Forbes magazine have done a survey where they put eight well-known large American firms to the test… testing how they responded to various customer service requests. Forbes tested responses to requests through Twitter, customer service phone lines, and through the companies’ websites.
The article is here and it’s well worth a read – on a number of levels. Forbes wrote about it as an indication that most customers will often get a better and quicker resolution to issues via the phone, rather than through Twitter. And that Twitter has not replaced older forms of business communication – such as the phone.
This is interesting, but should not be so surprising. Twitter only adds to the communication and conversation options. It does not – and should not – replace other forms. Especially for customer service, where Twitter is perhaps best used as a way of hearing customer complaints, taking action and being seen by others to be taking positive action on complaints. But let’s face it, with 140 characters Twitter is hardly the place for resolving individual customer issues in great detail. And dirty laundry is still generally best washed in private.
Another issue this Forbes study highlights once again is that businesses often ignore or mishandle customer inquiries coming from their own website. I’ve noticed this over the past 15 years. It’s been a long-term issue and it still is an issue.
14 Excuses for Lousy Responses
But why don’t businesses take inquires from their website seriously? Here are 14 of the reasons I’ve heard or observed over the years…
1. Website inquiries are seen to be from ‘tyre-kickers’ just looking for information and seldom result in sales. (If someone takes the time to ask for information, then they could be a serious customer at some point in time. Perhaps not right now, but it’s smart business to add them to your sales funnel and build relationships.)
2. Website inquiries are sent to the wrong person in the organization. (Are customer service requests going to your receptionist or your IT person and getting overlooked or ignored?)
3. Website inquiries are sent to someone who is no longer working in the organization. (When someone leaves, someone else needs to get their email and respond to it. Better still, make inquiry forms position-related and not sent to an individual person.)
4. Website inquiries are sent to the wrong organization – maybe such as your web development company. (It’s dumb, but some businesses still let it happen.)
5. Website inquiries are sent to someone in the organization who is already so busy they don’t notice or don’t care about the inquiry. (This is a biggie.)
6. Website inquiries get caught in a junk or spam filter. (It’s dumb and kinda tragic, but it happens.)
7. Website inquiries go into an inquiry database on the website, never to be seen again. (This may be due to poor website administration, poor database management, poor reporting or or poor alerts, but whatever the cause it is treatable.)
8. Website inquiries often come from spammers, so the people in the business have just learned to ignore them. (I once had a sales manager of a big company tell me this during a website planning consulting session. “Most are spam, so we ignore them all,” he said. )
9. Website inquiries are often incomplete and are not taken seriously. (Hey, the person has at least bothered to give you some information. They should not have to fill in a complex form filled with mandatory fields of data just to report an issue.)
10. Website inquiries may be coming from competitors and get ignored. (Well, it’s true. Your competitors may be ‘shopping you’. So, why not start intimidating them by showing your strength in providing great customer service rather than revealing your customer service weaknesses by showing how darn slack you are!)
11. The Website inquiry form doesn’t work and so the messages don’t get sent properly, let alone read. (Yep, sadly not all forms are tested thoroughly when built, and some break after being built. Learn to test your customer service processes regularly – and that includes website forms.)
12. Website inquiries are not reported to management, and there is no tracking of response and resolution times and status of followups. (Management 101: “What gets measured gets done”. Management 102: “What gets reported on to others often gets done better”.)
13. There is no in-built escalation process in the system to escalate issues if inquiries are not responded to in an acceptable time-frame. (Clever systems can do this. If it will provide better customer service and less risk to your business, then automate what you can when you can. (Zendesk is a highly recommended and widely used tool for this.)
14. Website inquiries can come in at any time, 24.7. No one is there to respond quickly. (Unless you offering services across multiple time-zones, most customers will understand that you have working hours and you have non-working hours. The solution is to clearly set the expectations for when you will respond to inquiries, and say it right up from on the inquiry form. And if you are operating across time-zones, then have a system that will be there when you are not. Again, look at Zendesk.)
There are probably a bunch of other poor excuses I could add to this list, but it’s a good start.
What do you think? Is it ringing any alarm bells for you?
If you can see one or more applies to you, then recognize them for what they are - situations to improve. After all, you’ve probably spent a fair bit of money on your website so customers can use it… Don’t ignore them when they do.
Larger companies can often afford to have 24.7 service and even offer “Live Chat” facilities on their websites. You can outsource this, but be careful. Sometimes it can work well, but often out-sourced helpdesk staff can cause more issues than they solve and be perceived to be unhelpful if they’re not trained thoroughly enough. In fact, it’s one of the ways I recommend to test a possible supplier’s customer service levels and commitment to servicing customers in the online world… test out their responsiveness and knowledge, especially in online live chat if they offer it.
And here are the links to the Fortune story…
Intro to the Fortune story
2. Delta airline
Related Posts: