Online customer service has become a very important part of global economy as it helps to increase customer loyalty and contribute to the company’s bottom-line. By using systems and processes such as email and chat the enterprises can attend to customer concerns quickly and accurately. However, it is not very easy to provide good online customer service and the companies have to face the criticism of consumer groups accusing them of delivering unacceptable quality customer service support.
Global recession and plummeting sales figures have made the companies sit up and refocus on their customer support strategies. They have realized that they can gain a competitive edge by high quality assistance and support for customers when they need it most. Today, enterprises of sizes have begun to provide customer service over the web, and use a number of techniques for the purpose.
For example, one consulting firm to the food industry is using online customer service to sustain and survive in this competitive business environment. The CEO recently purchased specialty software from http://live247support.com to address the customer’s needs, and is pleasantly surprised by the positive response from their clients and reduction in their phone bills.
Businesses can recreate the success of other companies by using customer service software to offer good customer service.Business tools such as chat live software and microblogging service Twitter has helped companies to solve their customer problems rapidly and efficiently.
Retaining customers is always tough and it has become even more difficult in the current economic scenario. Business analysts show that even a five percent improvement in customer retention can result in a 25 percent increase in profits in a company. Customer services can be improved in many ways and Web-enabled customer service is one way to reach the goal.
References
Leland, K and Bailey, K. (2006) Customer service for dummies. 3rd ed.For Dummies.
Kopf, D. (2001) The Online Customer Contact Conundrum. Business Communications Review. 31(6).
Rappaport, D.M (1998) The Next Wave in Do-It-Yourself Customer Service. Business Communications Review. 27 (6)
http://www.pixelbridge.com/articles/index.php?p=43
http://econsultancy.com/blog/2954-using-twitter-for-customer-service http://www.pixelbridge.com/articles/index.php?p=43
(Accessed on 30th May 2009)
I think we can definitely improve our customer service by implementing live chat. I accidentally came across inside, and after looking through their site http://www.inside.tm/, it morphs a business website into a virtual storefront so business personnel can see and help their site visitors in real-time using chat.
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