The phrase ‘online customer service’ seems like a contradiction in terms. As the operator of an internet business, the closest you ever come to a face-to-face interaction with a customer is through an email, or perhaps a phone call, at the most.
This is part of the reason why so many people prefer to shop online. The personal sales experience of walking into a business can sometimes be cloying. But what’s lost is the finesse of a positive, face-to-face customer service experience, and the benefits that brings to both parties.
“With normal traditional retailers, it’s quite straightforward. You go into a store, you find a person, and you talk to them, and that’s how you get your customer service,” says Irene Lee, founder of online furniture retailer Furniture Escape. “Online, it’s a challenge to bridge that gap, because they’re at home, looking at your website. They’re unable to see your products before they purchase them. If you’re not a big brand, there’s no reputation there. It’s hard to build trust.”
This is why online retailers are forced to get creative with the few genuine customer service touch points that survive the transition from in-store to online retail. Much of the way a customer perceives an online business comes down to how its website looks. But in order to cement any favourable perceptions that good web design creates, things like site functionality, unique sales propositions (USP), and online communication avenues need to be nearly flawless.
“Throughout all the research we’ve done, we’ve found people look for four things from a website,” says Alex Pirouz, a business adviser at RIDC Advisory. “They look for branding and credibility, they look for the functionality of the website, and the details within the website.”
Of these four things, Pirouz notes that it’s a lack of credibility or a unique selling point that most often lets web-based businesses down. This is where strong customer service needs to come into play.
Know what they want
The first step to improving online customer service is to make sure that your site gives visitors what they’re actually looking for, rather than what you suspect they want to see.
“Many businesses imagine what their customers want, rather than ask their customers what they should provide them,” says Pirouz. “Get a strategy behind what the customer is looking for from your online experience. Once you find that, your sales will start to grow organically.”
Something as simple as an online survey or open question on social media can reveal significant insights into what your current customers and prospects like or dislike about your site.
Give us a call
The golden rule of online customer service is to make it brazenly simple for a customer to pick up the phone or send an email query if they want to. The idea is to have a call to action (a piece of text suggesting the reader do something) on every page encouraging visitors to get in contact. Furniture Escape’s Lee takes this approach a couple of steps further.
“Firstly we have a 1300 number that’s obviously displayed on our website, so it’s easy for people to call us,” she says.
In addition to the prominent contact details, the site features a number of click-to-call buttons. The customer clicks on a button, enters their phone number, and Furniture Escape’s staff call them back promptly with details about the product they were browsing.
On top of these two phone-oriented methods, the company has invested in real-time chat software called Zopin, to field those queries from phone-phobic prospects that can’t be properly tended to via email.
“It’s free to trial, so any online business can try it out, and there’s different levels of pricing, but it’s constantly there, the online chat, and we man it all the time,” says Lee. “Through that, you can actually see the location of the person that’s contacting you, so you know they’re in WA or Queensland, and you can cater your answers more towards them, in particular with shipping.”
Ease of navigation
Since a website is effectively a research tool as far as customers are concerned, it’s important that you make it simple to use. This means the fewer navigation options it offers, the better. Pirouz relates that RIDC Advisory conducted market research for a business called She Fitness. The goal was to find out how its customers preferred to find their way around the business’s site. As a result of the research, RIDC discovered that She Fitness’s site would benefit by consolidating its 11 navigation tabs to six.
“Once you provide too much information, people to become overwhelmed,” he says. “That’s part of providing good customer service – because otherwise, you’re not giving the client what they want within your online strategy.”
Content marketing
Many businesses overlook the role that content and information can play in online customer service. The goal of any customer query, online or offline, is to find information about the product or service you’re selling. This is why it’s important not to exclude crucial information in the hope that visitors will pick up the phone to find out more. More often than not, they’ll assume your business can’t help them, and move on to the competition. If your site can answer all of their questions, then those that actually want to buy will be much more likely to get in touch.
“What we try to do on our website is answer all the questions before they even ask us,” says Lee. “We’ve created a swatches page so that they can see all the different wicker samples and cushion colours that we have so they can see that all beforehand without even having to ask us.”
Ideally, you don’t want customers to have to search for the information they need at all. This is where the use of content marketing in conjunction with search comes into play.
Search is an important part of the passive, content-oriented approach to online customer service. Make sure that every keyword your site is targeting in search engine optimisation and search engine marketing has its own landing page. That way, every time someone clicks on a search listing or ad to read more about one of your products, they’ll be presented with exactly the information they’re looking for, instead of having to navigate through your homepage tabs of their own accord. To learn more about this, read 5 ways to make the phone ring using online.
Would you like video with that?
Having refined your site’s navigation and created landing pages for all of its search-targeted content, it’s time to review exactly what sort of content your visitors are likely to expect.
“Find out what way people want to absorb information. Is it through video or text?” asks RIDC’s Pirouz.
Content types should vary depending on the calibre of the products offered. If a customer is looking to buy a car, they’re likely to be more responsive to a video accompanying text information about the car, rather than text alone.
“If the product cost is over or around about $600 and above, most people want a video, simply because what the video does is it builds credibility as to why they should pay more,” says Pirouz. “If the product’s something on a smaller scale, then it’s probably not needed.”
Given the tactile nature and price range of what it sells, Furniture Escape uses video to showcase its products and to demonstrate their quality.
“We put in a lot of video of the actual process of how our wicker furniture is actually constructed, so that they can see there’s quality there,” says Lee.
Offer returns
Lack of credibility is often a major barrier to conversion in online retail. One way to put the minds of sceptical customers at ease is to offer an attractive returns policy. It not only makes the sale more appealing to first-time customers, but it also presents a USP that can work to distinguish your business from other online competitors. Furntiure Escape’s Lee reports that this has worked well for her business.
“What we have done is created the USP that says if they actually buy and they don’t love it, they can return it, and we’ll give their money back,” she says. “That overcomes the whole ‘I need to see it before I buy it’ problem, and we’ve had no-one return any of our stuff.”
Make it personal
One of the more lamentable aspects of online retail for businesses is that it dispenses with the potential charm of walking into a store and talking to an actual human being. Although many online shoppers are quietly grateful that they can dispense with nagging salespeople, this means the businesses have to work especially hard to impress online customers. Furniture Escape’s Lee takes a lateral approach to this quandary, and claims it’s quite effective.
“With every purchase, we send a handwritten letter and a bottle of wine,” says Lee. “It’s to create a connection and a ritual with our furniture, and a story for them to tell their friends and family.
“Have a personal touch with everything,” she advises. “A lot of businesses want to grow big quickly, but having that personal touch will enable you to build a brand and then you can look at systemising more of your procedures.”
Is your website as effective as it could be? Ask a Netregistry web design consultant for tips on how to make it better.
Image credit: Thinkstock
