Creating Great Customer Experience
| Category: Customer Service | Date: 2001-07-20 |
Too often, Internet companies mount expensive ad campaigns and hire PR firms before they put their house in order. Thats why a lot of glitzy ads lead people to sites where the customer experience is confusing, or just plain bad. When that happens, all the advertising, PR, search engine placement, and other marketing tactics in the world wont mean fudge.
The most important features you can create are the ones that lend themselves to a great customer experience. Spending money on market research often makes more sense than spending it on advertising. Develop a community that addresses the real needs of visitors and you give them a reason not only to return again and again, but also to bring their friends.
For an E-commerce site, the most basic measurements of marketability are conversion rate—the ratio of buyers to visitors—and average order size. A low conversion rate or a drop in order size should be a red flag about more serious site problems. Customers want your site to be easy to use. Take that away from them and theyre not coming back, ever, no matter how much advertising and PR you do.
Build Business Around the Customer
Smart marketing starts with good site intelligence that helps develop better site personalization, more targeted focus, easier shopping, and stronger partnerships with other E-commerce players.
The Web makes possible a new business model that depends on merchandising ease. If a site writes about something, it can sell it too. Its possible to provide a depth of information online that is not possible in a brick-and-mortar environment. People can be persuaded to buy products online without touching, tasting, or trying them first. To paraphrase the great Blues singer Sippy Wallace, you can make customers do what you want them to, but you got to know how.
Sites that Do It Right
Lets look at some sites that have built a marketable customer experience into their concepts:
Biztravel promises to do more for airline passengers than airlines have ever done themselves. Biztravel is offering customers unprecedented refunds for late or cancelled flights anywhere in the world on five big airlines—Air France, American Airlines, British Airways, Continental Airlines, and US Airways.
Purchase your tickets on biztravel.com and you can apply for a refund of $100 if your plane is more than 30 minutes late to its destination and a $200 refund for a delay of an hour or more. If your flights delayed more than two hours, or canceled on the day of departure for anything besides a mechanical problem, biztravel will give you a full refund.
Biztravel is betting that its customer-centric program will boost traffic to the Web Site and improve its ratio of customers who book, instead of just browse, tickets. The move has resulted in a flurry of publicity, including an article in The Wall St. Journal.
Hungry Minds is an online learning portal. Besides courses, it features experts for hire and tutorials of all descriptions. A search on photography returns 1 expert, 30 Web sites, 27 distance learning courses, 5 discussion groups, 22 tutorials, 61 books, and 15 "other media" by which they mean books, videos, and periodicals. (I am a happy camper, as I am soon to spend a few hours on the subject.) Complete, intelligently organized, information on every topic listed. People remember this kind of good treatment by a site.
The Black Entertainment Network doesnt just give in-depth information about entertainment. This lively site addresses its target audiences political concerns, career goals, health, social lives, personal finances, and other lifestyle issues that affect their lives. This is a true community. There is so much good quality information on the site that one could easily spend a day there.
Whats this got to do with marketing? Everything! With such a treasure trove of lifestyle and entertainment content, bet.com is set up for reciprocal linking and cross promotion with a variety of sites that address the same demographic. Bet.com is a magnet both for advertisers who want to reach their audience and for viral marketing by friends telling other friends about this great site.
American Leather has nothing to hide. It tells me right on the home page that I will get four-week delivery on my custom-made furniture. No waiting six months for delivery! It shows me remarkably clear little photos of its many styles. I click on "Havana" and Im shown the couch and chair in a room setting.
The site shows me how the furniture is constructed, tells me about the tanning process, and explains why a leather couch will last seven times as long as a fabric version. Its clear, bright, and easy to use. The site is thorough, easy to navigate, and forthright about delivery times. Since the site saves me from having to ask all these questions in the dealers store, I will forgive them for not letting me order online.
Dell Computers lets you configure your new system and place your order on the site. Then the real customer service kicks in. Their post-purchase service cant be beat. You are given a URL, support.dell.com/ordstat/, for tracking every possible detail of your order. You get a personal Dell order number and customer number.
Once your computer is shipped you can track where it is at all times. Says my friend William Johnson who just ordered a Dell computer: "These guys are doing it right. Something about the way they do it makes me feel totally confident and totally served."
Drugstore.com has a very quick and easy signup and shortcuts like "Shop by brand" and "Your list." Your List fills up automatically as you shop, keeps track of your prescriptions, reminds you (via email) to stock up on anything you ask it to, lets you check items you want to re-order, and promises 24 hour Customer Care. They also rewards repeat purchases with discounts.
Guess.com has situational merchandise. It responds to the way people really shop: Im going on vacation and I need everything. OK, here it all is. "Getaway essentials" suggests items good for a weekend away or ones to buy before a vacation.
Costco.coms merchandise descriptions are a marvel. Pages with product descriptions that actually show shipping charges instead of surprising you with the huge charges at the end, and that also give approximate delivery time as you order. They also offer personalized content and collaborative filtering—that is, when looking at item X, you are told that other people who bought item X bought items Y and Z to go with it.
Sites that Bite
Now lets look at some sites with features that blow it by making the customer experience unpleasant:
Just Balls set out to be the best at one thing and to become the ultimate source of news, information and products in just one one category. Theyve received a lot of awards and quite a bit of media attention as a result of their sharp focus. The site not only sells and imprints balls for every imaginable sport, but also contains game rules, a ball encyclopedia, and tips for ball care.
However, when you try to order, things fall apart. On the home page, were encouraged to "Serve Up Savings" by ordering a case of tennis balls. Great idea. But when you click, you get to an order form where a case is not an option. Tiles along the side of the page offer links to "Deal of the Day," and "Quantity Discounts." Neither link takes you to the case price for tennis balls. Goodbye Just Balls.
Reflect is a custom beauty products site that makes visitors fill out a multiscreen registration form before they can shop. Customer experience doesnt get much worse than this.
Before I saw a product I could buy, I had to fill out a lengthy and stupid questionnaire which asked me to choose: "If I were a house I would be: a) a beautiful mansion filled with art from the hottest artists, b) a penthouse apt in the heart of a big city, c) a maintenance-free townhouse with an exercise room, d) a cozy house with a meditation room and a garden, e) a historic home in an established upscale neighborhood, f) a ranch in the country." (And this has WHAT to do with make-up?)
"The person closest to me would say that I am most likely to dream about a) living a glamorous life, b) going for a sunrise walk on a secluded beach. . ." And, get this: "My personality is best represented by: a) a peacock, b) a swan, c) a hawk, d) a dove." Then they actually asked my ethnic background. Hey! I thought that was illegal.
After several more equally vapid queries, it turns out the result of this third degree is that theyve selected colors and illustrations for my personal Web site. But they still have not shown me any products. What do these people sell anyway? Why is it a secret? Are they ashamed of their products?
Yikers! Now an obnoxious cartoon character named Alice pops up and tells me she is my guide and shopper throughout the site—go away! Good-bye forever.
Bottom Line It, Please
So whats the bottom line? The best way to give your site a marketing edge is to think about what your customers want and then give it to them. What? You thought I was going to tell you something complicated?
About the Author
B.L.s company, whatsnextonline.com, builds global traffic and sales for Internet businesses.
:To contact see details below.
www.whatsnextonline.com
The most important features you can create are the ones that lend themselves to a great customer experience. Spending money on market research often makes more sense than spending it on advertising. Develop a community that addresses the real needs of visitors and you give them a reason not only to return again and again, but also to bring their friends.
For an E-commerce site, the most basic measurements of marketability are conversion rate—the ratio of buyers to visitors—and average order size. A low conversion rate or a drop in order size should be a red flag about more serious site problems. Customers want your site to be easy to use. Take that away from them and theyre not coming back, ever, no matter how much advertising and PR you do.
Build Business Around the Customer
Smart marketing starts with good site intelligence that helps develop better site personalization, more targeted focus, easier shopping, and stronger partnerships with other E-commerce players.
The Web makes possible a new business model that depends on merchandising ease. If a site writes about something, it can sell it too. Its possible to provide a depth of information online that is not possible in a brick-and-mortar environment. People can be persuaded to buy products online without touching, tasting, or trying them first. To paraphrase the great Blues singer Sippy Wallace, you can make customers do what you want them to, but you got to know how.
Sites that Do It Right
Lets look at some sites that have built a marketable customer experience into their concepts:
Biztravel promises to do more for airline passengers than airlines have ever done themselves. Biztravel is offering customers unprecedented refunds for late or cancelled flights anywhere in the world on five big airlines—Air France, American Airlines, British Airways, Continental Airlines, and US Airways.
Purchase your tickets on biztravel.com and you can apply for a refund of $100 if your plane is more than 30 minutes late to its destination and a $200 refund for a delay of an hour or more. If your flights delayed more than two hours, or canceled on the day of departure for anything besides a mechanical problem, biztravel will give you a full refund.
Biztravel is betting that its customer-centric program will boost traffic to the Web Site and improve its ratio of customers who book, instead of just browse, tickets. The move has resulted in a flurry of publicity, including an article in The Wall St. Journal.
Hungry Minds is an online learning portal. Besides courses, it features experts for hire and tutorials of all descriptions. A search on photography returns 1 expert, 30 Web sites, 27 distance learning courses, 5 discussion groups, 22 tutorials, 61 books, and 15 "other media" by which they mean books, videos, and periodicals. (I am a happy camper, as I am soon to spend a few hours on the subject.) Complete, intelligently organized, information on every topic listed. People remember this kind of good treatment by a site.
The Black Entertainment Network doesnt just give in-depth information about entertainment. This lively site addresses its target audiences political concerns, career goals, health, social lives, personal finances, and other lifestyle issues that affect their lives. This is a true community. There is so much good quality information on the site that one could easily spend a day there.
Whats this got to do with marketing? Everything! With such a treasure trove of lifestyle and entertainment content, bet.com is set up for reciprocal linking and cross promotion with a variety of sites that address the same demographic. Bet.com is a magnet both for advertisers who want to reach their audience and for viral marketing by friends telling other friends about this great site.
American Leather has nothing to hide. It tells me right on the home page that I will get four-week delivery on my custom-made furniture. No waiting six months for delivery! It shows me remarkably clear little photos of its many styles. I click on "Havana" and Im shown the couch and chair in a room setting.
The site shows me how the furniture is constructed, tells me about the tanning process, and explains why a leather couch will last seven times as long as a fabric version. Its clear, bright, and easy to use. The site is thorough, easy to navigate, and forthright about delivery times. Since the site saves me from having to ask all these questions in the dealers store, I will forgive them for not letting me order online.
Dell Computers lets you configure your new system and place your order on the site. Then the real customer service kicks in. Their post-purchase service cant be beat. You are given a URL, support.dell.com/ordstat/, for tracking every possible detail of your order. You get a personal Dell order number and customer number.
Once your computer is shipped you can track where it is at all times. Says my friend William Johnson who just ordered a Dell computer: "These guys are doing it right. Something about the way they do it makes me feel totally confident and totally served."
Drugstore.com has a very quick and easy signup and shortcuts like "Shop by brand" and "Your list." Your List fills up automatically as you shop, keeps track of your prescriptions, reminds you (via email) to stock up on anything you ask it to, lets you check items you want to re-order, and promises 24 hour Customer Care. They also rewards repeat purchases with discounts.
Guess.com has situational merchandise. It responds to the way people really shop: Im going on vacation and I need everything. OK, here it all is. "Getaway essentials" suggests items good for a weekend away or ones to buy before a vacation.
Costco.coms merchandise descriptions are a marvel. Pages with product descriptions that actually show shipping charges instead of surprising you with the huge charges at the end, and that also give approximate delivery time as you order. They also offer personalized content and collaborative filtering—that is, when looking at item X, you are told that other people who bought item X bought items Y and Z to go with it.
Sites that Bite
Now lets look at some sites with features that blow it by making the customer experience unpleasant:
Just Balls set out to be the best at one thing and to become the ultimate source of news, information and products in just one one category. Theyve received a lot of awards and quite a bit of media attention as a result of their sharp focus. The site not only sells and imprints balls for every imaginable sport, but also contains game rules, a ball encyclopedia, and tips for ball care.
However, when you try to order, things fall apart. On the home page, were encouraged to "Serve Up Savings" by ordering a case of tennis balls. Great idea. But when you click, you get to an order form where a case is not an option. Tiles along the side of the page offer links to "Deal of the Day," and "Quantity Discounts." Neither link takes you to the case price for tennis balls. Goodbye Just Balls.
Reflect is a custom beauty products site that makes visitors fill out a multiscreen registration form before they can shop. Customer experience doesnt get much worse than this.
Before I saw a product I could buy, I had to fill out a lengthy and stupid questionnaire which asked me to choose: "If I were a house I would be: a) a beautiful mansion filled with art from the hottest artists, b) a penthouse apt in the heart of a big city, c) a maintenance-free townhouse with an exercise room, d) a cozy house with a meditation room and a garden, e) a historic home in an established upscale neighborhood, f) a ranch in the country." (And this has WHAT to do with make-up?)
"The person closest to me would say that I am most likely to dream about a) living a glamorous life, b) going for a sunrise walk on a secluded beach. . ." And, get this: "My personality is best represented by: a) a peacock, b) a swan, c) a hawk, d) a dove." Then they actually asked my ethnic background. Hey! I thought that was illegal.
After several more equally vapid queries, it turns out the result of this third degree is that theyve selected colors and illustrations for my personal Web site. But they still have not shown me any products. What do these people sell anyway? Why is it a secret? Are they ashamed of their products?
Yikers! Now an obnoxious cartoon character named Alice pops up and tells me she is my guide and shopper throughout the site—go away! Good-bye forever.
Bottom Line It, Please
So whats the bottom line? The best way to give your site a marketing edge is to think about what your customers want and then give it to them. What? You thought I was going to tell you something complicated?
About the Author
B.L.s company, whatsnextonline.com, builds global traffic and sales for Internet businesses.
:To contact see details below.
www.whatsnextonline.com
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