(1) Be careful who you register your domain with.Some domain name registrars make it very difficult tochange your web host. I registered my first twodomains with a registrar that caused me more headachesthan I care to think about. When I needed to transferone of my domain names to a new web host, my originalemail address had changed. I was no longer able tosend them an email from that address and so I couldn'tauthenticate my request for domain transfer. So Itried to update my personal record with my new emailaddress. I got a message saying that I could onlychange my email address by sending an email from myoriginal email address (which no longer existed). Sothen I tried using my password. Again, I got a messagesaying that my request for transfer of domain mustcome from my original email address.

This bureaucratic nightmare went on for 4 weeks. Toadd to my frustration, I was communicating with amachine, not a human being. By end of that time Ihad no less than 35 computer-generated emails tellingme that my domain could not be transferred.

Finally, I sent my request for domain transfer in a5-page fax, including photocopy of my passport. Theythen sent me an email saying my request for domaintransfer could not be processed because my request wasnot on company letterhead. So I designed a letterheadand re-submitted 5-page fax. Finally, 6 weeksafter my first request, my domain was transferred.

To avoid this kind of experience I recommend you useregister.com:

http://www.register.com

Using their online Domain Manager, it took me lessthan 2 minutes to transfer my domain!

Since none of us is running a large company (I assume) and don’t have much of a budget—if any—for customer service, all of tips and resources in this article are either free or low-cost. Customer service for small businesses is typically provided via sweat equity.

Ground Rules First, some common sense ground rules for providing good customer service: 1.The more ways you have to contact you more assured potential and repeat buyer will feel in coming back to your site. We will look at many of these ways in this article. 2.Respond quickly! There is no point to having many methods of contacting you (e.g., email, chat, voice mail) and then fail to respond in a timely manner. It will just turn people off. Better to have less contact methods and be diligent in responding to issues or requests. 3.Be proactive. Since we want to minimize amount of time spent with customer service (and so do our customers!), provide as many ways as possible to answer common questions and problems as possible. Obvious solutions to this are FAQs and email updates. 4.Ask customers how you’re doing. Get feedback about your customer service from those who use it. Are FAQs comprehensive? How hard was it to get in touch? Did you get your problem solved? This will enable you to improve your service. You may have to offer a freebie to get people to respond. There are many free sites that provide surveys and polls for your website, including: http://www.pollwizard.com; http://www.visitorpoll.com; http://www.pollit.com; http://polls.whatiz.com

Now that we have that out of way, let’s discuss common low-cost methods of customer service that we can use.

EMAIL Yes, this is an obvious one, and is a minimum requirement for every website. You should have a specific email address for support requests (typically support@yourdomain.com). I have all email to this address forwarded to my MS Outlook mailbox and I use filters to color it red. This way I can take a quick glance and see if anyone is requesting help.

FAX Some people like to use FAX, especially if they don’t want to send messages from their work email. You don’t need to own a FAX machine; you can get free FAX receive service that goes straight to your email. The two popular services are http://www.efax.com, and http://j2.com. You will have to pay if you want to send faxes.