lthough a Web site can never take the place of great in-store or over-the-phone customer service, it can be a highly effective way to supplement the service you’re already offering. The Internet allows business owners to easily communicate with potential customers as well as assist existing ones.
But it isn’t enough to simply establish a Internet presence. Like any other part of your business, a Web site is only as good as the service backing it, and the planning that goes into it.
“It’s important to know how you’re going to use the Internet to help your business, rather than just throwing up a Web site for the sake of getting something out there,” says Alex Kahl, president of Kahl Consultants, a Web design and Internet service firm in San Rafael, Calif. “When you build a site, you’re opening a virtual door to your office or store, and you have to maintain control over this and be able to respond. You wouldn’t let a customer walk around your business unattended. The same is true for your Web site.”
Kahl’s contention touches on two key components to using the Internet as a customer-service tool: customer service and responsiveness. You have to make your Web site inviting and easy to navigate, and you need to react, in a timely fashion, to customer questions and complaints.
Customers first
When it comes to design, your best bet is to keep it simple — and keep the customer in mind.
“When we first put our site up, in addition to the marketing aspects, we did think about customer service,” says Noel Spilbor, service and retail manager at Atkinson Pools & Spas, a builder/retailer based in Mt. Pleasant, S.C., with two stores, (at that main location and on James Island).
“We wanted to give customers another way to get in touch with us,” Spilbor says. “We also wanted to provide a lot of information on the site, the same as what they could get in the store. This makes it very convenient for people. They’re not locked into our store hours.”
But simplicity was important to Spilbor, too: “There’s nothing more annoying than going to a site and finding hundreds of things you have to click on, or having the site take forever to load.”
This is one reason the company is still debating whether to include a repair request form. Currently, users can click a button to obtain brochures or service quotes, but an initial goal was to have a form that would collect detailed information about repairs or problems in an almost interactive manner.
“We’re just not sure such a complicated form is necessary, even though it was a big part of our original plan,” says Spilbor. “The goal of enhancing customer service would be defeated if the site was difficult to use.”
This is also the reason behind builder/retailer John Anderson’s decision to communicate with customers about repairs via e-mail rather than through a form posted on the site.
“We had a repair form on our first site, but it didn’t work for us,” says Anderson, owner of Anderson Pools & Spas Inc., in Murfreesboro, Tenn. “My experience with forms on the Internet is that they give you more information than you need. Instead, our customers e-mail us with questions, sometimes including a phone number asking us to call them about a problem. This has proven to be a much better method.”
In general, it’s best to keep forms, scripts and graphics to a minimum, says Kahl.
“People get excited about all the technology that’s available” he says. “They want flash this, and frames that, but you have to always keep the users of your site in mind, and use the technology that’s most appropriate for them.
“You have to concentrate on creating a site that people will want to visit again and again. One way to do this is to keep the wait-time to load down. People are sometimes willing to wait 30 seconds or even a minute for a site to load,” Kahl says, “but when it crashes because the site is overloaded, they tend not to revisit.”
Customer-friendly features
One way to make sure they come back is to build in a lot of customer-friendly features or tools.
One such feature is a Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) section, says Darlene Cary, co-owner of Mind’s Eye Presentations, a Web design company also located in Murfreesboro, Tenn. Cary, who designed Anderson’s site, says it is the most-accessed page on his site.
“It’s by far the most popular,” agrees Anderson. “What we try to do with this section is give people an education and make them wiser buyers, no matter where they decide to do business. I think this gives us a great deal of credibility.”
Another good move, says Cary, has been to create a link from Anderson’s site directly to that of the Better Business Bureau. Visitors can click on this link and be immediately connected to the BBB, where they can obtain a report on the company. This feature, she explains, is open to all BBB members in good standing. It allows prospective customers to confirm that a company is reputable, which makes people much more comfortable.
Other design features you may want to consider:
• Have full contact information and clickable e-mail located on every page. “People should be able to go to any page and find contact information,” Kahl says.
• At the top of each page, Cary suggests putting your most-favored form of contact (Do you want phone calls, or do you prefer e-mail or faxes?) — and display your most valuable information “above the fold.” This is the area that is immediately seen without having to scroll down the page.
Be sure to test and retest your site under the conditions of the average user, recommends Kahl. Find any bugs before you start promoting your site.
Also, keep track of site statistics, says Cary. This will allow you to determine which pages customers are visiting the most, and what may need beefing up.
Responsiveness
Once your site is up and running, be sure you have the capacity to respond to questions and requests arriving by any means, be it phone, fax or e-mail. You should designate this responsibility to a specific person on your staff rather than approaching it on a “whomever, whenever” basis.
A good design can cut down on the amount of e-mail flowing into your computer, notes Kahl. If it’s hard to find information on a site, the tendency is to just dash off an e-mail — the high-tech equivalent of calling 411 instead of looking the number up in a book.
But even an efficient Web site will bring you more e-mail simply because more people have access to you. Not all of these will come from current, or even potential, customers. For example, Anderson gets a lot of e-mail from people in other states with questions about their pools or asking how to find builders in their areas.
“This is the only downside I’ve seen when it comes to using the Internet for customer service,” he says. “You’ve got to answer the e-mail, and sometimes this is at 10:00 at night.”
This task can be made easier, says Kahl, by creating a variety of standard responses that can be personalized as necessary. He also offers these suggestions:
• Use an automatic reply, such as “Thank you for your e-mail. We will get back to you in X days.” This lets people know immediately that you’ve received their question or comment. At the same time, it gives you more control over your response schedule. Kahl advises including an emergency number in the automatic reply in case people need immediate attention.
• List several e-mail addresses on the site to allow visitors to route requests themselves, such as to service, sales or technical support.
• Keep replies as brief as possible. Not every e-mail requires a long, involved answer.
• Know when a phone call would be best. There are certain levels of support where e-mail simply won’t suffice.
Despite the occasional late-night correspondence, Anderson says his site is a timesaver. “Let’s say a prospective pool customer calls us and we end up making an appointment to come out to see him. In the meantime, he can visit our site, see what we’re about and get some questions answered. By the time we get out to his house, he’s better-educated and has a higher level of trust in us.
“This makes my job a lot easier. It’s almost like a presales call,” Anderson says. “It’s been a great customer service tool.”
2003 Internet & Technology Report