James SpillaneEmail was once viewed as a main method of communication when handling customer support online. Why? Because its easy to manage and low cost. But, over the past couple of years new technology has increasingly taken over emails dominance. Such as live chat and social media. Here we will look at whether email customer service is dying, and if so what solutions are taking its place.
Email as a Form of Customer Support
In the past the standard way that customer support was supplied was through email. A contact form and / or an email address, would be placed on a website. The customer could then send use this to send their query to customer support. The customer would then need to wait until customer support was able to reply.
While this solution did work, it also had its drawbacks. Firstly replies to email could be slow. The query would need to be received, an answer formulated and then it would need to be dispatched. There was lag time at both the sending and receiving end, which slowed down the process. Smaller companies were often not able to offer 24/7 customer support, so emails outside of working hours were often slow to be answered. And because each query was in some way unique, it was difficult to provide boiler plate answers to very common questions.
The Rise in Self Service
Self services is one of the biggest consumer trends. Supermarkets and big box retailers are increasingly enabling their customers to purchase their own products. Self service reduces labor costs for companies and allows retailers to provide a more efficient check out process.
This same trend is also changing online customer support. More and more customers are being empowered to help themselves online. This is allowing customers to find the answers to their problems faster and more accurately. This also benefits companies by reducing the need to hire customer support staff.
Self Service Options For Online Customer Support
There have been a number of different solutions created in order to provide self service customer support. Some of the most popular are social media, forums and walkthroughs. Social media such as Twitter and Facebook are common ways that customers are now seeking to solve their problems. Unfortunately most companies are still failing to provide the 24/7 support that customers expect from social media. Queries that are not answered fast enough, can result in customers using the same social media to sully the businesses reputation.
Forums are another popular form of customer support. Here other peers provide the answers to questions. Customers can also search through the forum to find previously answered questions. This is an inexpensive option which creates a user generated database of answers. However if not properly monitored, forums can become a place where disgruntled users can vent their frustration at the company.
A more recent development for self-service customer support is walkthroughs. A good example of these is WalkMe, which uses highly intuitive walkthroughs to help guide the customer step by step through problems that they are encountering.
How Self Service Can Compliment Email
Email is likely to remain a popular way of receiving customer support, if for other reason that customers are used to it. However self-service customer can be used with email in order to enhance the experience for customers while also benefiting the business. When a query is received by email, customer support can use a permalink to direct them to the self-service tool that they need. This allows the customer to find a fast and comprehensive solution to the problem that they are facing.
Email may not die out any time soon, but it is likely to lose its dominant position. Self service is the future of online customer support. When used correctly it can reduce the customer support burden for business while allowing customers to quickly help themselves.
This article was written for Business 2 Community by James Spillane.
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Nothing, absolutely nothing, beats the personal touch. Email cannot convey the same caring and service invested person who listens to you with the ability to properly understand why you are calling and then give you the proper customer service you deserve!!!
I agree, nothing beats the personal touch…but that can be conveyed in an email too, to a degree. “Business email etiquette” experts decry it, but using smiley faces/emoticons, salutations (like “Have a great day!”), and punctuation like exclamation marks can convey friendliness and enthusiasm just as a friendly voice on the phone can. You do lose a little in the way of response times using email versus the phone or live chat, but email is still an excellent method of customer service for non-emergency requests. I’ve used those “chat with an agent now” features on company websites (mostly retailers) and they just type canned responses from a script. (I’ve gotten reps on the phone who actually do the same thing!) What I would say to companies is, if you care about your customers, spend the money to hire good, competent customer service employees. It will be worth it in repeat business and in word-of-mouth referrals. Customer service is basically an extension of your sales/marketing department…salespeople get customers in the door, but good customer service keeps them coming back.
Apologies for the lengthiness…and have a great day! :)
This article inspires me to look for new ways to handle Customer Service. At first glance, many customers could be very happy with a good, reliable Self-Service Facility. This would take away a considerable amount of workload on the Customer Support Dept.But I would certainly not do away with the more personal email-facility yet…..
Thanks for inspiring me!
Erik
There are other options out there that don’t involve email such as the rise in smartphone feedback Apps such as SurveyMe which is on IOS and Android. This provides a solutions for those companies that don’t want to ignore email feedback because as you say some people are more comfortable with email but provides a new option allowing their customers to choose to give feedback via smartphones/tablets through a app and to get rewarded. Whichever method the customers choose the data is collected, analysed and in management graphs in less than a minute. So you can use SurveyMe – anytime, anywhere, any device by anyone.
Just wanted to point out there are other options out there too which don’t just rely on email or on social media.