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Customer Service Tips for On-Line Business
By Jennifer Smith
Imagine yourself enjoying a relaxing day of shopping. You spot a fabulous window display, walk inside to see a beautiful array of wonderful items, a friendly store clerk greets you with a cheery “good morning”, and you begin to shop. As you are looking around the store, you have a few questions and the store clerk is happy to assist you. Once you have decided which items you wish to buy, the clerk efficiently handles your payment, wraps your items, and heartily thanks you for stopping by. You leave your first store with a smile on your face and move on to the next store. You now enter a store that is cluttered, has unpacked boxes in the shopping aisles, and there is no store clerk to be found. You are still in a shopping mood, so you persevere through the mess. You finally lay your eyes on an item that might be the perfect gift for your Mom’s upcoming birthday. There is a tiny scratch on the item so you look for the store clerk to ask if there are any more of this item available. Eventually, you find the clerk, although she looks annoyed with you for “bothering” her. She finds a similar item for you, drags her feet over to the checkout stand, takes your payment, makes no eye contact, and mumbles an insincere “bye”. Which of these 2 stores would you consider shopping in again? How many of your friends will you tell about Store #1? More importantly, how many more of your friends will you tell about Store #2? These scenarios describe possible shopping experiences in traditional brick & mortar stores, but how might these shopping experiences relate to on-line ecommerce stores? The answer is “Customer Service” and can be quite easily applied to all ecommerce stores, big or small. Here are a few of my tips: 1. Pleasantly Greet Your Customers:
With an on-line store, the easiest way to do this is by having a welcoming and uncluttered home page. A short introductory welcome or an “about us” page accompanied with a short description of the products you offer is a great asset as well as having your on-line store organized and easy to navigate. 2. Answer Customers’ Questions:
The easiest way to accomplish this is by having a “contact me” page, a FAQ page, a telephone number, or a live chat available on your site. Some of these are easier to incorporate than others, but it is critical that potential customers have some way to reach you. It is also equally important to respond to questions in a polite and timely manner. Failure to do this often results in a lost sale. 3. Processing Payments:
Handling payments on-line through a reputable payment service is an absolute must. Depending on the size of your business and if your market is local, national, or international, there are many affordable options available for processing payments. Keep your checkout and payment process as streamlined and easy-to-use as possible. Customers who get frustrated with a checkout service may just give up and move on to another store. 4. Thank your Customer:
I have always made a point of not only acknowledging receipt of a customer’s order and payment, but I also take this opportunity to thank them for shopping with me, and to let them know when their item will be shipped. It is absolutely astounding to me the number of sites that fail to do this one little step. I am a small business so I am able to do this with one short email, but if you are a large business, set up an automated email response if possible.
These tips may appear simplistic and a bit obvious, however, as an avid on-line shopper I can say with absolute certainty that there are sites who have permanently lost my business due to their failure to follow some of these basic steps. Lastly, with on-line shopping in mind, go back to this earlier statement:
“Which of these 2 stores would you consider shopping in again? How many of your friends will you tell about Store #1? More importantly, how many more of your friends will you tell about Store #2?” In this day and age of internet social sites, and also the blogging world, do you really want to risk having a customer with an unpleasant experience telling all their on-line friends about it? Something to think about….
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Contributor's Note
I have been both an on-line seller and shopper for the past 8 years. This article is based on my own personal experiences and is intended as advice only.
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Excellent tips, ones that can be acted upon fairly easily. Thanks!
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