. If a customer can’t find the information he or she needs, that customer will seek a way to call or chat with a company. While this shouldn’t be an excuse to offer sub-par online self-service, it shouldn’t be hidden, either. Most customers truly want to find their answers themselves, so forcing them to pick up the phone won’t endear your company to them.
Collect feedback. There is nothing more critical than putting an ongoing process in place to collect customer feedback so you can continually strive to improve your processes. This way, you’ll know for certain if you’re getting it right.
Experience today shows us that it’s not enough to make attempts with online customer service. Companies that hope to stay in business need to get it right…it’s too easy for customers to visit, reject your offerings as sub-standard, and rush to a competitor.
Edited by Ashley Caputo