Striking the right balance in the customer service world can be challenging; you want to provide world-class customer service through your call center and from your sales team, but you also want customers to be able to answer their own questions through your website and from packaging/collateral materials. Call centers are a huge investment, but they allow you to up-sell and cross-sell and have personal interaction with your customers, so you don’t necessarily want to drive people away from using your call center. On the other hand, you can’t expect your website to be the only place that people can rely on to answer questions—but you want it to be informative. So how do you build an informative website, yet give customers the option to call you?
Having a website that’s as customer-friendly as your call center is an essential component to your customer support strategy. Before you upgrade or build a new website, make sure you incorporate in the below elements.
Enlist web-design and content experts
Web design is constantly changing, but functionality and ease-of-use are always in style. When a customer wants an answer to a question, or needs to learn more about a product or service, he or she should be able to go to your website, easily navigate around, find answers, and if necessary, contact you via the phone or through online chat if there are further questions.
Hire a company that has a reputation for building functional, attractive websites and understands content strategies. Clear content is a must, but also having search engine optimization is important so that people can find your website through common search terms. If you have international customers, make sure your website has multi-language functionality that customers can toggle through. It may also be worth investing in a usability study with your website to ensure that customers can find the information they’re looking for.
Must-haves for every website
Describing your company, products, and services are essential elements for the core of your website, but additionally, you’ll want to incorporate the following features:
Contact information on every page: Every page on your website should include your contact information and a simple call-to-action such as “contact us for further questions” that redirects to an email form, telephone number, or both. Make sure your customers always know how they can get in touch with you, without forcing them to leave the page and search through the site.
Frequently Asked Questions: Build a FAQ section where customers can browse through common questions – you probably have found that customers tend to ask many of the same questions, so make it easy by compiling all of the popular questions into one section. Additionally, it’s worth building in a searchable FAQ feature that allows people to type in questions and receive answers to them. This will take more time and may cost more to develop, but it’s a functional aspect that customers appreciate.
Customer feedback: Allow your customers to email you and ask questions easily by filling out a customer feedback form. A customer feedback form should capture the customer’s email address, phone number, and potentially even their address. Not only does this allow the customer to easily email you with further questions, but it captures their information so that you can follow up with them through email communication, the phone, or even with mail collateral materials. Make sure that you have a designated person/team on-hand to quickly respond to customer’s requests through the customer feedback form.
Consider offering live chat
Live chat is a popular feature – particularly in sectors such as banking or communications. You can integrate live chat into your website through software companies such as BoldChat, HelponClick, and eTalkUp. If you decide to incorporate live chat into your website, make sure you have a separate customer service department that only deals with live chat, and take them through live chat training. With live chat, you do not want to rely just on scripted responses; your customer service team should have well-developed writing and communication skills and be able to think creatively and solve problems.
Use your website as the face of your brand
Your website may be the only interaction that some of your customers have with your brand, so use it wisely as a method of communication and assistance for your customers. Make sure that you clearly explain your benefits, products, and philosophy, and build the site to be as customer-friendly as possible. Train any customer service representatives who respond to customers via the website to communicate clearly with your customers and represent your product in a way that is reflective of your brand. Lastly, use your website to promote your call center support team so that you have the chance to personally interact with your customers.