How To Improve Your Online Customer Service

Good customer service isn’t restricted to face-to-face interaction: these days it is important to ensure that your online customer service is just as professional. After all, your website is your virtual shop window so you want any customers to go away feeling they have been treated well – just as you would if they visited your premises in person.

There are many different areas you can work on to ensure this is the case, some of which are as follows:

Allow For Self-Service: You don’t need to patronise your clients: yes, you need to make the process of using your website as simple as possible for those who are less confident online; but just as you find self-service check-outs in most supermarkets today, you also need to offer the option of online self-service. Make sure you have a comprehensive FAQ page to enable users to find the answers to common questions so they don’t necessarily have to contact your customer service team about every query. You should monitor and update this regularly to keep up with changing demands.

Clear Contact Info: You should always make it as easy as possible for your customers to contact you: failure to do so engenders mistrust and they will very likely go elsewhere to buy what they’re looking for. The best sites will offer multiple contact options so you should too: give telephone numbers, email addresses, instant chat options and so on. Include several links to all of these to show demonstrate transparency. Making your contact details easy and accessible will show that you are serious about providing excellent customer service.

Encourage Feedback: In addition to providing contact details, it’s also important that you allow customers to leave feedback on your website. This will show that you have nothing to hide. You can do this however you like: via a dedicated ‘feedback’ link, specific product reviews or through allowing visitors to comment on your blog posts. You should then try to engage personally with your customers by responding to these comments.

Deal With Complaints: Every company, however good it is, will now and then have to deal with customer complaints. It’s simply a fact of life in the business world. What is important is how you respond to and deal with these complaints. The most important thing is to act quickly: if someone has posted a negative comment on your website, respond publicly and always apologise for any inconvenience they may have had. If you’re at fault then don’t argue the point – just admit to it and offer recompense. An example would be if a product is damaged in transit and arrives broken: don’t quibble, just send them out another one and even offer a discount if they have been very inconvenienced.

Common Web Design Mistakes And How To Deal With Them

If you’re setting up a business for the first time you will know that there is a huge amount to think about. Because of this, you may not be giving the design of your website the attention it deserves. There are lots of mistakes that many new companies make with their website and these can turn out to be very costly. After all, your website is your online calling card: it’s what you use to present your brand to the world.

To help you find out whether you have made any of these mistakes, here are some of the most common ones and how to deal with them:

Too Much Clutter: If you have an awful lot of information to convey then take care how you do it. The content on your website should be as simple as possible for the visitor to take in. One important rule is this: never cram too much onto your home page. This is the first thing most visitors will see, so it needs to convey the essence of what you do as quickly as possible. Don’t overload it with text and images going into detail about all your products and services. All of this should be in separate pages that are easy and intuitive to navigate.

Too Much Text: This is really a continuation of the above point: when it comes to text, remember that less is more.  Try to say what needs to be said using as few words as possible (there is quite an art to this). And what text you do have should be broken up to make it easier to digest. You can do this by adding bullet points, sub-headings and placing it in columns.

Over-Use Of Videos And Music: A few well-put-together videos can work wonders for your marketing so you should never overlook them altogether. But – and this is a big but – you should avoid using them on page load. Many companies do this and it’s hard to see why. All it serves to do is slow down the load, annoy customers and probably cause them to navigate away from your site quickly. Instead, provide clear links to videos, either from your website or social media pages. It’s better to give people the choice to watch or listen to something rather than force it on them. (Look at the outcry there was when Apple decided to plonk the new U2 album directly onto all iTunes accounts without anyone asking them to.)

Pop-Up Windows: You may be tempted to use these to draw attention to a new product or get people to sign up for newsletters. All we can say is: don’t. It is annoying for visitors and will also give your website a bit of a ‘cheap’ feel. Pop-up windows have associations with spam and nobody likes spam!