If you think e-commerce is about dealing with anonymous customers in a cold, uncaring environment, you can forget about online success.
“In our experience, customer service for a Web site is just about everything,” says Dennis Sinclair, CEO of Virtualsellers.com, an e-commerce solutions provider. “If you want to retain the customer, if you want to keep them happy, you have to have some way to follow up from the Web and talk to them if something goes wrong.”
People are switching from catalogs to the Internet. If there are problems, customers should have an 800 number to call for help.
“They should also receive an order confirmation e-mail if ordering off the Web,” says Sinclair. “They should get an e-mail after it’s delivered asking if everything is OK and what it is claimed to be.”
One of the most important factors in customer service comes down to a site control issue. A good site focused on the customer needs to have the ability to do things like put up “out of inventory” signs, take down items no longer offered, keep prices up to date and match up price changes with special offers.
“This has been a huge administrative problem with Web sites,” says Sinclair.
Too often, sites are maintained in two different areas — one on the client side and one on the server side. While the sites might mirror each other, changes made might not be reflected to consumers right away.
A bloated chain of command for a site might have the marketing department creating ideas, which then have to be taken to the IS department, which assigns it to the Web master, who has to make changes to the client side. Eventually, the changes originally conceived by the marketing department will show up to the customers.
“There are too many hands on the Web site, which creates a lot more customer service needs,” says Sinclair. “The second problem is customer service is not focused on the completion and satisfaction of the transaction. If a credit card is denied, call them and ask them for another form of payment. Complete the process manually if you have to.
“The main thing is, most Web sites from the retail side are dealing with existing customer bases. Try to think of dealing with customers just like you would in a real retail environment. You are not dealing with digits, you are dealing with people.”
Another common error companies make is cutting costs in the customer service area. They’ll spend thousands, and in some cases millions of dollars, to get a site online, but won’t spend the money to train customer service people on how to interact with customers on the phone.
How to reach: Dennis Sinclair, www.virtualsellers.com
Todd Shryock ([email protected]) is SBN’s special reports editor.
