Great customer service is what separates the really successful online businesses from the forgettable ones. However, achieving truly great customer service takes work. It takes a lot of work. In fact, it takes so much work that many businesses never manage to achieve it.
For some businesses, great customers service seems cost-prohibitive. This is ironic, as achieving great customer service would increase business in the long run, and almost always pays for itself.
All that said, whether or not you achieve great customer service isn't just a matter of caring about your customers and wanting to fix their problems. In many cases, it's all about the particular tools and tactics you use. Pick the right tools, and online customer service becomes quick, painless, and effective.
Here's a look at five tools that will take your online customers service from zero to hero:
1. LivePerson
Live Person has been around since 1995, and is one of the oldest and most successful online customer service tools on the market. If you've ever visited the customer service site for Earthlink, Microsoft, Verizon, Hewlett-Packard, or Qwest, chances are you've seen a LivePerson chat box.
The basic premise of LivePerson is this: when a customer visits your site, they're a single click away from a text-based customer service session. For the customer, that means no digging around for your 800 number and no waiting in an endless call queue.
For you it means greater agility and flexibility. You can meet several customers' needs all at once, without having to invest in call center technology and without being stuck on the phone all day.
LivePerson is, of course, a robust chat box solution. It's probably not ideal for small businesses, at least from a cost perspective.
2. Volusion
For smaller businesses, there are chat box solutions that are more idea. Volusion is one of those. Volusion gives you similar capability as LivePerson, but on a smaller scale.
For example, the free version of Volusion is limited to a single operator and no more than five concurrent chats. While this obviously isn't sufficient for a higher-volume situation, it can work well when you're first starting out.
Volusion also offers a premium service so that you can scale up to a more robust solution as your business grows, rather than switching out to another tool (such as LivePerson).
3. Zendesk
If you've spent any amount of time dealing with customer service issues, there are a couple of things you've probably noticed:
- The same customer service issues tend to arise again and again.
- It's easy to lose track of a customer service issue. You need to be highly organized, or some issues will fall through the cracks.
These twin truisms are behind the design of Zendesk. Zendesk is a ticket tracking package that lets you take your online customer service up a notch.
With Zendesk, you have a central repository of all of your customer service information. From there you can create priority levels for tickets, identify predetermined solutions and set up macros, to resolve them, and even implement a number of automated customer service processes.
4. Trouble Ticket Express
As is the case with chat boxes, there are free ticket tracking systems, as well. Trouble Ticket Express is installed on your web server, and offers some of the same basic functionality as ZenDesk.
Here again, the free solution isn't as robust as the paid solution, and there's a bit of a knowledge curve you need to have to use Trouble Ticket Express. Still, it will allow you to do most of what you want, including:
- Track customer service correspondence
- Create an answer library
- Monitor ticket statuses
- And more.
Some of the functionality in trouble ticket express requires the one-time purchase of an add-on module.
5. WorldAPP KeySurvey
Great customer service means knowing where your customers are, and identifying customer service issues before they even happen. One way to do that is by taking your customers' pulse regularly.
WorldAPP KeySurvey gives you the ability to survey your customers right from your website. There are a number of potential uses for this technology, from market research to evaluating problems with your order process.
This solution is highly customizable, allowing you to create specific logical transitions in the survey process. That means each participant's experience can be unique, and tailored to their specific problem. More than just a customer service solution, this one allows you to get valuable information that can be used in marketing, as well.
Customer service isn't rocket science. You don't have to spend a ton of money to make it happen, either. You just need to be committed to making sure your customers are happy, and willing to find the right tools that fit your online business.
About the Author: Greg Muender is President of Ticket Kick, a California company that helps drivers get red light tickets, speeding tickets, and other traffic tickets dismissed by helping drivers through the trial by written declaration process. The company, which formally launched in 2010 after providing similar services since 2006, is the leading company in this space and growing rapidly.