“The next available representative will be right with you.”

Finally, after listening to that irritatingly pleasant, canned voice run through a long list of menu items—twice, because I lost concentration the first go—I was in a queue for customer service. Soon, I would be speaking with a human—with any luck, an intelligent, knowledgeable human, one who could interact with me and perhaps help me resolve my problem.

Sound familiar? Voice Response Units (VRUs) have become prevalent for customer service—never mind that we all despise them and that they are expensive to install and maintain. Today, however, we have another option, a low-cost medium that provides the kind of support many customers prefer: the Web. Web-based customer service is intended not to replace traditional customer service but rather to enhance it. The goal is to improve the quality of service while decreasing the frequency and duration of calls. The trick is to leverage standard inquiries, such as “Where’s my...?” or “When is it necessary to...?” or “How do I...?”

Problem Resolution

The greater the complexity of your product, the greater the cost of technical support (and, unfortunately, the greater the chance that your technical support staff won’t be able to help). With online support, your customers can interact with your company through methods that don’t require human intervention:

• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
• Q&A postings
• Online tutorials and white papers
• Downloadable Lotus screen cams
• Product forums Given the option, customers will often visit a Web-based customer support site before they’ll call a customer support center. But for your support site to work, it has to be

well-managed. For example, customers must be able to easily query your FAQ page to search for responses to their questions. They also need to be able to post new questions, and your company must answer those questions quickly and generate FAQ material from them.

Training and Collaborating

Complex products always ship with manuals, but those manuals are often out of date by the time they’re printed, and information is frequently either incorrect or missing. Your Web site should allow customers to view or download updated manuals as well as take online tutorials. Many companies save money by decreasing printed documentation. They then compensate customers by providing superior online documentation and lowering the cost of the product.

Lotus screen cams are another hot alternative for training. Screen cams are similar to training videos, but there are no distribution costs. A customer can download a screen cam file and then execute it on a PC to view a multimedia training presentation.

You should also consider providing white papers on your Web site. White papers are more marketing than support, but you must continually sell your product—even to customers who already own it.

Your customers may also appreciate a Web forum. Many people like to confer with other people who are using the same product. With a Web forum, your customers can trade advice with other customers and (marketing will love this) potential customers. Be sure that your company’s experts frequently visit the forum to address difficult technical questions and to respond to unresolved customer problems. Also, remember that customers may feel more comfortable spouting off in a forum than complaining formally to customer service. And every company needs to be aware of customer dissatisfaction.

Voice and Web Integration

The strategies mentioned so far can decrease the number of customer service calls, but you should also strive to reduce the duration of those calls. One method of reducing call length is to leverage your company’s knowledge base. For example, your support personnel may be able to resolve customers’ problems by directing callers to specific URLs that contain detailed instructions. This step should not sound like a brush-off, however; remember that the point is to enhance, not replace, voice customer service. Have your support person offer to either walk the customer through the steps over the phone or fax the instructions to the customer. Many customers would rather fix the problem at their leisure without the nuisance of cradling a phone between ear and shoulder.

Keep in mind that these methods will work only if your Web site is comprehensive and easy to use. Otherwise, customers will simply dial your customer service number. And the last thing your customer service department needs is to handle questions and complaints about your Web site. Use a sound Web design strategy, properly format documents for readability, and use plenty of images to enhance user comprehension.

Because your company already has a Web site (well, it should), the additional costs associated with creating a customer service Web site are not all that great, and the potential savings can be huge. The estimated cost of handling a support call is, at best, around $7. The cost of a customer visit to your Web site is considerably less.

To judge for yourself the value of online customer support, consider the rampant success of two complex products that have no voice support, only a Web site: the Apache HTTP Server (www.apache.org) and the Linux operating system (www.linux.org).