We know that effective service increases the lifetime value of a customer by escalating future sales through repeat visits. Patricia Berry warns that as with their brick and mortar counterparts, unless e-businesses treat their customers right, they’ll go away — probably never to return.
GartnerGroup research tells us that it costs up to 10 times more to recapture a customer relationship than to maintain an existing one. Conventional businesses rely on live customer service representatives (CSRs) as well as technical support and help-desk personnel to serve as primary contacts for their customers. Retailers such as Nordstrom have built their businesses by championing service to build unparalleled customer loyalty. But how can an online business ever attain Nordstrom’s level of customer satisfaction, repeat business, and long-term profitability?
According to Forrester Research, the only e-businesses that are thriving are those that provide quality online customer care. What do successful customer-oriented e-businesses look like? They’re constantly searching for ways to achieve higher customer satisfaction and retention, higher revenues per customer, and lower costs of customer acquisition and service. In short, they’re building customer loyalty while lowering labor costs by increasing the efficiency of their CSRs. The most successful customer-oriented e-businesses use the full range of electronic customer relationship management (eCRM) solutions to provide immediate communications and live care with every customer contact.
Technologies that provide online customer service include intelligent e-mail, live collaborative chat, self-help, telephony, voiceover Internet protocol (VoIP), personalization, and knowledge management solutions. Let’s see how each of these improves online service and thus promotes customer loyalty.
E-MAIL
E-mail remains the only means of online customer contact for more than 70% of online businesses. However, the volume of mail can be a killer. Presently, nearly half of all e-mail responses from online businesses arrive at least a week late. Many Web sites are so inundated with e-mail that they no longer even post a customer service e-mail address. However, this situation is changing as CRM systems adopt artificial intelligence. Today, computers can answer simple and frequent questions on their own, without the customer ever knowing it. Some computer-generated messages are so hard to distinguish from the real thing that they’ve created a new problem: unnecessary customer thank-you messages that can clog an e-mail system!
COLLABORATIVE CHAT
Do you have a question about a product? Finding it difficult to understand a payment plan? Can’t figure out exactly when an item will ship? Click on a live customer service icon and up pops a chat box with a cheerful 'Hi! How may I help you today?' If you’ve shopped on a site before, and you registered your user name when logging on, they might even address you by name. The CSR with whom you’re chatting should have access to all databases and legacy systems that contain your customer history, enabling a response such as, 'Hi, Mrs. Smith. My name is Ann. It’s nice to see you once again shopping on our Web site. How did the stereo work out that you purchased last month for your daughter’s birthday? I hope it was all you expected.'
HOW MAY I HELP YOU TODAY?
Now that’s service — the kind of customer care no one has seen since the bygone days of the small-town shopkeeper! Some CRM systems can link front-office solutions (including live chat) to back-office databases and legacy systems, enabling CSRs to tap into a customer’s purchasing history, personal preferences, registered complaints, problems, or any other relevant information. The CSR can use this information to suggest new products or accessories, provide valued-customer incentives, or otherwise cross-sell and upsell to maximize revenue while enhancing customer loyalty. The CSR can suggest Web pages that feature items of probable interest to the customer, help them compose a request for technical support or complete other forms, or perform any number of other personal services. Such customer care can go far to build loyalty between the online business and the customer.
SELF-HELP
Self-assistance has moved well beyond the days when frequently asked questions (FAQs) were the only customer care available on an e-business site. Today, self-help includes everything from intelligent FAQs, in which expert search systems can interpret a customer’s question to find an answer that a key-word search might never locate, to virtual agents or 'bots' that chat with customers, answer questions, and make suggestions nearly as effectively as a live person. These bots have a learning algorithm that enables them to improve the accuracy of their responses with every customer contact. If they get stumped, bots can courteously transfer the customer to a live agent. Depending on the e-business, virtual agents can normally handle more than half of the questions asked by online customers.
TELEPHONY
Computer-telephony integration (CTI) is rapidly maturing as artificial intelligence enhances the software solutions that drive call centers. Some Web pages now have callback buttons that, when clicked, open a window in which the customer can leave a phone number where they can be reached for questions or other services. Depending on the Web page, CTI can even direct the call request to a specific CSR who is familiar with the goods and services advertised on that Web page. The downside of this technology is that few customers have a dedicated line for their computers, so most have to get offline to receive a call. This brings up another solution, voiceover Internet protocol (VoIP).
VoIP
For computers equipped with a microphone and soundcard, VoIP can provide an outstanding customer care solution. Click on a VoIP icon, and a live CSR speaks directly to you through speakers or headphones. It’s just like a telephone, but without the line charges. As with live chat, a VoIP-equipped salesperson can show an online customer Web pages with new products or services while discussing their attributes with the customer. Alternatively, a CSR can talk a client through filling out a form or application.
PERSONALIZATION
Some say that personalization is a strategy, not a software solution. That’s true if you define personalization as the process of linking front and back-offices so that CSRs have immediate access to customer histories. However, real personalization solutions are emerging. And because they’re personal, they’re controversial. Such products might mine chat text to determine a customer’s personality predilections based on a Myers-Briggs type of personality inventory. Let’s say that you’re shopping for a car online, and have a 'Type A' personality. A CSR might push you toward a red sports car, rather than the beige sedan that they might’ve suggested if your analyzed conversation showed you to be a 'Type B.'
Is this ethical? Some would say no. But many customers are willing to trade a little privacy for the convenience of not having their time wasted by an agent showing them items in which they have no interest. Businesses that keep personal information about their customers to themselves will enhance customer trust and loyalty.
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
Knowledge management, the next level above self-help, uses technologies that let customers access critical information about a company’s products and services to solve problems. Knowledge management tools include the popular 'Ask Jeeves,' which employs algorithms that aid in information searches, as well as more sophisticated self-learning problem-resolution tools for CSRs or customers. Although self-learning algorithms greatly improve the value of knowledge management systems, a system can only learn to the degree that customers are willing to provide useful feedback on each response.
Although many eCRM vendors can help e-businesses communicate with their customers, most have focused on front-office interaction, rather than the back-office resources that provide the real value. In fact, most application service providers offer only front-end solutions that are nothing but attractive traps for unwary e-businesses, unless they can interface with a company’s legacy systems and databases. They might look good on the surface, but they can’t give CSRs the information they need to deliver satisfactory service and enhance customer loyalty.
However, back-office technologies — especially artificial intelligence, data and text mining, and data source managers — constitute the real magic of eCRM.
In the world of online customer service, the message is clear: Successful e-businesses must 'go for the gold.'