|
|
|
CREATE A TRAFFIC JAM AT YOUR WEBSITE!
Let's face it, some businesses sell "high ticket" items with enough profit margin that a few sales will do. Internet businesses don't usually follow this trend. So one of the KEYS to success on the net is driving HUGE amounts of traffic to your...
In Mourning for the Google Cash System
Do you remember when you could pick an affiliate program, hustle up a few hundred keywords toss it all into your Adwords account & wait for the commissions. No me neither! I was busy doing something else during those glory days. If it ever was that...
Search Engine Positioning: Trends for 2005
Anticipating what the future may bring can always be a risky business. In spite of these difficulties, businesses must work within predictable and potential boundaries that can generate good intuition for the future. We humbly accept the possibility...
Treble your Adsense Earnings in 60 Minutes
Treble your Adsense income in 60 minutes. Google's Adsense is one of the most powerful weapons in website publisher's arsenal. It enables you to monetize your sites easily and if used properly can generate a very healthy income. However, if you're...
Why Aren't You Making Money Online ?
(c) Copyright 2004 by Charles Kangethe How many times have you had a marketing question and didn't know where to find the answer ? When I started out in Internet Marketing I had so many questions about the business. * How do I get started ? *...
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Customer Service - The Key to Increased Customer Lifetime Value
Last month we discussed building credibility and trust at your website, so that visitors feel comfortable buying from you. That is half of the battle. The more important part is increasing the lifetime value of each customer, that is, getting your one-time buyers to be repeat customers. There are many factors that go into this: marketing; product quality; and the consumable nature of the product or service you sell. However, if you have poor (or non-existent) customer service, you can forget about repeat business.
Since none of us is running a large company (I assume) and don’t have much of a budget—if any—for customer service, all of the tips and resources in this article are either free or low-cost. Customer service for small businesses is typically provided via sweat equity.
Ground Rules
First, some common sense ground rules for providing good customer service:
1.The more ways you have to contact you the more assured the potential and repeat buyer will feel in coming back to your site. We will look at many of these ways in this article.
2.Respond quickly! There is no point to having many methods of contacting you (e.g., email, chat, voice mail) and then fail to respond in a timely manner. It will just turn people off. Better to have less contact methods and be diligent in responding to issues or requests.
3.Be proactive. Since we want to minimize the amount of time spent with customer service (and so do our customers!), provide as many ways as possible to answer common questions and problems as possible. Obvious solutions to this are FAQs and email updates.
4.Ask customers how you’re doing. Get feedback about your customer service from those who use it. Are the FAQs comprehensive? How hard was it to get in touch? Did you get your problem solved? This will enable you to improve your service. You may have to offer a freebie to get people to respond. There are many free sites that provide surveys and polls for your website, including: http://www.pollwizard.com; http://www.visitorpoll.com; http://www.pollit.com; http://polls.whatiz.com
Now that we have that out of the way, let’s discuss the common low-cost methods of customer service that we can use.
EMAIL
Yes, this is an obvious one, and is a minimum requirement for every website. You should have a specific email address for support requests (typically support@yourdomain.com). I have all email to this address forwarded to my MS Outlook mailbox and I use filters to color it red. This way I can take a quick glance and see if anyone is requesting help.
FAX
Some people like to use FAX, especially if they don’t want to send messages from their work email. You don’t need to own a FAX machine; you can get free FAX receive service that goes straight to your email. The two popular services are http://www.efax.com, and http://j2.com. You will have to pay if you want to send faxes.
USER FORUM
In the old days it was called a bulletin board system (BBS), now they are user forums or groups. This is a great way to provide support, mostly because if you can get enough people to use it, your customers will help each other out! People will request answers to problems that others may have already had, and they can respond with the answer. However—you must make an effort to participate in the group and answer questions
as much as possible, at least once a day. You can also post updates and message digests to common problems in the user group as well. The best place to start a group is at http://groups.yahoo.com.
CHAT
Chat is very popular on the Internet, and is becoming a popular tool with customer service as well. The chat software is free and includes products from AOL, MSN, and Yahoo, as well as mIRC and ICQ. Personally, I feel that ICQ is the best product to use for a business site. You can get it at http://icq.com. The only drawback to chat software is that they are proprietary and can only work with users that have the same software. So if some of your customers use MSN Chat, and some use AOL Instant Messaging, then you need to have both on your computer. There are a few chat programs that are capable of working with multiple chat services including the ones I listed above. These programs are: Jabber at http://www.jabber.com/index.shtml, EWZY at http://www.cactusvisionsoftware.com/ewzy.htm (which includes an autoresponder), and my personal favorite Trillian at http://www.cactusvisionsoftware.com/ewzy.htm.
There are more sophisticated software and services that you can use if you have larger needs for customer service. These include advanced chat with transcriptions, video, voice chat, etc. Take a look at the following sites: http://www.humanclick.com, http://www.phplivesupport.com/, or go to http://www.ecommercetimes.com/product_guide/live_interaction/ to see a current list of live interaction services and software.
VOICE and PHONE
Another method that really gives customers a “warm fuzzy” is being able to contact you by voice, such as a voice mailbox or live phone call. You can typically rent a voice mailbox from AT&T or other provider at a low-cost. Just make sure you return people’s calls! A great way to talk to customers for free (or low-cost) is to use a Voice-Over-IP software product such as Net2Phone (see http://web.net2phone.com ). This provides you a way to call anywhere in the country for 2 cents a minute, and great overseas rates as well. I use it for personal calls a lot. The great thing is that if others have this software, you can talk from computer-to-computer for free. So put the download link to the software on your web site.
OTHER SERVICES
If you want it all in one spot, look into ureach.com (http://www.ureach.com). They have
A unified messaging service that includes call forwarding, voice mail, fax, email, file storage (30MB), PDA address book synchronization, pager notification, ICQ integration, all in a single interface. You can also access messages via your WAP mobile phone. Some of their features are free others are not. Their plan info can be found here:
http://www.ureach.com/help/planinfo.htm.
Finally, you should track your problems (outstanding and closed) for historical purposes. Most of us are able to do this using either MS-Word or Excel. If you need a more sophisticated trouble tracking software, the only one I found that looked decent and didn’t cost a mortgage was Request Commander (about $30) at http://www.nestersoft.com/requestcommander.
Good luck!
About the Author
Mike Martone is the webmaster at http://www.profitmonkey.com, editor of the free newsletter Ebiz Edge, and author of the ebook '7 Days to 700% More Traffic'
|
|
|
|
|
| Gentoo Forums :: Index |
| Discussion forums for topics around the distribution, Linux applications, installation, administration, portage, frequently asked questions. |
| forums.gentoo.org |
|
| Readers' Opinions - New York Times |
| Books Reading Group. Readers are discussing “All Aunt Hagar’s Children,” Edward P. Jones’s new short story collection. More Books Forums ... |
| www.nytimes.com |
|
| Ubuntu Forums |
| This is a discussion help and support forum for Ubuntu Linux. |
| ubuntuforums.org |
|
| Joomla! Community Forum - Index |
| Joomla! Forum - The Joomla Community. Support, discussion and interaction with the Core Team. |
| forum.joomla.org |
|
| Internet forum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| A typical Internet forum discussion, with common elements such as emoticons, ... Like other forms of online communication, Internet forums are home to many ... |
| en.wikipedia.org |
|
| Java Technology Forums |
| Online discussion forums offering help for users in solving issues. Includes FAQs, and links to other Sun technical databases. |
| supportforum.sun.com |
|
| Adobe - Forums |
| Share questions, suggestions, and information about Adobe graphics products. |
| www.adobe.com |
|
| WoW Forums -> Forum Index |
| Read our Introduction to the Forums. This includes information about getting ... blizzard provides the World of Warcraft community forums for its players to ... |
| forums.worldofwarcraft.com |
|
| MySQL AB :: MySQL Forums |
| Forum to discuss the sample database included with MySQL ... The main discussion forum for MySQL. Please use specialized forums for specific topics. ... |
| forums.mysql.com |
|
| SitePoint Forums: Resources, Design, HTML, CSS, PHP, ASP, MySQL ... |
| Webmaster Forums for Design, CSS, XHTML, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript, Affiliate Marketing, ASP.NET, Promotion. |
| www.sitepoint.com |
|
| Delphi Forums |
| Offers free and paid forum hosting. The paid offer is ad-free. |
| www.delphiforums.com |
|
| Home - MozillaZine Forums |
| Search the forums for others who may be having the same issues you are. You can also browse the sticky'd posts at the top of the forum for the product ... |
| forums.mozillazine.org |
|
| Web Hosting, Free Web Hosting and Web Tools from Bravenet.com. |
| Maintain a direct mailing list. Message Forum Host your own online discussions. Vote Caster Perform a multi-question poll. Web Poll Perform a quick poll. ... |
| www.bravenet.com |
|
| Forums | NewsTalk |
| The Detroit News Online does not tolerate offensive language in its forums. The News will kill offensive posts. Participants can and will be denied access ... |
| info.detnews.com |
|
| osCommerce Community Support Forums |
| Official community support forums for the osCommerce project. |
| forums.oscommerce.com |
|
| The GardenWeb Forums - GardenWeb |
| The GardenWeb Forums comprise the largest community of gardeners on the Internet. ... If this is your first visit to the forums, you might want to visit our ... |
| forums.gardenweb.com |
|
| AnandTech |
| Is server configuration a pain? DSL or Cable Modem giving you fits? Get your questions answered and your topics discussed in the AnandTech Networking Forum. ... |
| forums.anandtech.com |
|
| Chronicle Forums - Index |
| Chronicle Forums - Index. ... Talk online about graduate-school life in our new forum. ... Forum Stats, 220919 Posts in 17109 Topics by 3306 Members. ... |
| chronicle.com |
|
| Forums | drupal.org |
| Try searching the forums first or a specific project's bug reports. Pre installation questions. Is Drupal a viable solution for my website? ... |
| drupal.org |
|
| Dev Shed Forums - Open Source web development |
| Dev Shed Forums - over 195246 members on our Dev Shed forums. |
| forums.devshed.com |
|
|