This will be a short post today to make up for not posting last week.  I’ll get back on track later this week, I promise.

What is keeping you from leveraging today’s technology to provide stellar customer service?  I’ve noticed a trend in the reasons I’ve heard from small business owners and it ISN’T money.  This surprised me because you’d expect the main reason to be cost.  In today’s economy cost IS something to consider and any changes or additions to the technology you use to support your business should be carefully thought out and carefully planned and implemented.

No, the reasons I hear most start like this:  ”I still have to…” or “I would have to change…” or “I want…” – in other words, it is all about the business owner, not at all about the customer.  When I hear sentences that start with these phrases the following questions come to my mind:

When I hear “I still have to…” or “I would have to change…” I wonder, have you taken the opportunity to rethink your operational processes?    You might not need that step any more.  Or I wonder if you really understand the solutions you are considering.  For example, if your response to putting in functionality for customers to self-schedule appointments is “I still have to call them to confirm or change the appointment”, you may need to look at what the services provide.  Most of them allow you to apply rules to the appointments, maybe only existing customers can self-schedule or you can specify dates and times for appointments based on the service selected.  In addition, most of the services include functionality that automatically emails confirmations and reminders for you.
When I hear “I want…” my ears really perk up – this is where it is GENERALLY about you, your sales technique and need to deal with your customer in a way you are comfortable with, your needs and not your customer’s.  When you start with “I want…” keep in mind that today’s culture is getting more technology-savvy and more technology-centric.  Your customers have lots of options on how to interact with business and more and more often they want to choose their communication channels and deal with your business when it is convenient for them.

If you keep thinking “I want…” instead of “They want…so I should…” you may find yourself left behind your more open minded and progressive competitors.

Wow, we are part 5 of the series on how to use technology to improve customer service with your small business.  No foolin!

Today I want to talk about online chat, also known as live chat or click-to-chat.    This is a feature you can add to your website that allows your customers or prospects to choose to communicate with your company real time, using text.  It can be implemented in a number of ways and can provide a variety of service-related benefits to your small business:

• Your customer service folks can be involved in multiple chats, allowing them to help more people at one time than they could on the phone.  Not only can your representatives have multiple chats going at once, you can “can” responses to frequently asked questions and your reps can use them by pressing a single button.   You can increase customer service while reducing operational costs!
• It allows your customer service people to engage in communication that is more conversation-like than asynchronous email.  The number of people that engage in live chat or instant messaging is on the rise so this a communication channel that many are very familiar with.  Finally, while it is real-time and comfortable, it allows for a level of anonymity that some people prefer.
• Customers or prospects that engage in online chat generally have a higher tolerance for waiting for service (but not too long!) – by definition they are online and can easily multitask while they are waiting for answers to their questions.  When they are on hold on the phone they are usually much less patient.
• Most, if not all, live chat implementations allow you to push content, via links, to the recipient.   You can provide FAQs or a how-to videos easily, for example.
• If you have an e-commerce site where you sell a product, most live chat vendors provide “shop with me” functionality that allows you to gently guide your customer thru your site and address any questions.
• You can set up live chat to proactively engage users if they spend a long time on a page or repeat actions that indicate they are having a problem.
• All of the chat conversations are logged and saved to a database.  You can use them identify frequent customer problems or diagnose customer-service issues.

Live chat can provide benefits beyond improved customer service.  Most of the vendors provide functionality that helps you better understand how users interact with your site and to optimize it.  You can proactively engage prospective customers at key place in your site, perhaps speeding up the acquisition or conversion process.

As with any new technology, there are a lot of best practices you can employ to improve your chances of success – just as there a lot of way to screw it up and annoy your customers and prospects.   This is definitely a place where you should get professional help to make sure you are doing the right thing for your business.

If you are interested in learning more about live chat, contact your technical advisor and see if live chat needs a place in your technology plan.

As a small business owner we want to help our customers personally, to meet with them face to face or talk to them on the phone so that we build a connection and a relationship. Unfortunately, sometimes our customers want to help themselves. When you allow customers to help themselves, where it makes sense, you empower them to get what they need when they need it. In the long run they are more likely to come back to you for additional products and services.   It doesn’t have to be an either/or scenario – why not allow them to choose between self-service or in-person service?

So what do I mean by self-service? It can mean different things to different companies:

• As I mentioned in an earlier post, services firms can allow their customers to set appointments online.  You can tell from this post I am a big fan of being able to set appointments online at my own convenience.  It may not always make sense but is something to consider.
• Companies that have a product can include product manuals and warranties online.  This one has become near and dear to my heart lately; I have a 10-year-old son and I probably don’t have to tell you that instructions and new toys/games/whatevers they belong to are soon parted.  Just last night I had to go online to find the instruction manual for the rock-tumbler he got for his birthday.  What a relief!
• Firms that share a lot of documents with their customers can set up portals to allow them access and share documents.  Tools vary in their sophistication and include (but are certainly not limited to) Dropbox, Box.net, Google Docs, Basecamp, et al.
• If you regularly do business with a customer why not present the invoices online?  Any then maybe even PAY online?  Cool, huh?  There are a lot of options for this and it is a topic worthy of its own post so we’ll leave it at that for now.
• Online ordering or online quote capabilities have been around a long time but it is surprising how many companies still don’t use them.  I think the mindset is that they want the prospect to all or come in so they can sell them in person.  Certainly some products and services are too complicated to handle online but, honestly, most aren’t.  I for one will likely look for another service provider if I can’t get at least a semblance of a quote online before I pick up the phone.

As you can see, there are a lot of ways for you to provide service to your customers online.  The additional benefit is that not only will you make your customer’s happy, you’ll reduce the customer service load on your employees, perhaps even freeing them up for other revenue generating task.  Sounds like a good deal all around to me!

Have you considered adding customer self-service to your small business technology plan?

I started to write this post about some other more specific examples of how small businesses can use  technology to improve customer service but some of them were related to a company’s website – and since a lot of companies STILL have awful websites and a few don’t have a website at all, I thought it made more sense to start there.  With the training wheels on.  Next week we can take them off.

A good, relevant website is essential to providing good customer service.  How?  Any time you can provide answers to  your customer’s questions at their convenience you are providing good customer service.  Your website can be accessed from virtually anywhere at anytime, giving your customers (and prospective customers) instant access to the information they need.  Descriptions of services and products, fees and costs, contact information, hours of operation and maps or driving directions are a great start.  If you get a lot of the same questions over and over you can include FAQs.  Testimonials or references from other customers provide prospects with references that they can contact.  If you have service manuals, installation guide, instructions or other documentation, you can allow them to be downloaded from the website.  You can provide video clips or blog articles with educational content.  The possibilities are boundless.

Your website can be a storefront and a vehicle for your marketing and branding but it can also be the hub of your customer service platform.  Once you have the basics covered you can move on to providing even more service online.  A few weeks ago I wrote about providing customer self-service by allowing them to schedule appointments online.  In my next post I’ll expand on this customer self-service theme.  In the meantime, how do you provide customer service online?

In the last post I wrote about how important it is for small businesses to respond to emails from customers and to use it as a communication channel if that is what the customer prefers.  Face it, some people just feel more comfortable with the feeling of distance you get with email as opposed to phone or face to face conversations.  Personally, I like email because I can send and respond asynchronously, at my convenience.

There is another important aspect of email as it relates to customer service that I want to explore today – outbound email. This is where you send email to a customer that are not directly in response to a query or email from the them.

What kinds of email am I talking about?  Email that provides value or information to a customer that is not salesy or annoying.  Assuming your customer has given you permission to send them emails you can send newsletters with educational content, personalized emails with reminders, emails with coupons or specials.  Here are some examples:

• an accounting firm could send out quarterly newsletters with information about tax changes or tips on how to save money on taxes.  They could send out personal reminders when it was time to file quarterly taxes.
• an auto repair business could send out emails when it is time for an oil change, recalls or other routine maintenance.  In these they could provide coupons or services for those specials.
• a hardware store could send out seasonal newsletters that focus on “going green” or weatherizing homes or gardens for the upcoming season.
• a garden center could send out monthly gardening tips
• a hair salon could use email to send reminders for upcoming appointments

There is a marketing aspect to some of these; as a business owner you are hoping that your customer will be reminded about a service or product they need from you.  But beneath all of these there should be a strong vein of customer service, of providing additional incremental value to your customer.  It costs nothing or almost nothing to use Mail Chimp, Constant Contact or Aweber to send out targetted emails to your customers.

Do you use email to improve your customer service?  If not, is it time to look at your technology plan to add it?