LOGÍSTICA

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C H A P T E R S E V E N T E E N

sonalized Web experiences are little bits of magic that help tie buyers to a site and push them to make that critical initial purchase.

Clinique.com’s “Personal Consultation” tools help customers figure out their “look” and directs them to colors and product lines suited to their features. Once a Clinique.com customer fills out her color profile, it’s permanently stored at the site. Whenever she clicks on a product category, the page automatically suggests shades and product lines that complement her coloring and skin type.

Amazon.com is another pioneer in e-personalization, noted for of-fering recommended reading or music lists for customers based on their history of past purchases.

The need for personalization extends to e-mail contact as well.

Customers judge online customer service not only by the speed of re-sponse to their e-mailed questions, but how those rere-sponses are crafted to address their idiosyncratic needs. Electronic service encounters allow no chance to charm customers with sparkling smiles or enthusiastic de-livery. E-service can still delight customers, but e-mail replies and solici-tations created by artificial intelligence tools make online operations easy prey for the tortured version of “personalized” scripts made famil-iar by direct-mail marketers. You know the kind: “Dear John Smith: We’re offering you, John Smith, our valued customer, a special discount for a limited time only. John Smith, we know that quality and price are important to you. . . .”

Ugh. The Department of Motor Vehicles seems warm and fuzzy by comparison.

Many e-commerce sites use auto response systems to answer high volumes of e-mail and control the costs of product support, but such systems can backfire if used as one-size-fits-all solutions. Consider this Dell Computer reply to a plea for help troubleshooting the erratic clock in a new Dell computer:

“Thank you for contacting Dell U.S. eSupport. An artificial intelligence tool designed to interpret your message and re-spond quickly will conduct this first reply to your message. The first paragraph of the response should tell you whether the document accurately addresses your question.

If this response does not address your question, you can reach the next available e-mail technician by replying to this e-mail. Before you reply, please go to the very bottom of this e-mail. You will find useful information there on how to use al-ternate Dell support resources and what to include in your reply.”

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There followed 11 pages—“a collection of specific solutions,” ac-cording to Dell—of directions for diagnosing and fixing a host of com-puter time-keeping problems. This reply, received after clicking through 10 pages to finally access a screen that allowed a question to be typed in, was enough to cause one customer to throw up her hands in disgust.

The lengthy reply failed to include a phone number or a specific e-mail address for a support technician that would allow a customer to seek help from an actual human. Dell, reputed to deliver some of the best online service, blew its chance in this encounter to deliver a magical service moment.

In contrast, some Internet companies use their technological prowess to awe and delight customers with sleight-of-hand personaliza-tion. They excel at the art of combining response templates with per-sonalized answers to e-mail inquiries. Many use personal messages with names of customer service representatives (CSRs), deliver custom re-sponses to questions, and include a personal, thoughtful sign-off. All too often when customers click on a “contact us” button on a Web site, it simply launches an anonymous, preaddressed e-mail screen with no information about who the message is going to or when the sender might expect a response. Customer-sensitive companies sidestep this bland practice by placing e-mail contacts into specific categories, with many using personal e-mail addresses of specific employees.

When we sent an e-mail to Godiva.com, a CSR responded in less than ten minutes with a pleasant personal note that answered all the questions we asked, included the CSR’s name, e-mail, phone and fax, and encouraged us to “have a sweet day” (playing on the site’s signa-ture chocolates). And when customers contact Amazon.com, as hordes do each day, CSRs have some 1,400 prewritten responses to draw on—and to personalize as the situation dictates.

LillianVernon.com, the online presence of the home furnishings catalog retailer, is another that understands the power of personaliza-tion. After searching for a shower curtain with a seashore or ocean theme and coming up empty, our e-mail question resulted in the fol-lowing response in less than 15 minutes:

Dear Ms. Miller,

Thank you for your inquiry regarding the ocean theme shower curtain. After researching our products database, we are sorry to inform you this item is not found in our current inventory.

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Should you need to search further, you may try contacting these individuals at other catalog companies or check their Web sites:

Harriet Carter 800-377-7878

Miles Kimball 800-546-2255

Walter Drake 800-525-9291

Taylor Gifts 800-829-1133

Just For Kids 800-654-6963

Customer service is our number one priority. If we can be of further assistance, please contact our Customer Service Represen-tatives at 800-505-2250, or [email protected], 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Or visit our Web site at www.lillianvernon.com.

Thank you for shopping with Lillian Vernon Online.

Now that’s magic!

Offer multiple ways to access live human help. Even though on-line shopping is largely a do-it-yourself venture, the opportunity to link to a live human and get help, if even for a moment, has great appeal for many. At times, there’s no substitute for the wisdom and grace of the human touch.

That starts with making an 800 number easy to find on your Web site, and working to reduce customer hold times. But today’s e-customers expect more ways to access human help: Multichannel customer re-sponse systems combined with automated answer capabilities have be-come table stakes in the e-service game.

To speed up the response process, many e-commerce sites have im-plemented a live CSR option, making available living, breathing hu-mans who can talk to customers through one-on-one chat boxes while they shop a site. On a technology level, live text chat is fairly easy to im-plement. The real magic comes in hiring and training CSRs who can communicate effectively in writing with customers in this free-form style. If consumers actually link to live chat, chances are their questions will be more complicated than, “What’s your return policy?” They’ll ex-pect answers to questions about product quality, technical specs, repair records, or advice on what to buy. CSRs manning this channel must be well prepped and carefully chosen for the duty, or the personal exchange

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can leave customers disappointed and skeptical of the organization’s professionalism.

Multichannel response systems require CSRs who can perform as effectively in writing as in speaking on the telephone—a selection and training challenge for service centers. Good phone skill doesn’t always translate to good writing skill. It’s dangerous to assume that service staff trained to speak with cheery voices, interpret spoken clues, and master phone technologies will be equally adept at crafting clear and customer-sensitive e-mail, or will seamlessly pick up the new technology skill that goes with it.

Deliver soup-to-nuts service. The reality is most e-customers don’t hand out service report cards until their ordered product arrives on schedule, unharmed, and without fulfillment error. If there is a problem midstream in a fulfillment or delivery chain—especially for business-to-business customers—they want rapid notification or online access to check inventory or shipping status. And if problems prove so daunting as to warrant a product return, online shoppers want return and exchange policies that are synchronized between online and off-line channels, and that don’t give them migraines with endless condi-tions or convoluted machinacondi-tions.

If it’s magical e-service you’re after, it’s important you give as much at-tention to the last half of this service race as the first. While plenty of Web sites have licked front-end design and transactional challenges, building the back-end infrastructure and mastering the logistics to move product efficiently from manufacturer to warehouse to e-customer has proved far more vexing.

Create e-service standards pegged to customer expectations.

Surveying online shoppers as they complete interactions with your call center or self-service functions, or capturing impressions of Web site de-sign, checkout process efficiency, inventory selection, or other factors helps you stay on top of ever-shifting perceptions and experiences on your site.

Done right, online surveys—including Web-based surveys delivered in real time—can reduce surveying costs and improve response rates compared to conventional mail or phone survey tactics.

Organizations that understand how Service Magic drives customer retention and profit take such measurement and standard setting seri-ously, often linking management incentives to achieving key service goals. They also ensure standards for elements like response time to

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customer e-mail are pegged to “Internet time” and not to the rhythms of their own company systems.