Des Traynor, COO of Intercom, stresses the importance of good customer communication and explains how to connect to your customers to turn them from idle browsers into active, loyal and passionate visitors.
“Customer service online has been relegated to “handling complaints”. Sites like to boast about how quick they can respond, but it’s rare you’ll hear any boast about what a great shopping experience they had online.
Online businesses are obsessed with user experience, optimisations, page rankings and much more. Yet a thousand of their customers could walk past their offices every morning, and they wouldn’t even recognise them, never mind offer to stock their friend’s CD.
In our quest towards total commerce automation, we’ve failed to bring the most important part of commerce with us. The customer experience.”
Where are your customers going?
The chart above shows a well-cited study by the Rockefeller corporation studying precisely why customers leave. Everyone expects that people leave because of lower priced competitors. If not that, then because of some gimmick their competitor has. It’s rarely the case. Customers leave because they don’t feel that you care about them. Online retailers are at best apathetic about their customers. I’ve spent literally tens of thousands of dollars on flights and holidays with some travel companies, and my reward is weekly spam from their newsletter. Unsubscribe.
With this degree of apathy, it’s no surprise that people booking flights have 10 tabs open running parallel queries. There is no service, there is no customer care, so it’s no surprise there is no loyalty.
He who cares wins
Each era of the web has brought new “must-have” skills. It used to be a “CSS web designer”, then it became “Web 2.0″, and of late it has been “UX designer”. Each skill starts out as rare and exciting, but all end up being simply the cost of entry. Already it’s a cliché to claim your app is “easy to use”. It will come down to relationships.
Companies that have a strong bond with their users will succeed. Those who focus on short term tactics will experience short term customers. The investment in relationships is high, but the reward is significant.
Building relationships
Let’s state the obvious. Here’s what doesn’t work.
- John searches for XBOX Game
- John clicks advert
- John arrives at site, and purchases game
- Game is delivered and John is satisfied
- John receives email every week from then onwards offering games he already owns, or doesn’t care about. Music he doesn’t listen to, electronics he can’t afford
- John unsubscribes, or worse creates a filter to ignore mails
There is nothing personal about filling in pre-defined web forms. There is nothing memorable about entering credit card details and clicking “Submit”. To get John back again, a business needs to do more than issue receipts and fulfil obligations. It needs to reach out and be human. Every communication from a business is a chance to delight your customers.
Making the connection
If you want to elevate your business out of the race-to-the-bottom, good customer service is the key. Loyal customers who feel valued are your road to riches. Loyal customers shop more, pay more, are the first to forgive, the last to criticise, and are your number one marketing channel.
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