Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

We decided to try something new. The Thing. It`s a new kind of technology, but it`ll replace very important old technology. In other words, The Thing is going to be Very Important! And we`re hoping to make repeating purchases. And The Thing costs enough that we can`t easily afford problems.

Since this product is entirely new, there`s no word of mouth. We don`t know squat about it, and we can`t test it out in the physical world. We only have a couple of web sites to find out details, along with some forums. People on the few related forums are all excited about The Thing, but that`s just forum gossip.

It`s time to make a decision. We have to choose one or the other, and we really would like The Thing to work out. If it does, it`ll solve lots of problems. So we went to the site. We got all the details, saw some pictures, but that`s pretty much all there is. There`s no "satisfaction" guarantee, so if we don`t like The Thing, we`re out the money.

Following the instructions, we filled out a new-customer account form. Could hardly read the text, what with it being red on gray, and very small font size. But we really want The Thing, so we persisted. We checked the order, the shopping cart, and it looked pretty good.

They prefer PayPal, and the only other options are check or money order. (Guess that lets out eBay, since they won`t allow sellers to use money orders anymore.) So we clicked "Next."

Ordinarily, you just log into PayPal, assign a payment, and come back to the seller site. Not this time. It took a few tries, and some exploring to figure out how to make our purchase. The integration was poor, and we really didn`t even know if we`d made a payment. We had to check the PayPal account, then found another screen.

By this time, if it hadn`t been for our really wanting The Thing, we would have been very nervous, highly suspicious, and quite concerned. We would have abandoned the entire situation.

Even so, we still are quite nervous about the lack to testimonials, lack of "typical" action and results, and the "new-ness" of the product itself.

All this, and we`re very familiar with e-commerce. We sell, we buy, and we`ve been doing it all for quite awhile. Yet when we encountered this new Thing, we went right back to being newbies, with all the worries about everything you hear regarding online shopping.

Do you think your site doesn`t need all that junk? Do you believe shoppers are all highly experienced, so they`re not worried about glitches, lack of content, lack of testimonials? Are you so sure that you can do the minimal amount of customer reassurances, and people will simply buy whatever you`re offering?

Think again.

Online shopping is still pretty new. Online payment systems are still pretty new. Every day you hear constant ads about identity theft, electronic fraud, phishing, viruses, malware, and so forth. People aren`t all that ready to roll over and buy whatever they see on a screen.

Have you considered exactly how your own site stacks up against professional places like Amazon.com? It seems to me that too many online sellers have forgotten what it`s like to buy something "sight unseen," particularly when there`s little information about the product. Everyone seems to just assume that the burden of closing the sale rests on the buyer. Not the seller.

This experience reminded us like a ton of bricks! Buying online isn`t as simple or easy as walking into your neighborhood store and picking something up off the shelves. It`s nerve-wracking because you have absolutely NO idea who you`re dealing with! The "face behind the site" is almost totally anonymous.

What are YOU doing to reassure your visitors that you`re real, authentic, and that you can be trusted?


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Craig Landes
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Defining the undefinable. "There are 10 kinds of people in the world---those who understand binary numbers and those who don`t." - Unknown

International Society of Curmudgeons

Excellent reminder, Craig. Thank you for taking the time to write this message so that no corner is missed. I personally will now remember to save every little positive comment emailed by our subscribers and share it on the home page.
In Health,
Sandra Strom, CEO of Song of Health.com



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http://www.songofhealth.com

To my mind, it`s so completely easy to slip into the mind of being a customer that I`m astonished at how rarely it seems to happen elsewhere. All of us, within one single week, will buy something from someone, somewhere. All of us have to make that final decision to take out our money and hand it over.

Somehow, when it comes to building a web site or online business, a large portion of us either decide to develop a case of utter amnesia, or we`re so one-sided in our perspective that we believe customers just automatically hand over whatever money they happen to have.

Build a web site. Then before launching it, go buy something expensive enough that it`ll hurt if you don`t get what you want. In our case, $50 was that number, but we`re poor people. In other cases, it might be $250. Whatever. Choose something that`ll hurt if it`s not right, then buy it online.

That`ll show you very quickly the difference between a quality site and a badly-designed site. The trick is to actually take notes and remember what you experienced and couldn`t find on the bad sites!


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Craig Landes
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Defining the undefinable. "There are 10 kinds of people in the world---those who understand binary numbers and those who don`t." - Unknown

International Society of Curmudgeons

Great insights Craig!

It`s interesting how customer service is making a comeback with the recession. Customers will just go elsewhere if they don`t get the attention they deserve (all the more reason to think like your customers and help solve their problems - especially on your Web site).

Melanie

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Melanie Rembrandt
CEO, Rembrandt Communications®, LLC
Visit www.rembrandtwrites.com for valuable PR tips and SEO copywriting help!
Twitter: @RembrandtWrites

Y`know what kept us with the site? Rapid-response email! The owner of the site responded within hours to our first email, in which we asked a couple of important questions.

The combination of the almost immediate response, and the forum posts talking about the site being reliable was what got us over the problems of their shopping cart.

And how easy is that? How simple is it to monitor your email, see questions, and right-away get back to the customer? And yet we`re astonished at the number of times we hear....nothing!

It`s to the point now where we email a simple question to a new site where we`re thinking of buying something. If we don`t hear back in a day or maybe two, we abandon the site completely and never go back.


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Craig Landes
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Defining the undefinable. "There are 10 kinds of people in the world---those who understand binary numbers and those who don`t." - Unknown

International Society of Curmudgeons

Great thread and I too am amazed like Craig mentioned about the amount of people that don`t respond to emails. Like he said if we don`t hear back we abandon that site. We give them a day or two not 2-3 weeks to respond.

 In the last few years there has been countless places where we have asked a question about a product never to hear from them. These were products that we needed and would have ordered on a regular basis so they are the ones losing out. One example is with our vertical signal flag banners. We use white rope to build it. We emailed him with a couple of questions over a week ago. Still haven`t heard back.

Why bother to have a contact us page if you aren`t going to answer? What irks me is those same people can`t understand why there business is failing. They just don`t put the two together 

PrPro said: It`s interesting how customer service is making a comeback with the recession.

In my opinion it never should have left. That is one thing that is key in our business. If you have quality products you should have quality customer service also.

Kathy






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..Navy Signal Flag Gifts....
Made to Order Navy Signal Flag Banners...
"Anything you can Spell we can Make!"......
Visit IB Designs Blog....

What it comes down to is that we`ve made a "rule," if you will.
 


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Craig Landes
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Defining the undefinable. "There are 10 kinds of people in the world---those who understand binary numbers and those who don`t." - Unknown

International Society of Curmudgeons

I think some have overstretched their ability, in an effort to try and keep the cashflow going. The recession is pushing retailers etc into a tight corner. Keeping overheads such as staff to a minimum while trying to attract as much custom as possible. Losing sight of their own capability. This results in a less than happy overworked staff and less than happy customers and systems that cant cope. The downward spiral continues until there is no business. So what may have been a good business ends up badly managed, and constantly in panic mode. 

The key problem with most business cases to lay off employees, is that it`s the *delegating* of tasks to employees that builds a business.

Consider Aldi, a discount grocery store that`s growing exponentially around the Chicago area. It`s dramatically impacting all the established stores. Aldi pays their employees almost double wage, compared to the other stores.

The result is exceptional service, speed, knowledge. The employees also are willing to stock shelves and keep the store clean, thereby cutting down on janitorial services, while boosting employee morale.

Coupled with good pricing and quality, Aldi is wiping the floor with their competition.

Customer service is so fundamental to a strong business, yet those are often the first employees let go. So too, places like Circuit City used to pay for product knowledge in their sales people. They decided it was cheaper to hire minimum wage, non-commission sales people instead of that product knowledge.

In my opinion, that`s one of the main reasons Circuit City went bankrupt. And I think it all comes down to the overall nature of the business owner. If they`re a control freak, they won`t let anyone else do much of anything. AND they won`t value the work being done by people on the front-lines, like customer-service reps and support.


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Craig Landes
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Defining the undefinable. "There are 10 kinds of people in the world---those who understand binary numbers and those who don`t." - Unknown

International Society of Curmudgeons

Maybe Aldi have found the magic formula, good prices+quality+good customer services+motivated employees=success!  To start with anyway. One thing I have noticed as an employee over the years is that when a new manager or management team comes on the scene they feel they have to make an impact and look good.
The no brainer for many of these "managers" is to cut costs, it looks good to upper management, improves the bottom line and looks good on the CV.  The no brainer to cutting costs is get rid of employees, cut hours, cut benefits and have the remaining employees fill the gaps in service.
These cost cutting measures take time to filter down to customer service, and staff moral but it will, by which time these mangers have moved on to trash another business. Another management team feels they have to do the same thing and it keeps on going. You see it time and time again, it must be a familiar story.
As I see it this is the fault of senior management who have lost site of the core values of what their business is about, short term thinking and poor middle management.