Recommendations

Substantial business benefits result from using the Internet for customer service. The Web is open 24 hours a day. And every time a customer finds an answer online, it eliminates the cost of a phone call or an e-mail reply. This yields significant savings and frees up operators to handle issues that really warrant their attention.

Customer service on the Web, also known as e-service, is scalable, allowing companies to handle spikes in customer queries without having to temporarily add operators or phone lines. Most importantly, e-service ensures customers get answers to their questions immediately, resulting in higher levels of customer satisfaction and retention.

E-service adoption by organizations has yielded many important lessons. Many benefits are gained from simply implementing the right e-service software, but even greater success is achieved by applying proven best practices. In other words, becoming a successful e-service practitioner requires more than just technology, it requires expertise.

With the preceding in mind, this last part of the chapter pinpoints 15 essential best practices or recommendations for effective e-service. These field-proven best practices impact both the cost savings and increased customer satisfaction companies experience as a result of their e-service initiatives. These best practices have been organized into three categories:

People and processes: These are project management strategies that impact the effectiveness of the e-service initiative and ensure a speedy, successful project launch and substantially enhanced long-term results.

Site smarts: These are tips and tricks in Web site design and the presentation of answers to customer questions. These simple principles can be applied with great effect to virtually any e-service implementation.

Software smarts: These are insights that relate specifically to getting optimum value^[2].

Why E-Service?

Before enumerating the top 15 best practices for e-service, it’s a good idea to review the benefits effective e-service implementations deliver.

Cost Savings

E-service has been proven to consistently yield significant cost savings. There is virtually no incremental cost when a customer finds an answer on a Web site. If that customer sends an e-mail, on the other hand, it can cost several dollars for a customer service representative (CSR) to respond. A phone call can cost $20–$30 or more. Multiply that per-inquiry savings by thousands of inquiries and the savings can be quite substantial.

Customer Satisfaction

E-service makes for satisfied customers. When customers have questions, they want answers fast. If they find their answer with a click or two of the mouse, they feel good. This equates to higher customer loyalty and retention. Effective e-service can have a very positive impact on e-business revenue.

As customers consistently find answers online over time, their comfort level with the site and the company grows. This is a competitive advantage over companies that make them wait days for e-mail replies and put them on hold. Quality e-service instills confidence, strengthens relationships, and offers a 24 7 resource to customers.

Rapid Scalability

E-service is useful for dealing with short-term spikes in customer inquiries—such as those occurring in seasonal businesses, during product launches, or due to a problematic event. Rather than temporarily adding staff and phone capacity, e-service allows companies to simply add relevant knowledge items to their Web sites. This eliminates much of the e-mail and call volume that might otherwise deluge the company, minimizing the cost and disruptions typically associated with such situations. This scalability is invaluable for sustaining business growth. E-service adopters have been able to support more customers with more products and services—without having to continually expand their call center capacity and/or customer service staffs (see Figure 26.1)^[2].

Figure 26.1: Customer satisfaction versus excess capacity.

Improved Staff Productivity

E-service makes customer service staff more productive by shielding them from repetitive queries—allowing them to focus on issues that actually require personal attention. This change also tends to improve morale and reduce turnover. Plus, giving CSRs access to the e-service knowledge base ensures they have the information to give customers fast, consistent answers.

With all these proven benefits, e-service best practices are clearly worth applying. By excelling at e-service, companies save money, delight customers, beat the competition, handle crises with ease, and get more value performance from their customer service staffs.

The Top 15 Proven Best Practices for E-Service

The more often customers have a positive experience with a company’s e-service, the more the company experiences these diverse benefits. A primary, quantifiable goal of any e-service implementation is to maximize the percentage of customers who find answers for themselves on the company Web site. The easier and faster customers can pinpoint the information they’re looking for, the greater the resulting business rewards.

Therefore, e-service best practices are focused on achieving high self-service percentages. More specifically, these best practices ensure:

• Customers use e-service knowledge items on the Web site to find answers to their questions whenever possible, rather than using e-mail or the phone

• Online knowledge items provide answers for the most common questions

• Customers can quickly and easily find the answer/knowledge item

• Knowledge items answer customers’ questions fully and effectively

These are the fundamental characteristics of any effective e-service implementation. By focusing on these characteristics, even relatively small companies save literally millions of dollars in service and support overhead while significantly improving customer satisfaction.

People and Processes

The first set of e-service best practices involve people and processes. These practices are essentially project management strategies ensuring rapid time-to-benefit and optimum long-term results for e-service initiatives. Based on the experiences of organizations across all sectors, three strategies in particular have been shown to be essential in achieving maximum return on investment (ROI).

E-Service Best Practice #1: The E-Service Champion

Someone has to “own” e-service. The long-term owner of an e-service implementation does not have to be the executive or manager who initiated it—although this is often the case. It must be someone who fully understands the objectives of the implementation and business needs, and supervises the application of best practices.

The champion is needed beyond the launch of the project. E-service is a highly dynamic business solution. It constantly adapts to the changing needs of the company and its customers as new products and services are introduced, markets and technologies evolve, and use of the site grows. Without a champion, site content is likely to be neglected and become stale. Support across the organization for the success of the e-service initiative will fade. Eventually, this will manifest in reduced effectiveness and lower ROI. Champions provide both direction and accountability for e-service projects. That’s why the most successful first-wave adopters have (almost without exception) had very strong e-service champions leading the way.

E-Service Best Practice #2: Ensuring Cross-Department Collaboration

Although strong individual leadership is essential to e-service success, it is equally critical to make sure an e-service effort is fully supported by the diverse parties-of-interest whose participation makes it work. Without this support, key e-service processes break down and undermine the timely creation of effective self-service content.

These processes typically involve people from different departments. For example, whereas a customer support manager may champion e-service, someone in marketing may administer the corporate Web site itself. The Web site administrator must be involved to ensure any changes to the site helps drive customers to the e-service content. These changes will be described in more detail next.

Similarly, product management groups and other technicians typically generate a lot of content. It is advisable to have their buy-in on the e-service effort and prepare them to collaborate on the creation of content. Often, these groups have a variety of existing materials that can be very useful in creating content.

One way to motivate groups to participate in the e-service processes is to appeal to their self-interest. For example, e-service provides valuable feedback to product managers about the problems customers encounter, which can be used to improve next-generation products or even spawn ideas for new ones. Similarly, because e-service draws customers to the Web site, it can help marketing to do online cross-selling and up-selling.

Depending on the nature of the individual business, other participants may also be enlisted in the e-service effort: accounting, shipping, sales, suppliers, distributors, and so forth. Regardless of the specific participants involved, every e-service champion should determine whose help will be needed and get commitment from the beginning of the project. That way, when the time comes for them to contribute to the process, there will be no surprises and arguments.

E-Service Best Practice #3: Committing to Continuous Improvement

Because e-service technology delivers substantial benefits quickly, it is easy for organizations to become complacent about their implementations. Even an initial self-service rate of 60–70% results in rapid payback on a software investment. Many companies enter a period of complacency soon after their e-service system is up and running.

As valuable as a self-service rate of 60–70% may be, a rate of 85–95% is even better. And, those rates are achievable for companies. E-service, by its nature, provides the feedback necessary to “tweak” implementations to increase the effectiveness of content and site navigation. By taking advantage of these built-in feedback mechanisms (which range from customers’ own comments about content to site traffic statistics), diligent e-service managers can increase ROI by 200% and more.

Site Smarts

In addition to the preceding management considerations, e-service implementers significantly boost their ROI by employing straightforward best practices regarding site design and navigation. These simple suggestions radically improve self-service rates and ensure as many customers as possible use e-service content. As intuitively obvious as many of these best practices may seem, they are often overlooked by e-service users. Based on empirical evidence from thousands of active e-service sites, the top seven best practices for e-service site design and navigation follow.

E-Service Best Practice #4: Help Is Just a Click Away

The faster customers get to helpful knowledge items, the better. The optimum solution is to clearly identify links on the home page (which can be labeled “Customer Service,” “Need help?” or something similar) that leads directly to a list of top ten answers.

By contrast, a surprising number of early e-service implementers made the mistake of nesting e-service content within other areas of the site. As a result, customers sent e-mails or made phone calls to CSRs without realizing they could have found the answers to their questions themselves.

Another common mistake is forcing the customer to navigate through one or more layers of knowledge categories before finding actual answers. This may seem like an intelligent way to manage the navigation process, but it tends to be counterproductive. Users need to see answers right away. Because the bulk of their needs can be addressed with a relatively small number of knowledge items, it’s best to present those knowledge items to them as quickly as possible.

If it turns out that those knowledge items aren’t what they’re looking for, they can then continue searching. Plus, now that they see what the knowledge items on the site look like, they proceed with their search with more confidence.

E-Service Best Practice #5: Customers See Content Before Phone Numbers or E-mail

Many Web site managers consider it a given that the company’s toll-free number is displayed prominently on the site—sometimes on every page. Conventional site designers tend to put a “Contact us” link on the home page and everywhere else. But, successful e-service practitioners found this to be counterproductive. If you give customers a phone number or an e-mail link to use, then they assume this is your preferred contact method. As a result, e-service content is ignored or never even browsed.

An alternative approach proven to be more effective for both customer service teams and the customers themselves is to provide support phone numbers and/or an e-mail form after they have viewed at least one knowledge item from the e-service system. As soon as they enter the e-service area, they then have ready access to phone or e-mail support—but not before.

This approach is not customer-unfriendly in any way. Customers like knowing a site has lots of useful content. But, they have to be directed to that content at least once to experience its benefits. Once they have that first positive experience, they’re hooked. And, by habituating customers to using the Web site as a self-help resource, e-service adopters can reduce their service and support costs.

On the other hand, some Web site managers don’t display any type of contact information, and simply do not want to be contacted at all. It makes one wonder why they’re advertising in the first place or why the page even exists. This can be quite irritating and very annoying to prospective customers. In fact, there are some Web pages that do have an e-mail contact link, but when you try to send an e-mail, it bounces back as undeliverable. Or, to make matters worse, there are Web sites that don’t respond to any e-mail contact at all, no matter how many times you send a message or inquiry. The ISPs that sponsor these types of sites should simply just drop them from their customer list and sever the link. Their existence is not doing anyone any favors.

E-Service Best Practice #6: Everything Customers Need Can Be Found in E-Service

Many companies have an abundance of useful information on their site, but it’s scattered across various areas. Product information is in one place, shipping information is in another, return policies are somewhere else. Often, there is a good reason for this information to be in these different places. Implementing e-service doesn’t mean removing this information or completely redesigning the corporate Web site.

It is important to make sure this information can be found within the e-service area. Once a customer enters the e-service area looking for assistance, they should not have to leave it and look elsewhere to find what they need.

For example, a leading sporting goods manufacturer had an excellent product selection tool in the sales area of its site. As good as it was, it turned out that many customers didn’t use it and instead called the company’s CSRs to get walked through the selection process. After the company started its e-service initiative, it made the very same tool available in its e-service section—as the answer to the question “Which item is right for me?” Remarkably, use of the tool rose dramatically—and phone calls dropped. That’s because customers found the tool during their quest for help, rather than during a less directed browsing of the site.

It’s worthwhile to look at the information on the company site as a whole and evaluate whether any of it could also be used as an answer to a FAQ. This simple repurposing of existing content can substantially improve customer satisfaction and self-service rates.

E-Service Best Practice #7: Get Visual and Interactive

Well-written text can be very helpful, but often something more is required to answer a customer’s question. The interactive product specification tool previously mentioned is a prime example. Customers can choose from a list of various parameters and, at the end, are given the exact model that applies to their needs—with a hyperlink that leads them right to the appropriate Web page. Many companies selling technical products offer schematics or diagrams, some allowing customers to click their way through a given procedure or repair. Several companies are adding streaming video to their e-service content.

In many cases, the necessary visual content may already exist in the form of online manuals or computer-based training. The trick is to get that content from its current location onto the e-service site, and to make it available as an answer to the appropriate question.

In other cases, it may be worthwhile to develop the necessary content expressly for e-service purposes. The cost of doing so is often minimal and can be justified by looking at the number of phone and e-mail support incidents generated by the issue.

E-Service Best Practice #8: More Links in More Places

Customers don’t always begin their visit to a Web site looking for help. Sometimes, they start by browsing or merely shopping and then encounter an issue that creates a question in their minds. Often, this question may have to do with a feature or process on the site itself. That’s why it’s often wise to put additional prominent links back to the site’s e-service content area in many places.

In fact, many of the most successful e-service implementers keep a prominent link to their e-service content in a consistent place throughout the site. This reminds customers the e-service content is available and it includes material that is relevant to any topic they may have questions about. By reinforcing this message with a consistent visual cue, customers can be conditioned to use e-service with greater frequency, rather than calling or e-mailing. Habits are hard to break, so it’s important to be consistent in pointing out that help can be found online.

E-Service Best Practice #9: Tell Your Customers About It

A large percentage of customers are in front of their PCs when on the phone. So, it’s a good idea to put a suggestion about using e-service on call center “hold” messages. That way, users can take action as they wait for a CSR to get free. In many cases, they can solve their problem while they’re on hold. CSRs can reinforce the e-service message if they realize during the call the question could have been answered online. By politely showing the customer where to find the answer, the CSR encourages the customer to try the Web next time.

E-Service Best Practice #10: Always Provide a Way Out

Although it’s critical to not present phone or e-mail channels before customers check online content, the converse is also true. After a customer responds to the invitation to examine the e-service resource, he or she must not feel trapped in a dead end. This creates a disincentive to try e-service again. So, immediate contact with a CSR (whether by phone, e-mail, or real-time chat) must always be available as an option within the e-service system.

Software Smarts

In addition to project management and site implementation, the most crucial and effective e-service best practices relate to the use of features and functionality available in a company’s e-service software-of-choice. The configuration of basic system capabilities makes a dramatic difference in the percentage of customers successfully solving their problems online.

E-Service Best Practice #11: Auto Suggest Answers to E-Mails Before They’re Sent

Customers often launch an e-mail from a Web site without realizing the answer to their question is just a click away. Users can avoid responding to these e-mails manually by having their software scan e-mail text and automatically suggest relevant knowledge items to the customer. This eliminates the delay that occurs if the e-mail was sent and replied to later. It also teaches customers that answers to their questions can be found on the site encouraging them to find their own answers on subsequent site visits.

E-Service Best Practice #12: Take Advantage of Reports and Other Feedback

The most successful RightNow users take advantage of the software’s reporting functions to continually improve their e-service content^[2]. A prime example of this is the Keyword Search report, which shows the search terms customers use most frequently. If there’s a commonly used search term in the report and no corresponding e-service knowledge items, then something is amiss. Savvy e-service managers respond to such situations by developing and/or reorganizing knowledge items to address the search terms customers are entering.

E-Service Best Practice #13: Activate Appropriate Escalation/Workflow Rules

If responding to e-mails within 24 hours is a primary objective, for example, then workflow rules can be used to alert managers to events that remain unanswered after 18 hours. Workflow tools can route e-mails containing specific terms to assigned subject-matter experts—eliminating the delays and confusion arising from manual routing.

These rules can serve other purposes as well. For example, if a certain e-mail subject line characterizes a new breed of computer virus, then e-mails fitting the profile can be automatically deleted. A reply to the e-mail can also be automatically sent, informing the sender of what happened and suggesting that they check their e-mail system for infection.

E-Service Best Practice #14: Use Emotional Indicators to Spot Crisis Customers

Using emotional indicators to spot crises customers is a special case of the previously mentioned routing technique. Many times, customer service teams score more points with the customer by rescuing a bad situation than they do when they take care of a more mundane issue.

Getting Started

E-service isn’t just a technology. It’s a strategic activity for any company selling in a competitive marketplace. Also, e-service best practices are as important for achieving customer delight and reducing operating expenses as e-service software. The combination of e-service best practices with a proven software platform delivers a remarkable solution for achieving rapid business results. These best practices include:

1. Have a “Champion” lead the corporate e-service effort.

2. Ensure buy-in for essential collaboration across multiple departments.

3. Commit to continuous improvement of content and processes.

4. Make sure customers can get to e-service content with a single mouseclick.

5. Direct customers to e-service content before giving them phone number or e-mail links.

6. Make useful information on the site available from within the e-service area.

7. Use graphical and/or interactive material wherever possible.

8. Add as many links across the entire site as necessary to e-service content.

9. Promote e-service on “hold” messages and during phone conversations.

10. Always provide the ability to speak or chat with a live operator.

11. Autosuggest answers to customer e-mail inquiries before they’re sent to CSRs.

12. Take full advantage of built-in reports and other feedback.

13. Activate appropriate escalation/workflow rules.

14. Use emotional response indicators to respond quickly to customer crises^[2].

There is, of course, one more critical best practice on which all of these other practices depend:

E-Service Best Practice #15: Get Started Now and Enhance Implementation Over Time

The most successful e-service practitioners aren’t those who wait until they’ve developed a perfect system to launch it. They start with “seed” knowledge items and base functionality and expand from there. Almost without exception, e-service winners have started with limited content and a simple set of e-service functions. What ultimately makes them winners is that they get started sooner rather than later, and then continuously refine their e-service implementation to incorporate the preceding best practices. By taking this incremental approach, they begin to experience the benefits of e-service immediately and then expand those benefits over time.

Finally, e-service has proven to offer tremendous bottom-line benefits to companies in virtually every market segment. E-service best practices are critical to achieving those benefits. But, no one gets from here to there without taking the first step. In other words, that first step is the most important best practice of all.

^[2]“The Insider’s Guide to e-service Best Practices: 15 Best Practices Smart Companies Use to Maximize the Business Benefits of Customer Service on the Web,” RightNow Technologies, Inc. 2002, RightNow Technologies, Inc., 40 Enterprise Blvd., Bozeman, MT 59718-9300, 2003.