Six Tips Every Online Retailer Needs to Know for Delivering Great Customer Service

By Suzy Meriwether

Even though online retailers may never meet a customer in person and deal with them solely online, people are not computers--they are driven by feelings and emotions. Today, the success of every online retailer depends on translating that obvious-yet-fundamental concept into the reality of the customer experience. If you don't make people feel good about doing business with you, you'll lose them to someone who does--especially in a world where your competitor is just a click away.

Reflect for a moment--how do you react when you have a bad online service experience? In a recent Harris Interactive poll on the customer experience, more than half of all consumers polled sited outstanding customer service as the top reason they continue to do business with a company. And another 60 percent said it was the top reason they would recommend a company to a friend.

Conversely, after a negative experience:

• 80 percent decided to never again do business with that company;
• 74 percent registered a complaint or told others;
• 47 percent swore and/or shouted; and
• 29 percent actually reported getting a headache, sensing a tightening in their chest and/or crying.

Think about it: with the soaring costs associated with attracting a customer to your website in the first place, and all the efforts and expense you incur in converting that visitor to a customer, shouldn't you take aggressive action to ensure that the customer has a positive experience with your brand, especially when you consider the disastrous implications a negative experience entails?

To avoid being the cause of consumers' headaches or driving them to tears, retailers need to routinely deliver quality customer service. The following six tips can help you put a smile on your customers' faces and drive a significant increase in sales through customer loyalty.

Make Sure Your Site "Listens" to Customers
In the past, in-store customer service was all about building a one-on-one, meaningful relationship with customers to build loyalty. While online customer service may lack this in-person interaction, it can still take important cues from this approach to reach the same goal. It starts and ends with listening to your customers.

When a customer goes to a customer service page on your site, successful retailers "listen" to what they're asking by observing what content is viewed, what information is searched for and what questions are asked. By listening, retailers can proactively provide commonly requested information in an easily accessible way. For example, if the most common FAQ viewed relates to store hours, why not put that information on the top of the page where it can easily be seen? Or if the most common information searched for pertains to shipping costs, why not feature the information early on in the shopping process? This leads to step two.

Make Customer Service Resources Easy to Find and Easy to Use
Most consumers want to be able to help themselves quickly--and routinely rely on the retailer's website to find the information they need. If it's not easy to find, they just might feel the beginnings of that headache. That's why it's essential to provide customers with highly intuitive search tools that let them pinpoint the answers they need with a minimum number of steps. It's also smart to maintain a "Top 5" list of most frequently viewed FAQs that customers can immediately see when they arrive at the customer service page.

Web self-service technology is a great way to take your FAQs to the next level by enabling subject-matter experts across an organization to quickly create and modify what are called "knowledge items" for your company's site. These knowledge items can then be reviewed, edited and posted quickly, letting customers search for the information they want by keyword or phrase. It also allows them to browse available information by category and sub-category.

But even after you've listened attentively and provided information in an easy-to-find manner, customers will inevitably still have questions--it's just impossible to anticipate and proactively respond to every customer service scenario. Smart retailers know this, which leads us to step three.

Offer Multichannel Choices
Customers expect choice and convenience when it comes to resolving issues. Both are prerequisites for superior customer service. While many consumers still prefer the phone, e-mail and chat are also popular communication channels. You'll quickly find that customers will use different communication channels at different times and for specific reasons. If it's an urgent question that requires an immediate answer, they may pick up the phone or open a chat session. Less urgent questions may come in via e-mail. And many retailers still receive handwritten letters of complaint. Multichannel customer service choices are like the good in-store sales agent who listens to verbal and non-verbal signals from a customer with questions--and responds accordingly.

The challenge many retailers face is connecting these communication channels to create a cohesive customer experience. This leads us to step four.

Savvy Retailers Have Integrated Communication Channels
Customers want to have a single, seamless conversation with a retailer. Offering multichannel communications options that aren't seamlessly integrated is worse than not offering multichannel choices in the first place. All customer interactions need to be logged in a single customer record--so contact center staff can view all of their previous contacts in order to provide personal and effective service. If a customer calls the contact center in response to an unsatisfactory e-mail, the agent should have visibility into that e-mail and the answer provided. If a customer calls multiple times on the same order or issue, the agent needs to see that as well.

In the Internet Age, Speed is Critical
Customers expect retailers to answer questions quickly. Whichever channel a customer uses for contact--whether phone, chat or e-mail--retailers must respond quickly. Further, customers need to get the same answer no matter what channel they use. So it's important to leverage consistent information across all channels. Ideally, the information you provide on the web should be exactly the same as what you provide via your live operators, e-mail and chat staff.

Frequently, retailers face the challenge of customers calling support multiple times until they reach an agent who can give them the answer they wanted--at an additional cost to the retailer. This challenge can be met by establishing a central knowledge base of information for all agents to use across all channels. By delivering the same answer, consistently and across all channels, you'll significantly reduce inbound contacts.

E-mail response is often the most challenging. Leading retailers have goals of returning all inbound e-mails in less than two hours. Unfortunately, using Outlook and a generic in-box does not provide the discipline, process and reporting needed to meet this goal. By having a system with the capacity to receive, route, track and report on inbound e-mails, agents handling e-mail will have the tools they need to meet these aggressive response targets.

Let Your Customers Rate You
The only way to know if your customer service is truly effective is ask your customers--you can't improve what you don't measure. So the most successful retailers provide customers with a way to rate the quality of support. By eliciting feedback at the point of interaction, retailers can gauge their success. Also, by gathering comments and taking immediate action after a negative report, retailers can address problems immediately and often win back disgruntled customers.

It is simple enough to analyze customer feedback when questions in a survey have specific, multiple-choice answers. Survey systems with open, unstructured commentary are much more difficult and time consuming to analyze. But they do provide an ability to rate the emotional component of a customer's textual response, which can help you to quickly gauge customer sentiments--and which enables you to respond accordingly.

Topic monitoring capabilities also capture and automatically categorize common topics based on free-form feedback. For example, after delivery of an order (especially a large, high-dollar item such as a TV or sofa), a feedback survey can be automatically sent to customers to see if the product arrived on time and in good condition. As the surveys come back, topic monitoring automatically identifies key terms. If the word "damaged" is identified, this information can be routed to the shipping department for immediate follow-up. Customers are then proactively contacted with offers for free upgrades, pre-empting a potential customer service disaster and demonstrating quality customer care.

Customers have more choices and higher expectations than ever before. They are looking for a great experience every time they engage with a retailer. Increasing conversion rates and building loyalty are critical for success. In this fast-growing and highly competitive industry, you must provide seamless service throughout the purchase process and proactively address and anticipate shopper needs to set your business apart. Consider it an immunization against customer headaches.

Suzy Meriwether is industry solutions manager for RightNow Technologies, a Bozeman, Mont.-based supplier of advanced CRM solutions. She can be reached at susan.meriwether@rightnow.com.