.
The JFA Web site has been online since 1997, and has doubled
its income every year - it’s now a multi-million dollar e-commerce
enterprise.
Jim, who's also a professional speaker and expert on customer
service, highlighted for me how the online buying experience
differs from the bricks-and-mortar model.
Buying online eliminates the physical presence and personality
of the salesperson from the process. This makes the Web site
copy critical in creating a one-to-one relationship with the
customer or prospect.
Which echoes one of my favorite mantras:
Every page of your site should be written from the
visitor’s point of view, not yours.
A visitor should be able to look at your offerings, and immediately
answer the questions:
“Why me?” - that is, is your Web site the right
place for me?
“Why should I care?” - does this copy convince me
that you can meet my needs?
It’s much easier and immediate to jump from Web site to Web
site than to move between real-world stores. So the visitor
has far more freedom of choice online. Jim says that the challenge
for customer service is therefore very clearly to focus on
one customer, one purchase at a time. E-customers expect great
service, with little or no direct interaction. They will tolerate
some mistakes, but not many.
Jim offers five rules for effective online customer service:
- Be accessible. Show very clearly on your site all
the ways that your customer can contact you - including
e-mail, phone and fax numbers, and your office hours.
And, if it’s practical for your business, be personal
- give your visitors a real person to call who has a name,
as opposed to sales@mycompany.com
Of course, if you’re really upscale, you can include
a “Call-me” button on your site.
- Return every e-mail or phone call in the same day,
as far as reasonably possible. This may sound simplistic,
but a recent experiment with the top Fortune 100 companies
showed that nearly a third failed to respond to e-mail sent
through their Web site within one month! Some of these companies
still don’t provide a usable e-mail address on their sites
at all.
- Acknowledge all orders. Send e-mail confirmations
(this can be done very effectively with autoresponders),
and if you’re shipping actual products, give tracking numbers
and expected delivery dates.
- Provide a clear return policy, honor it and learn
from it. This may give you more information about what’s
working and what’s not. Jim’s products are sometimes returned
with no explanation, so his staff always call the customer
to establish and resolve the problem.
- Expect more phone calls. Jim says: “Customers can’t
read or write!” If your Web site traffic and response rates
grow (which is, of course, what we want), so will the volume
of phone calls, whatever your business or industry.
Regardless of the site quality, clear returns and privacy
policies, secure servers, etc., people still require human
interaction. All of my clients report talking to customers
on the phone, and walking them through the Web site, where
their questions are clearly answered. Maybe these psychological
barriers will lessen, but right now, they are very much there.
If you can get the customer service aspects of your business
working well, there’ll be a definite bottom line impact. Jim
is quite clear that his business has grown substantially through
repeat business and referrals from satisfied customers.
And in contrast, we can see the impact of poor customer service
and fulfillment procedures in many of the dot.coms that failed.
Jim says that people buy things online in the expectation
of getting something more valuable than the actual money they
spend.
Does your Web site do this??
JFA Inc. can be found at http://www.jfainc.com/
© 2002 Philippa Gamse. All rights reserved.
Byline
Philippa Gamse, "CyberSpeakerSM",
is an internationally recognized e-business strategist. Check
out her free tipsheet for 19 ideas to promote your Website:
http://www.CyberSpeaker.com/tipsheet.html
Philippa can be reached at (831) 465-0317 or mailto:pgamse@CyberSpeaker.com
