Customer Support on the web
By: Daniel Szuc and Gerry Gaffney
Published - 13 Feb 2005
Summary: Customers avoid web-based customer support if information is not relevant, out of date or hard to find. Without a business commitment to addressing these issues, customers will continue to prefer contacting a service representative by phone. |
Customers will use the fastest and easiest path when they need assistance. Usually, this means picking up the phone and speaking directly to customer support staff. This is true for technical problems, service requests and billing enquiries.
While business would prefer to direct as many queries as possible to a web-based customer service channel, this can only happen if there is a clear incentive for customers to use that channel in preference to others. Such incentives include:
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Remembering historical information (such as previous bills and payments and records of previous contacts)
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Providing easy ways to update personal information
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Providing easy payment methods
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Providing enhanced functionality not available in other channels (for example, analysis tools)
Unfortunately, confusing design and excessive focus on technology frequently make web channels unattractive.
Problems
In recent projects, we have reviewed customer support on web and telephone-based interactive voice response (IVR) systems, considering how the two channels could be better aligned, and why these channels were not being used for certain functions. Some of the problems we discovered were:
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Unclear primary navigation
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Excessive depth of structure, with items being 'buried' and inaccessible
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Inconsistent menus options and terminology between the web and IVR channels
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Access to critical tasks not available from the Customer Support Home Page
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Contact information (phone numbers and email addresses) being hidden (sometimes deliberately).
Some of the factors that affect the success of customer service interactions on the web include:
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The nature of the problem. Some problems require a dialogue with another person, or have other characteristics that make them unsuitable for resolution on the web.
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Urgency. An urgent problem may be amenable to web support if the answer is instantaneous. If not, customers will pursue other channels.
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Visibility of customer support. Can customers find the appropriate functions readily from the Home page?
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"Findability". Can customers find the right path to the function or information they require?
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Commitment to customer support. Have customers achieved satisfactory outcomes in the past, and do they have expectations of positive outcomes when dealing with the organization?
Same problem, different systems
In most cases, we see Customer Support staff using in-house systems that are different to those being used by customers. While this shields customers from unnecessary complexity, the in-house systems are frequently more up-to-date making the web channel less attractive.
Ideally, customer-facing and internal systems should contain the same data. The benefits are that:
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Information is updated centrally and once only.
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Information is consistent, regardless of access mechanism
If the same system or website is used by both customers and staff, there are additional benefits:
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The Customer Support staff can walk customers through screens
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The website is not seen as a "burden" or "yet another system" to keep relevant
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There is buy-in from the Call Center and a commitment to keeping the information accurate and current
There are real opportunities for business to review their Customer Support strategies. By considering how customers can best be served on the web and providing real incentives for customers to use the web as a self-service channel, businesses can free Customer Support staff to manage non-routine and complex problems, while customers benefit from quick and easy resolution of the majority of their support requirements.