The title of this article seems like a cliche, "The Customer is number
one"! Who doesn't know this already? Many businesses and business people
know this to be true but how many really practice this philosophy? More
importantly, how many Internet companies really practice this?
In the brick and mortar world, there are numerous examples of service
excellent. One of the most famous, is the customer who claimed he had
bought a tire from Nordstrom and insisted on returning it. Nordstrom
doesn't sell tires but they accepted the return anyway! This is a true
story, although a little extreme for most companies.
Let's take a look at Internet businesses vs. traditional brick and
mortar businesses. How do they stack up in terms of customer service and
putting the needs of the customer first? Ask yourself these two
questions:
How many Internet businesses do you highly recommend to your friends
because you received excellent customer service?
How many traditional brick and mortar businesses do your recommend to
your friends because you received excellent customer service?
If you are like most of us, the list of Internet businesses you
recommend is a lot shorter than the list of traditional retailers you
recommend. Why does this tend to be true? The main reason is, you
receive personalization when you shop at a traditional business, which
you don't receive from most Internet businesses.
At a traditional business, the employees people greet you, they qualify
your needs and they promptly close the sale. Is this possible to do with
an Internet business? Listed below are a few ways to personalize the
shopping experience at your web site, so you can practice "Making the
customer number one"!
1. Make sure your phone number, address and office hours are posted in a
highly visible spot on your home page.
Many Internet companies do not want to handle inbound phone messages. If
you are one of those companies, change your philosophy NOW or get out of
business. The phone number is there for your customers. Do not create
barriers for your customers to do business with you! Make sure doing
business with you is as simple and easy as possible. List your address,
even if you don't ship products from your physical address. Customers
are more comfortable knowing that you have one!
2. Provide concise and relevant F.A.Q.'s (Frequently Asked Questions).
If you have good F.A.Q.'s, you will reduce the amount of inbound phone
calls and you will be showing your customers you are concerned about
their questions. If you don't have F.A.Q.'s, you really need to get them
up on your site as quickly as possible.
3. Post your response time to inquiries in your customer service section
and stick to it.
Most Internet consumers feel that their inquiries will go unanswered or
they will have to wait days to hear back from Internet businesses. Post
on your site that you will return e-mails within 24 hours. That means
having someone check the status of questions on weekends too! If you get
in the habit of responding to inquiries within 24 hours, you will be
exceeding your customers expectations 99% of the time.
4. Confirm receipt of all orders received.
How many times have you ordered something from an Internet company and
after your transaction was completed, you DID NOT receive confirmation
of your order? If you are like me, it has happened way too many times!
Make sure your customers receive confirmation their order is being
processed. Send them confirmation through an automated system or
manually.
5. Follow up on important customer issues with a PHONE CALL!
That's right! If a customer places an overnight order and you find out
you are out of stock of the item, do you e-mail the customer and wait
for their response? No you don't! You call the customer and offer a
solution to their problem. Most people don't mind getting phone calls
from companies when the company is addressing their concerns. In fact,
in most cases you will build a tremendous amount of goodwill and they
will provide you with more referrals than you can imagine.
6. Provide a tracking number and the link to the tracking system of the
company you use to ship your orders. Many companies have automated
tracking systems tied into UPS and FEDEX. If you are a small
company without automated tracking, you can provide the URL for tracking
the shipment (example) http://www.fedex.com/us/ and the tracking number.
This gives the customer piece of mind and reduces the likelihood that
you will receive an inquiry from your customer regarding the status of
their order.
Follow these six steps and you will prove to your customers that they
are number one!
About the Author
Daryl Clark is President and CEO of EMarketingMan.com. His goal is to
provide you with high quality information, management and internet
consulting services. You can read his other articles at
http://www.emarketingman.com/articlespolicy.htm. E-mail
to: emarketingman-subscribe@topica.com