The way you treat your customers will determine if your business is successful or not. If you ship orders late, cannot answer questions about your product, are rude or condescending or you can not update your website regularly, customers will tell their friends and others to avoid your business. But there are ways to make sure your customers are treated with respect without having to sacrifice profits or time.
One of the best ways to provide quality customer service is by creating a website that is easy to navigate. This means that all pages are in logical order, products have full descriptions and order pages are clearly marked. Including contact information is essential to the survival of your business because customers may have questions about their order, products or your website in general.
When customers send email, you should try to answer them within one business day. This will let them know that they are important. If you cannot personally answer the amount of email you are receiving each day and handle other business obligations, you should consider hiring a customer service representative who can take over these duties.
Another way to ensure quality customer service is to make sure that all items shipped are properly wrapped and protected. Items that are thrown into a box without much thought to their safety sends a bad message to customers. Maintaining repeat business is vital to the success of your business. Customers who are pleased with their experiences will purchase other items in the future.
You should always have enough packing and shipping supplies for each day that you send orders. When an order is placed, you should send an email giving the customer an estimate of when it will be shipped and include all shipping information so the customer can track their order. Customers who want to return orders should not be ignored. Make it clear to the customer what the return policy is on your website and on their invoice when they receive the item.
Be patient with customers who want to return an item. Ask them why they were not satisfied and what you can do to help the situation. Many times replacing the item is all the customer will need in order to continue using your website. Customers who are treated poorly will not usually return to make additional purchases.
If you are just starting your business, learning more about ways to help customers find what they are looking for, answering any questions they may have and helping them make returns or exchanges will allow you to develop a reputation for being a quality business from the beginning. If you are patient, considerate and responsive when a problem occurs, you will receive repeat business which will allow your business to continue to grow.
When it comes to the so-called real world of commerce, and the ups and downs of the shopping experience in a ?brick-and-mortar? store, a customer usually has the opportunity to hunt down a salesperson to help them with their questions and concerns. On the Internet, the so-called virtual world, that is not clearly a viable option. So how can online businesses provide quality customer service while doing all the other zillion things required of an online company? Truth be told, it might not be as difficult as you think.
There are many ways to keep customers satisfied with solid customer service skills that do not take a lot of hard work or waste time. Instead of making a list with ?do? on one side and ?don't? on the other, let's just work through this subject logically, starting with what successful companies are really doing to keep their customers satisfied. The major no-no's will be highlighted too, of course, with examples from both online and offline businesses. The things learned in the real world can usually be adapted, sometimes quite easily, for use in the virtual one.
From chatting to mining
One of the most effective ways that many companies provide top-level service is with the ?live chat,? which is at the top of any net company's ?do? list these days. In a live chat, the customer can interact directly, in real time, with your customer service representative (CSR), just like on a phone call ? except they are communicating with their computers, with the customer typing in questions that the CSR can answer in a matter of seconds.
A slightly more controllable version of the instant message systems, like AOL Instant Messenger, a live chat session is becoming a very important tool for online retailers. Live chat also provides the raw material for another important member of the ?do? list, since the text messages can be easily archived and used for various sorts of ?data mining? projects.
Turning text into tools
When large numbers of CSR contacts are examined for patterns, you can end up finding out about product problems, billing discrepancies and other anomalies, as well as develop training material for other CSR's. Recordings of phone calls are much more difficult to ?repurpose? into usable information. And there's a ?don't? for you, too ? don't even try archiving phone calls, there's no point, except to satisfy certain legal requirements under special conditions.
Another critical customer service tool is order tracking, which goes hand in hand with live chat in many of the well-integrated CSR systems being used today. Modern databases and computers can provide CSR's with masses of information about the customers, their accounts, purchases, problems, warranties, payment history and everything else. Just having piles of data does nothing for you, however, so one of the less talked-about crucial things to do is have a great programmer and IT expert in the firm to make all the data usable for service operations.
Human and computer support
Support ticket applications, another good ?do? list entry, are pretty straightforward. When customers visit your site with a problem to resolve, they can simply click a support link and will be asked to enter the pertinent order information. The support software will forward your customers? responses, as well as the other related and necessary information you need to resolve the issue. The final resolution for your customers can be e-mailed in full, or the customer can be sent an e-mailed link with which to log back into the support area. Either way, they will receive a swift response, including all the proper return or exchange instructions. This system is particularly useful if you have a large number of customers.
Up close and personal
If all else fails, of course, there is always the telephone. Although it can be expensive and somewhat time-consuming to offer full-time phone support, sometimes it really is the best way to stay ?up close and personal? with customers and clients. On the phone, often you can work out in two or three minutes what it might take several chats sessions or multiple emails to achieve. Offering at least some phone support is another important member of the ?do? list, and ?don't? forget it.
Customers do appreciate live phone support because it adds the personal touch to an e-business. The fact is, the things you ?don't? do in offline customer support are the same things that online businesses should avoid. You do not want to antagonize your customers, make them wait when they shouldn't, promise what you can't deliver or ignore their feelings. In the ?human to human? part of the business equation, what you do online to service your customers isn't really that different from what any traditional, storefront business would do for customer support. Take care of your customers, they will keep coming back to take care of business. That's the bottom line.
Both Obinna Heche & Ian Mcroberts are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.