Providing Excellent Customer Support on a Small Budget

Written by Bill Platt


An integral part of any successful e-commerce website is an effective customer support solution. Your online business must be able to quickly respond to inquiries from potential clients and from existing clients, and then be able to address those inquiries accurately and efficiently.

There is no other area of an e-commerce website that is as important as customer service and support. If your online business fails to address this one issue, your business is nearly doomed to failure.

Small business owners usually rely on a simple email address or a contact form on their website to direct inquiries. The reasons for this choice are obvious.

Most small businesses are one person operations. There is seldom any need to provide anything more elaborate provided there is only one person handling all communications.

Inrepparttar event thatrepparttar 108996 site is being managed by only one person, it is recommended that you provide your customers a simple contact form attached to a simple contact script which can be found for free in numerous places online. A good starting point is:

http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Programs_and_Scripts/Perl/

This isrepparttar 108997 recommended method because spammers ruthlessly use email harvesting software to gather email addresses from websites for their spam games. If your real contact email address is hidden inside of a CGI script, thenrepparttar 108998 spam harvesters cannot find your address, thus protecting your email address from large amounts of spam email.

Anyone who is operating a website for profit and has no intention of ever expanding his/her business beyond current levels should not worry too much about expanding beyond a simple CGI contact script to run their customer service and support.

However, if you find yourself growing torepparttar 108999 point of needing something better, then please keep reading.

Small business people often find themselves inrepparttar 109000 mode of needing to add extra support staff, but still being small enough to not be able to yet afford a customized support software solution.

Software driven help desks can be an expensive proposition. WonderDesk is a decent application to serve this market, but starting at $499 and going up to $8499, it can be a really expensive solution.

http://www.wonderdesk.com

Facing costs like this, many small businesses choose to try bringing on extra staff and trying to manage incoming messages through various POP email accounts.

While this method remainsrepparttar 109001 cheapest solution, it is not alwaysrepparttar 109002 most efficient. Think about this.

If you have email going to Bob and to Steve --- in a theoretical scenario --- and you have Bob handling sales and Steve handling support, all would seem well.

But what if Bob finds himself extremely ill and unable to work? What then? Now you are stuck withrepparttar 109003 very real possibility of sales inquiries not being handled until Bob can return to work. Sorepparttar 109004 way to handle this becomes making sure that everyone has access torepparttar 109005 accounts that handle sales inquiries and support inquiries. So, you make arrangements for both Bob and Steve to be able to getrepparttar 109006 email fromrepparttar 109007 POP accounts.

Of course, this introduces a whole brand new problem. Now, both Bob and Steve are getting email from both accounts. But now, if Bob answers an email, Steve really has no way of knowing that Bob has already answeredrepparttar 109008 email. If both Bob and Steve answerrepparttar 109009 inquiry, then your company now looks as if it consists of a couple of bumbling idiots. That is definitely notrepparttar 109010 image you want to portray of your company. Additionally, you don't want Bob and Steve answering inquiries that have already been answered because it is a waste of human resources.

MOST ONLINE BUSINESSES DO NOT OFFER WHAT CONSUMERS DEMAND

Written by Bob McElwain


There's so much data aboutrepparttar Web floating about, it's difficult to make sense of it all. And even more difficult to plan based onrepparttar 108995 information you have. However, it does seem clear that B2B (Business to Business) transactions are up, and are likely to move up even more strongly. Reports indicate very large increases in capital spending by major companies to take full advantage of savings to be had in buying onrepparttar 108996 Web.

Some reports regards B2C (Business to Consumer) transactions paint glowing pictures of increases in this area as well. But my hunch is,repparttar 108997 "glow" mentioned isn't as bright as claimed. Certainlyrepparttar 108998 volume of business is not. My conviction is that online companies hoping to attract offline consumers have a very long way to go.

A Typical B2C Site

They're usually well done. Navigation is pretty good. Buy buttons abound. With lots of links to further informa- tion or comparisons.

Butrepparttar 108999 information provided is pretty skimpy. Andrepparttar 109000 comparisons are often limited. Okay, this handheld has 2 megs of memory and this one has 8 megs. The novice has questions: "Which is best for me? And why?"

On most sites, such answers aren't available. In fact you may not even find an email address to which to send a question. It's as if these companies assume you know all about what you need before you arrive.

My Introduction To Palm Pilots

I recently became interested in Palms and would like to have one. But I also needrepparttar 109001 software or whatever to convert text to a format this unit can display. My guess is that files to be read on a Palm must be downloaded to a desktop computer, then loaded intorepparttar 109002 Palm with a physical or software interface. But I'm not sure.

Three hours of looking at sites loaded with products and buy buttons, got me nowhere close to any answer. And at this writing, I'm as uninformed as when I began. (To be fair, I haven't yet checked further.)

Will Consumers Commit The Time?

Most realize that for your small online business to attract buyers, your site must be super simple to navigate, have flawless paths to completed sales, and provide efficient service and outstanding support. But these and related notions will only take you so far.

Will consumers begin flocking torepparttar 109003 Web only to spend hours trying to figure what model of whatever best suits their needs? In cameras, there is a vast selection. In digicams as well. And even with something as simple as an audio recorder,repparttar 109004 same holds true. I seriously doubt your visitors will volunteer much time to find information that should be readily available.

The Present Trend Will Continue

So long as major sites can profit from sales generated with pictures, brief descriptions and skimpy details, they will continue to operate in this mode. But most consumer dollars will continue to be spent offline where information needed is available.

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