[Article] 12 Easy Ways to Save Money with Online Support

12 Easy Ways to Save Money with Online Support
By Robbin Block <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.picturesez.com" target="_blank">http://www.picturesez.com</a>


Despite rumors to the contrary, the Web is not dead. More people are
using it, they have faster bandwidth, and in many cases Net-time is
taking over TV-time. It's no wonder more users are turning to the Net
for help, rather than the telephone. So why not take advantage by
offering your customers help online after the sale? Given that the
average customer care call is $33, it's a great way to please
customers that prefer the Web over a phone queue and save money too.

Not that you ever want to drive customers away. After all, keeping a
good customer is a whole lot cheaper than acquiring a new one. The
idea is to move the majority of calls to self-help and reserve quality
time for those customers that need to speak to a real person. If you
guide certain customers towards answering questions themselves, make
it a good experience, and offer incentives for usage, self-help will
be their first choice.

The type of online support required for each customer and for each
problem may be different, so it's best to provide a range of self-help
options and let customers choose what works for them. Online support
comes in many forms, but for now we'll focus on the least expensive
FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions), Enhanced FAQs, discussion boards,
and email. It's better to start with a few options first, and do them
well, rather than trying to do everything at once. Offering a good
help experience to people who use the Web regularly makes them more
likely to turn to the Web for assistance again and again.

1) Determine Your Online Support Strategy

Figure out what's going to give you the biggest bang for the buck,
then add on. Having a plan will help ensure that each support
component works within a cohesive whole. Generic information can be
easily handled with FAQs or Enhanced FAQs. More complex or
customer-specific information requires advanced technologies. If you
don't have the expertise or time to build the functionality yourself,
look into Web service providers who can create and host applications
for you.
 

2) Focus and Target

Don't try to create online support to cover every subject. Consider
customer demographics to determine who will use the service, why they
would use it, what they would need, and what would get them to use
it. Customers ordinarily will use a combination of both online and
offline support options, so build use cases for each target customer
segment to gain an understanding of their behavior and how to improve
their overall experience.

3) Tell Customers Where to Go

Make sure links to the help section are clearly communicated at every
touch point, such as on printed material and through IVR systems.
Familiarize your sales and phone reps with the site and its benefits,
as in, "Did you know that we have a website that shows you how to do
that?" Offer customers incentives to encourage first time usage and
let them get in the short phone queue if they try self-help before
calling.

4) Make Help Easy to Find at Your Site

If you don't provide a direct link to help, make it an obvious click
away from your home page and other appropriate pages.

5) Give them Options

Even if a customer visited the site only in search of contact
information, there's no reason why you can't try to resolve their
problem while they're there, saving both of you a phone call. Briefly
describe what is offered through self-help, how it works, and what
they can expect. You don't want customers to waste their time looking
for information that isn't there.

6) Should I Give Them My Number?

You should always make contact information available, but the extent
to which you delay publishing it will depend on your target customers
and your support strategy. For example, if you can respond to the
majority of visitor questions with generic information and your goal
is to maximize self-help use, then delay, driving visitors to use
self-help first. On the other hand, if many of your customers require
custom treatment and you want the opportunity for personal contact, as
with brokerage services, you may want to make phone numbers readily
available.

7) Start with Simple FAQs

Answer the questions customers ask most often. Don't worry about
trying to answer every possible question. Build your list from
customer questions received via your customer reps, email, and
keywords searched at your site. Organize the information into a
standardized format, write clearly, and don't try to sell your
customers anything. This is not the place and time. You can always
provide navigation links to sales information. If the FAQs are long,
add an easy to use index or search function.

Give It to Them Straight

Make sure the information you provide avoids jargon and terms they
would need to search elsewhere to find. Leverage the technologies
available with HTML to provide definitions via rollovers to help
customers get the information they need faster.

9) More than Just the FAQs

Expand on your FAQs by providing images and interactivity. Imagine
how much easier it would be to show pictures detailing a car battery
installation or a bicycle assembly, rather than explaining it with
words alone. Involving the user through interactivity improves
learning and results in a more positive experience, which means
they'll use self-help again.

10) Get Them Talking

Get customers to search and answer questions themselves via a
discussion board. Harvest information from the boards for your FAQs.

11) e-Mail with Caution

Use e-mail, but be sure you have the resources to respond in a timely
and effective manner. If you set up the expectation that it takes too
long to get a response, customers are going to lose confidence in the
service and not use it again. Be careful about using automated email
responders as well. If customers have to wait and still don't get the
specific help they need, the best you can hope for is frustrated
customers. More likely you'll end up paying for this lapse in customer
service in the form of phone support and lost future sales.

12) Survey Says

Let customers tell you what they need. It's the best way to make
improvements to your online customer support. Ask a few simple
follow-up questions through an online survey, but keep it short and
simple. Respect your customers' time.

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Robbin Block is President of PictureSez, Inc., which offers a hosted
application that helps companies enhance their websites with
picture-based, online customer support. Whether for how-to
instructions or FAQ's, the PictureSez browser-based authoring tool
makes it easy to show your customers what to do. No HTML or coding is
necessary. FREE 30-day trial is available at
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.picturesez.com" target="_blank">http://www.picturesez.com</a>

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