Service After the Sale

You might say that service after the sale is where the rubber hits the road. You've spent a lot of time, money, and energy getting the sale. Now you have to keep it.

Online customers are a skittish bunch. No matter how comfortable you've made them in buying from your Web store, after they press that Buy button, they still want to be secure in the fact that their order has actually been received and that their product has been shipped.

To soothe customer concerns about an order and eliminate many email messages to your customer service department, be sure that you send a real-time instant order confirmation to the customer as soon as the order is placed. The order confirmation message should include an order number, what they bought, where it will be shipped, and the total amount of the order, including all shipping and handling charges and applicable taxes. The great news is that, with the Yahoo! store, this process is automated for you if enabled. After the order is placed, the customer receives the confirmation email immediately.

To enable automated order-confirmation emails, follow these steps:

1.	In Store Manager, click the Shipment and Order Status link in the Order Settings column.
2.	Enter a valid email address to appear as the sender of your order-confirmation emails in the Order Confirmation Email text box. Entering an email address enables the automated confirmation emails.
3.	Click the Update button.

After the order has shipped, another email confirmation should be sent with relevant shipping information and order status. If you cannot ship within the time promised on your site, send an intermediate email to keep the customer informed of the status of the order and when it might ship. If you are using UPS Online Tools, you can insert a tracking number into the shipping status email. Customers can then track their own packages. This reduces phone calls and emails asking, "Where is my order?"

After the order has been shipped and enough time has elapsed for the customer to receive it, send another email asking if the order was received and whether there were any problems with the order. This proactive approach to customer service will pay off in spades. It shows that you do care about your customers and that you are willing and able to correct any problem they might have had. In addition, if they respond to your follow-up email, some customers might write you a good testimonial thatwith their permissionyou can print on your Web site. You can also provide a link and ask them to rate and review your store. Yahoo! store includes a merchant rating system: Users can rate merchants on a scale of one to five stars.

Finally, despite the best efforts of your customer service strategies, some customers will be disappointed in the product they bought and want to return it. It's important that you have a no-hassle return policy. Remember, your prime goal is to keep the customers you have, so you will have to weigh the return of a product or a refund on a service in light of how valuable your customer is to keep.

Sometimes, returns are a blessing in disguise. Okay, not blessings, but they're useful for your business. Most times, customers will give you reasons for the return, and this information is good feedback on a particular product or the manner in which you sell from your site. Collecting all the returns data and adding it to your customer service requests will help you identify merchandising problems and opportunities.

Tip: What Are They Saying About You?

It's a good idea to periodically monitor consumer-generated media. Use PubSub (www.pubsub.com), Bloglines (www.bloglines.com), Google Groups (groups.google.com), and Technorati (www.technorati.com), among others. You can also receive alerts in the form of emails and text messaging by setting up Yahoo! alerts (alerts.yahoo.com). All you have to do is enter keywords such as your name or company name. When news containing those keywords hits the Internet, an alert is sent to you immediately.

Merchants should also review refund and return policies from other sites and use the policies that seem the best fit. An iron-clad refund and return policy can save a lot of headaches of chargebacks and returns for bogus reasons. You should have your policies in place so you can refer to them, and then decide on a case-by-case basis how flexible you want to be. This allows you to decide whether a refund will net you a loyal returning customer or avoid unreasonable buyers.