In a traditional way of business, if a customer needs help, he or she can look around and find someone. We know that many successful companies such as P&G and HP all have excellent customer care services. And for many small businesses who can’t afford to have their own customer service department, they could choose to provide customer service as a part of their online sales experience. Following are some tips about providing sweet customer service with a minimum amount of work and cost.
1. KNOWING WHAT YOUR CUSTOMERS NEED
You could use online quizzes and surveys to get to know your customers better. For example, you could make quizzes that test customers’ understanding of your products, or surveys like “in which way do you use our products for”. Through all these quizzes and surveys, you may found out things you never thought of. Results of these quizzes and surveys could help you to improve your product development strategy and your sales strategy. Also, they help you provide intimate customer care.
Tools for making online quizzes and surveys: Articulate QuizMaker, Wondershare QuizCreator, Question Writer
2. PUBLISH MORE OF YOUR OWN INFORMATION
Above we talked about knowing your customers better. This step is about to make your customers know you better. In your site, you should put more of your detailed information. This could make you look more trustable online. When customers turn to you for customer care online, they would know that they are dealing with someone real. What’s more, you could put demos and business presentations on your sites. The demos could intuitively show your customers how to use your products. And the well-designed business presentations could help your customers understand your thoughts and feel closer to you. Then you are not only a small company sells things but a company that has its own culture.
Tools for demo recording and online presentation: Adobe Captivate, DemoCreator, Wondershare PPT2Fash, Articulate Presenter
3. USE LIVE CHAT
Live chat is probably the best option for direct online customer service. It gives you the option of providing real-time help to more than one customer at a time. The downside is that you or your employees have to make sure that your site clearly states when representatives are available to help. Once you have set your live chat hours, do your best to stick to them.
Nowadays using a live chat is often in the form of instant messaging. Since we got so many free IM tools, you could simply have icons of your IM tools available put on your site. Customers can just click on the icons to connect to you immediately. Normally, it would require customers to have the IM tool installed on their computers.
Tools for live chat:
Skype, MSN
4. BUILD YOUR OWN MEMBER FORUM
If possible, a lively member forum would be an excellent idea for you to keep in touch with your customers and build a customer community online. Have someone to be the administrator and confine all the topics to a certain level that connect to your business and products. And of course, you should let your customers be friends with each other. As mentioned before, this is the way not only sells things but also shape your own company culture through your customer services.
Online customer service isn't really that different from traditional business support. As long as you take care of your customers, they will keep coming back.
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