The customer rules in a fiercely competitive e-market where fickle consumers can browse, shop around and leave your online store in seconds. And that's precisely why building online customer service and loyalty is crucial to your online success.
Ultimately, you want your customer to have an uncomplicated, engaging and satisfying experience on your site. This includes aspects that are also true for a brick-and-mortar store such as selling high-quality and reliable products, providing a simple checkout process, delivering your products on time, and answering email messages promptly.
Start by ensuring that your website allows for easy self-service, whether it's shopping or simply getting information on your company. You'll be freeing up the time of your service people to focus on other aspects of your business.
Build security, privacy and trust
Your clients also need to feel that your site is trustworthy.
- Provide background information that lends credibility to your business.
- State how you protect your client's credit card transactions:
- Provide a clear privacy policy; state how client information is used and who has access.
- Make sure your retail policies on issues such as privacy, shipping and returns are easy to find.
- Offer customers different means of shipment (normal and express) and make sure you clearly indicate the costs before they make the decision to buy.
- Provide online order confirmation that includes detailed information; this reassures your client that they're order is being processed and avoids additional inquiries.
- Create a section for first-time users and include specific information on ordering, shipping and delivery procedures; you want to win their confidence and reassure them that they are dealing with a trusted company that understands their needs.
Establish effective communication
- Give your customers alternative contact information, such as your telephone, fax and physical address; make it highly visible on your site.
- Provide a feedback option so that customers can give you valuable input on your products and services.
Provide prompt customer service
- Respond to emails in less than 2 business days and provide an instant automatic response stating the 2 business day promise.
- Make sure that there is a good liaison between your site and your warehouse; delivering on-time is critical to repeat business.
Provide self-serve features
- Some storefront packages or logistics providers offer automated order tracking for your website so that customers can follow their delivery online.
- Include a well organized Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section which covers a diversity of issues such as pricing and legal issues.
- If your target markets are multilingual, provide several languages on your site.
- If you provide service manuals; make them downloadable.
Data mining gives you customer insight
It is important to keep track of the data that is automatically gathered by your web server; your supplier can probably provide you with reports. This data can be used to understand how your customers use your site. You can then use this understanding to improve your site even further.
Here are a few aspects to look out for in order to improve online customer service:
- From which pages do customers usually leave? Are they filling their shopping carts and then abandoning them at a certain point? Are they stopping at the point of checkout? These trends will indicate which pages need improvement.
- Are there pages where customers make use of the 'back' button? This may indicate poor design which lead them to the wrong place.
- Identify which products/services sell so that you can be proactive in offering promotions on items that are not doing as well.
Customer Relationship Management: apply the basic practices
A term often used in e-business is customer relationship management or CRM. CRM basically uses technology to manage relationships. For example, some companies use it to create personalized call centres where technology recognizes in-coming phone numbers and automatically calls up customer information for the representative taking the call. A CRM system could also allow travelling sales and repair personnel to use mobile wireless transfers to punch up information about customers.
If CRM technology is not within your budget, then you can at least apply the basic practices. For example, in most businesses, entrepreneurs contact and deal with customers through a variety of different means including e-mail, faxes, phone calls and letters. Putting this information together can help you improve customer service:
- Keep track of how you're dealing with your customers (who said what to whom and when) with a simple spreadsheet.
- Identify your gold clients so that you can offer them special promotions.
- Use the information to customize your products to the specific needs of customers.
- Use the information to target value-added newsletters to specific clients.
- Ideally, coordinate your customer contact efforts for a particular customer through a single person.
