The title of this article seems like a cliché, "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!
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