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How to improve customer
service online?
Just because you do not talk to your customers, it does
not mean that they are not real
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It is no secret that of all the things that most companies do,
customer service is
among the worst. It sounds very
counter-intuitive but study after study shows that
companies ignore the very folks that are
responsible for their existence. I have written about it in the past,
(Related article: Outsourcing
customer service is a stupid idea) but nothing seems to change. So I thought that since
online business is rapidly growing for small and medium sized businesses (and the profit margins on such business are typically higher), chances are that companies will focus their resources there. I was so wrong. In fact, while
e-business is growing for most
companies, their online customer service is even worse than what it is over the phone.
(Related article: How
to improve customer service?)
In the first eService benchmark study focused exclusively on
small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), BenchmarkPortal, a provider of
CRM best practices for contact centers, found that online customer service provided by SMBs is even worse than the service level offered by large enterprises. Actually a stunning 51% of businesses failed to even respond to emails with high-value purchase intent. You start to wonder what the executives at these companies think.
 The goal of the study was to assess the state of online customer service in SMBs with annual revenues between $10M and $250M. Conducted in early 2005, the study evaluated 147 SMBs spanning five sectors: retail, travel and hospitality, financial services, e-business, and hi-tech manufacturing. Posing as customers, researchers made targeted email inquiries that demonstrated a clear intent to buy a high-value product or service. Both the timeliness and the quality of the responses were measured.
(Related article: Call
center outsourcing best practices)
The study found that many North American businesses are missing out on revenue opportunities due to poor or non-existent email customer service. Among key cross-industry findings are:
- A shocking 51% of the companies did not respond at all.
- 70% of the companies failed to respond within 24 hours.
- 79% of the companies responded with an inaccurate and/or incomplete answer.
- Surprisingly, the financial services and retail companies were the least responsive, with 72% and 60% respectively not sending any response at all. Financial services
firms 89% of the time provided an inaccurate and/or incomplete answer.
- High-tech was the second worst sector with 86% of the companies providing an inaccurate and/or incomplete answer.
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What does it mean for you?
- Remember that online, your competitor is only one click away. As
customers increasingly shop
online, they also expect not to be put on hold over the phone or talk to a representative who either does not understand them very well or is reading from a standard script. Thus, excellent email and live chat are key to success in e-business.
(Related article: Tips
on improving customer service)
- Telephone support is actually far more expensive, and you should instead push your customers to use email support, but you have to be excellent at it. The company that hosts
iProceed
website, HostforWeb, does exactly that. I can rarely get anyone on the phone, but they have excellent email and live chat support. So I just shoot an email when we have hosting problems and while they work on the problem, I can do something more productive than being on hold.
- A negative impression can do permanent damage to your online business. Not only will these potential customers never come back, they may also
write about it on their personal blog and keep other customers from
doing business with you.
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Questions,
comments, feedback, and suggestions
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