Online Customer Service-An Oxymoron?
Online customer service is not as hard as you think. It’s not quite as simple as smiling when someone enters a retail store, but you certainly can convey that your business is focused on meeting customer needs.
Websites have been around long enough that it’s easy to compare and see which ones make it easy to do business and which are causing their customers grief. Try it yourself. Go to a few sites you have never visited before and see how easy it is to locate specific information. Then go to a few of the rock star online retailers and see how they do the job.
There are a lot of rules to good online customer service. Here are a couple of my favourites.
- First stop, create a site that is easy to use. And I don’t mean easy for you or your coder. I mean it needs to be dead easy for your site visitors to use. Frankly, even if you’re the one building it, your opinion doesn’t matter nearly as much as your prospective visitors’ needs do.
- Make sure there is a way to contact your company available from the home page and every other page in the site. And don’t bury it in text at the bottom! Make it bright yellow if you have to, but make it stand out. Often this is done somewhere in the top right quadrant of the page and many site visitors look here first.
- If you’re selling online, let people know the price before they input their personal information. Would you pull out your credit card and ring through a purchase before you know the price in a bricks and mortar store? Many site visitors will opt out of the selling process if they have to provide their personal data before seeing the full price of the product, including shipping.
In a nutshell, make it easy and you’re more likely to make the sale.
Wordpress 2.5 is a welcomed improvement
WordPress version 2.5 was released just a week ago with a bit of grumble from the web community but overall I think that it’s a major improvement. This week I upgraded 15 blogs and installed 3 new ones and I must say that everything went without a hitch. I held my breath for quite a few minutes while upgrading one particular blog from version 2.0.2… but nothing broke and everything seems to be in working order.
I must say that the interface has come a long way. I really like the work that the Happy Cog folks and the WP community have created. My favourite component is the image uploading. Having the option to add different types of media and a window pop-up makes it much friendlier.
In the past I’ve used the flexible-upload plugin for re-sizing my images but this new version has made it no longer required.
The only glitch that came about was with the admin drop down menu plugin. If you were a fan of this plugin and upgraded to 2.5 you’ll notice that your navigation has completely disappeared. Just remove that plugin and everything will be back to normal.
If I were to complain about anything with this new version is the absence of post-id. These id numbers are very useful when building sites to be used as CMS. Let’s hope that they bring this back.
I also noticed that when you insert an email address, the tinyMCE interface no longer gives you the alert box telling you that it will convert your email address into the right HTML code. Instead it just sticks your email address into a url, which of course makes no sense. Maybe this is something that needs to be added, but I’ve never enjoyed fiddling with tinyMCE. Has anyone come across this and found a solution?
Job Opportunities at Junxion Strategy
We’ve been working with Junxion Strategy for a few months now and are really impressed with their level of expertise and commitment to sustainability. If you are looking for a career with a design firm that cares about the environment, you should check them out. They are currently looking for a web developer to join their team. Check out their website for full details.
New Home for Your (not-so-)Old Tech & Office Stuff
While this might be a little off-topic, here’s a brief plug to check out the BC Crisis Centre’s Wishlist. In addition to office equipment, they could also use some kitchen equipment for their volunteer’s break room and a volunteer photographer.
Bluelime has been helping the Crisis Centre with their websites for years, and we’re looking forward to launching an updated version of their web-based youth hotline in the near future.
Look Out for Domain Renewal Scam
I received a very official looking Domain Name Expiration Notice a little while ago. It looked like the real thing and I might have fallen for it if I hadn’t been (a) wary that the notice was so far in advance of the actual expiry date; and (b) already aware of phantom invoice scams.
Back when I worked in big companies, it was a fairly regular occurrence to get an official-looking invoice for overdue payment that upon closer inspection was fraudulent. Sometimes it was for copier toner, other times for a directory listing or other common supplies. Now the scam has gone high tech.
I believe in knowing what I’m paying for (I prefer not to be described as “cheap” thank you) so I always looked into what I was signing off on. That’s how I uncovered the scam and learned just how persistent and unscrupulous these companies can be.
- The invoices are often to the attention of a former employee
- They always look very official
- There was always a sense of urgency
- The invoices keep coming even if you call the source and confront them
If I was like the many small business owners who do not keep close tabs on their domain name registrations and are too busy to read the fine print, I’d have paid over 4 times what I should have to renew those domain names AND I would have transferred them to a disreputable registrar.
Like spam, the phantom invoice scam must work or it wouldn’t keep appearing. I caution you to keep an eye on your domain names and pay attention to the details.