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Best Practices in Customer
Service Part Seven. Customer Service on the Internet
You probably know all about how companies are using the World Wide Web. But most are making big mistakes, according to the author of this article, who wrote Customer Service on the Internet. He offers recommendations for any business that's serious about making the most of its Web site. Jim Sterne is the head of Tarket Marketing, a consulting company in Santa Barbara, California. He has spent over 15 years in sales and marketing of technical products. For the past several years, Jim has devoted all of his attention to the Internet as a marketing medium. He has gathered information from on-line discussion groups as well as from his own experience as a founding partner of a regional Internet access provider. He's the author of World Wide Web Marketing (John Wiley & Sons, 1995), Customer Service on the Internet (John Wiley & Sons, 1996), and What Makes People Click: Advertising on the Web (Que, Inc., 1997). E-mail: jsterne@targeting.com Web site: http://www.targeting.com "A revolution in customer satisfaction measurement is imminent," according to the author of this chapter. He explains how organizations can use the Internet to get feedback from their customers more easily, quickly, cheaply, and accurately. But which medium is better for your customers -- e-mail or the World Wide Web? And how can you make the most of the potential of the Internet? This article offers some solid answers to the basic questions. John Chisholm is president of CustomerSat.com, a Menlo Park, California-based customer satisfaction measurement and market research firm specializing in the Internet. John has 20 years of experience in operations, marketing/research, and strategy. Before founding CustomerSat.com, he founded Decisive Technology, a developer of Internet software, and served as vice president of marketing for Ventura Software and NetFrame Systems. He serves on the market research council of the Association for Interactive Media. E-mail: jchisholm@CustomerSat.com Web site: http://www.CustomerSat.com As more and more people become familiar and comfortable with the Internet, they're expecting companies to provide immediate customer support for their products and services. A recent market research study reports that the top three things end users want from corporate Web sites are interactive customer support, solutions to specific product or service problems, and on-line access to technical information. How can companies satisfy increasing demands from their customers without straining their resources? Keith Loris is vice president of marketing and new business development at ServiceSoft Corporation, the leader in self-service customer support, with Web Advisor and Knowledge Builder software. He has more than 10 years of experience working with large and small high-tech companies, including serving as vice president of technology for the Desktop Documents Systems Division of Xerox Corporation, where he was responsible for all core Optical Character Recognition as well as the Natural Language Processing business. E-mail: leila@servicesoft.com Web site: http://www.servicesoft.com Return to Best Practices in Customer Service page |