What Happens After Someone’s Been On Your Website?

You are taking your online marketing seriously.

You’ve invested in a great website, you’ve hired a professional copywriter to create some fabulous copy and your search engine optimisation strategy is ensuring you have a steady stream of traffic to your site.

Once people have landed on your website, they love what you have to say and click to your contact page to get in touch.

Then what happens?

If you’ve managed to achieve a website that delivers customers to you, you must ensure your customer service doesn’t let you down.

1. Email

As a customer there is nothing more frustrating than someone not responding to your emails.

If you receive an email from a potential client but can’t answer their question immediately, send a holding email to acknowledge their enquiry and tell them when you’ll have an answer for them—and make sure you fulfil that promise.

Try to reply within 24 hours or sooner if possible. Remember this is probably the first interaction they’ll have with you so it’s vital you make a good impression.

2. Ring ring

Answer your telephone!

When a potential client phones, if you don’t answer they’ll hang up and phone someone else.

If you have an automated system try and make sure they reach a real person quickly. There is nothing more maddening that having to go through umpteen menus before you get to speak to a human.

3. Live chat

The option of live chat on your website is a great idea. It gives someone the ability to immediately speak with you while they are on your website. There’s no need to hunt around for a telephone number or email address—with just one click they can contact you and ask their question.

This transparency and ease of contact will show you as a company that puts their customers first.

4. Knowledge is key

When your prospective customer makes contact (either via live chat, phone or email), make sure the staff that deal with their enquiry are knowledgeable.

If their enquiry is dealt with quickly and efficiently you are going to impress. But if your staff member is uncertain about your products/services or inefficient it won’t put your company in a very good light.

5. When things go wrong

If one thing in life is certain it’s that things will go pear-shaped from time to time.

Despite your best efforts something is going to go wrong, but it’s how you deal with that that matters.

Be grown up about it – apologise, put it right and follow up to make sure the customer is happy with the outcome.

A mistake won’t lose you a customer, how you deal with that mistake could.

Whatever business you are in, customer service is vital. It doesn’t matter how cheap or how wonderful your product is, if the service is bad people will walk away.