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Gold/Mining/Energy : Net Shepherd Inc. (WEB) on ASE -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Barry K who wrote (1116)	6/19/2000 10:33:00 AM
From: Denise D	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1252

Found this on the weekend... Although the author seems to prefer "speaking" to live people, his thoughts on customer service are the same. And for most online companies, Answers.com might be a better alternative for those who may not be able to offer the same low prices we've come to expect online if they had to manage a call centre. _______________________________________________________________________________________ Ignore Customers At Your Own Peril In the early days of the Web, visitors used to accept only being able to communicate with a site by emailing the webmaster or administrator. But as more consumers make purchases on the Web, they're demanding prompt replies to their emails, and multiple methods of communication with companies. But online businesses are slow to catch on. A recent Jupiter survey showed that 46% of sites failed to answer email in within five days or never responded. That's up from 38% in an identical survey in the fourth quarter of 1998. Even as they ignore customers' emails, many online businesses provide no alternative means of contact, such as staff names, phone numbers and addresses. Why would a company NOT provide the names of actual human beings to contact? Why are Internet businesses such dismal failures at human interaction? Here are three scenarios. THE WIZARD OF OZ SYNDROME On the Internet, nobody knows the real size of your company. Lots of one-person online companies don't give contact names because they don't want to admit that the "we" they use on their site is actually the royal we. Like the Wizard of Oz, they don't want you to see the man behind the curtain. But these businesses don't realize that people would rather know they are dealing with one person who really cares than a hundred people who don't care. BEAR WITH NO BRAIN SYNDROME Winnie the Pooh said it best. "I have been foolish and deluded," he said, "and I am a bear of no brain at all." One explanation for why companies like Microsoft don't put their phone numbers on their site is because they are afraid they will get millions of calls. That should be their biggest problem. If you want to have a big business online or off, you have to staff up to handle customer calls. Period. CALL OF THE WILD SYNDROME Remember when the three cruel, inexperienced Alaskan Gold Rush prospectors in the book "Call of the Wild" died just moments after they were warned not to continue forward because the ice on the water was too thin? A lot of Internet companies are similarly disregarding warnings and risking their lives with statements like the one on Webtailer's site: "Due to the volume of responses we will not be able to respond individually to your ideas. Be assured that your thoughts are greatly appreciated." Plenty of other sites are equally dismissive of customers, including Listbot, AltaVista, MSN and many more. RESPOND APPROPRIATELY The Web is an instant medium. It requires instant answers. While website owners have devoted plenty of attention to automatic sales systems, the systems that really need help are those that involve human beings talking to and helping other human beings. Companies such as Live Person, Human Click, ServiceSoft Technologies and many others offer live real-time customer support. Some of the products may be primitive, but they are far better than ignoring customer queries. Internet marketers who fail to respond to customer queries may bring about consequences for all. Consumer protest -- leading perhaps to legislation -- will force Web companies to start treating customers like people, just as phone, utility and cable companies had to in the past. FIRST-HAND SERVICE SLIGHT My recent customer relations experience with Amazon.com is indicative of the problem. Long touted for its responsiveness to customers, this money-losing giant seems to be losing its service edge. When a book I ordered last June didn't arrive after several weeks, I forgot about it. Six months later, the book arrived via UPS. I emailed Amazon to say I didn't recall ordering this book and I didn't want it. They emailed back to say I had ordered it last June. Gee, maybe someone could have emailed me that they had finally gotten the book and asked me if I still wanted it sent. Instead, we exchanged a series of emails, with Amazon defending its position and even outlining for me, in bulleted points, why I was so wrong. Eventually, I griped my way up to a higher level and Amazon agreed to send me a return label for the unwanted book. When I wrote back to say it would have been great if that had happened in response to my first email, someone wrote to apologize and sent me a $5 gift certificate. This sixth email from Amazon was signed by an actual human being. I would have called them to have this exchange, but I could not find Amazon's phone number anywhere on its site. The apology and gift certificate would have been a home run if they had been sent in response to my first email. I'd have gone away praising Amazon's customer-centric culture instead of wanting to order my next book from barnesandnoble.com. Maybe I'll just go around the corner and buy my next book in a real bookstore. Customer service separates the wheat from the chaff in the bricks and mortar world, and it will soon do the same on the Internet. Ignore this prediction at your own peril. Not long ago a Web company told me that they have a "new policy." They answer their phones during business hours without using voice mail. No more voice mail hell for their customers. What a concept! Just watch, any day now more companies are going to give you names and phone numbers. By B.L. Ochman webpromote.com _______________________________________________________________________________________ Denise.