Helping Your Customers Help You

In a recent post by Jeremy Schoemaker, Customer Support On The Internet, he discusses why he believes customer support on the Internet is not important. This is in sharp contrast to what Brandi recently posted, Are You Playing Hide And Seek With Your Customers?. To summarize Jeremy’s post, he believes customer service and customer support are two different things. Customer service deals with documentation, tutorials, quick responses to billing issues and an easy return policy, while customer support deals with more technical aspects like installing software and product usage. He uses examples such as Amazon, Google and eBay as Internet-based companies that are extremely successful, offer excellent customer service, but virtually no customer support. This leads me to question… are these companies playing hide and seek from their customers or have they developed a system that tends to be more successful in an online marketplace?

I shop Amazon because it’s competitively priced and easy to buy and if I need to return something, it’s no problem. I search using Google because I can get what I’m looking for faster than any other service. Both these services are simple and intuitive so I haven’t really needed any support and I think that’s largely the reason behind their explosive growth and success. Online companies can’t grow exponentially, like Google and Amazon have, if the proportion of customer support needed rises at the same pace as their growth.

But wait, Google and Amazon are huge and I’m just a small business. I can’t afford the risk of losing my connection with customers, stop offering support and force my customers to just figure it out. So as a small business looking to grow online what should I do?

Good question (I certainly do know how to ask good questions )

I think the solution for small business can be found in utilizing something from both strategies. As a small business, you need to be available, attentive and listen to your customers. These are the building blocks that help small businesses connect and grow. But as your business grows, you also need to pay special attention to the system being created that services the customer. If you’re finding that as sales grow, so does your need for personalized support, then find a way to tweak your product, service or the process so the underlying support is intuitive enough that the customer can find the solution without needing personal attention from you or your employees.

I’m not promoting that as your business grows to make it increasingly difficult for customers to get in touch with you, but rather the opposite. As your business grows, get better at anticipating the support needed and make the necessary changes to reduce the need for support or make the process as self-serving and easy for the customer as possible.

The most successful businesses in today’s online marketplace all know how to offer what they are selling in a systematic way that’s both easy and intuitive to the buyer.

Reader Comments

Paul | SameTrafficMoreSales.com says...February 19th, 2008

Excellent. I sell software, and as my customer base continues to grow, so does the need for support. From previous experience, the best way of handling this is to have…

(a) A support forum, so that customers can share solutions.

(b) A support ticket system. Common questions can be answered systematically, and problems can be streamlined.

(c) “How to” videos. These can cut down support a lot!

These are some of the things I’ve found useful in my particular business.

Tim Paulino says...February 19th, 2008

All good points Paul. Flickr is a good example of using community support forums so customers can share solutions to common problems.

Yura says...February 20th, 2008

So, basically, you are suggesting to provide easy to use services and products? That’s something most businesses need to realize, indeed.

Btw, Paul, instead of spending time on the support forum, try to create the software that doesn’t require support. Make it astonishingly easy to use and effective. This might require removing useless features, though.

Cheers.

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