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My regular readers will know that one
of the things I highly recommend doing with any online
business is automating as many of your day to day tasks
as possible.
From a personal point of view, one
of the tasks that takes up a lot of my time is answering
emails. It isn't just answering email that eats up the
hours - sorting through and deleting spam and junk mail
absorbs a lot of time too. In the good old days, I used
to get a couple of spam emails a day. Now it is closer
to 1000 a day!
In fact, when you look at it, email
isn't always the best form of online communication.
Not only is there the junk mail issue to contend with
but also the fact that email is not 100% reliable. Emails
do 'go missing' far more regularly than you might expect.
Often this is simply because the recipients email software
has decided that a particular email is junk and has
transferred it directly to the 'Delete' folder. Other
times it may be because the recipients ISP has decided
that the email is junk and deleted it BEFORE it has
even been seen by the recipient! (Yes this really does
happen - imagine if your postman sorted through your
mail and made the decision of which letters you want
and which ones he should throw away?!)
One way to help avoid the spam problem
when dealing with customer support enquiries is to make
use of a contact form on your website instead of posting
an email address. This will certainly help to cut down
on spam but it still means that you have the problem
of emails not getting to their destination (and when
you have a frustrated customer waiting for assistance
this is not ideal).
Therefore, probably the best option
on the market presently is a full-blown helpdesk system.
Setting up a dedicated helpdesk is a superb way of automating
your customer support and speeding up the process of
dealing with enquiries and support emails. Not only
that but if you use a system that allows customers to
create 'tickets', you don't have to rely on email as
your customers can login to a special web page and view
both their tickets and your replies online.
Another feature of many helpdesk scripts
is an 'FAQ' or 'Knowledgebase' section. This is simply
a collection of the most frequently asked questions/queries/problems
along with answers and solutions. This means that customers
can search the knowledgebase and hopefully find the
answer to their question without having to contact Support
at all.
Some of the more advanced scripts will
even scan the customers support ticket prior to submitting
it and then list a few possible answers to their questions
just in case they didn't read through the knowledgebase
before typing the ticket out - very clever stuff.
These scripts are also very powerful
in terms of how they can benefit you. Just think how
much time you could save if, say, 40% of your customer
support emails just stopped coming due to the fact that
your customers were now able to find the answers to
their questions automatically.
Having an online helpdesk is also of
benefit if you travel around a lot or if you are away
from the office on vacation etc. Instead of having to
take a laptop loaded up with previous emails from customers,
you can simply login to your helpdesk admin page and
all of your previous correspondence will be online and
at your fingertips. It also means that you won't have
to spend hours in an Internet cafe deleting a days worth
of spam at a time just to get to the important emails
since only the important emails will have made it through
to the helpdesk in the first place.
As with most things, setting up a customer
service helpdesk is one of those tasks that is always
better done when you first start your online business.
That said, it is fairly easy to integrate such a feature
into your existing set up and that is exactly what I
have done for all of my websites...
Over the next few months, I will be
phasing many of my email addresses out - I simply can't
stand the spam any more! With immediate effect, all
customer support issues for all of my products and websites
will be handled via a central Customer Support Helpdesk.
I am confident that this will improve
the overall 'support experience' for both my customers
and me :-)
If you are interested in installing
a similar helpdesk on your own website/s, there are
numerous options when it comes to suitable software.
I chose a product called eSupport (link below) and whilst
this is a very powerful script, I am hesitant to give
it my full recommendation since the installation/set
up process was, how can I put this, slightly painful.
It doesn't help that there is no manual for the software
which means that new users are left to figure out how
it works by trial and error or by trawling through hundreds
of posts on the company forum. That said, I am advised
by the software creator that a manual is in the process
of being written and will be available soon. As I say,
an excellent and powerful script once installed and
configured but definitely not for those lacking patience
(and indeed, some computer knowledge). If you opt for
this script, my advice would be to get the publishers
of the software to install it for you. You can find
out more about eSupport at: http://www.kayako.com
Other alternatives (neither of which
I have tried myself) include Perldesk ( http://www.perldesk.com
) and Cerberus ( http://www.cerberusweb.com
). One advantage of Cerberus is that there is a free
version :-)
About the Author
Richard Grady has been helping ordinary people earn
online since 1998. He writes a free newsletter which
is published every two weeks. To subscribe (and claim
your free gifts), visit: http://www.thetraderonline.com/newsletter.html
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