Address: Simsbury, CT 06070
Phone: 860-655-2283
Phone: 860-655-2283
Customer Service and Your Website
Customer Service and Your Website
Today’s sophisticated consumer creates a rising demand on your business resources. For your day spa to thrive and remain competitive, you must find ways to:
As a rule, poor service and customer dissatisfaction is highest when you’re at peak service capacity. For the spa industry, peak capacity occurs seasonally (think of service overloads during the holidays – Christmas, Mother’s Day, and Valentines Day) and also with promotions. Most day spas respond to resource strain by scaling up and down (hiring and laying-off personnel) as needed. This practice creates employee morale problems and stresses your budget.
How can your day spa create a more positive customer experience without negatively impacting your budget or employees? Wouldn’t it be great if 80% of your incoming calls were from people ready to schedule an appointment rather than just asking for information? You bet it would! How do you make that happen? Simple, use your website to provide customers with the information they need. A well designed website makes customer self service a reality and improves customer satisfaction.
Tip #1: Make sure your website is "listening" to your customers. Does your website provide all the information your customers are looking for? Whether you realize it or not, your website is "listening" (both implicitly and explicitly) to your customers and gathering information about specific requests. It’s up to you to review those requests and give customers what they’re looking for. Where will you find that information?
Start by examining your web analytics and your site search box. They both provide a rich source of important data – the keywords and key phrases used by your customers. Don’t underestimate the value of that information. Next review your "most visited" web pages and the paths taken to them. These pages are good indicators of where "customer interests" lie. Finally, go through emails received from customers and compile a list of the most frequently asked questions.
Tip #2: Provide information quickly. The web is about immediacy. Provide information and answers quickly. If customers can’t be find that information quickly they may become impatient and click to another website.
Tip #3: Answer email quickly. Email is the preferred method of communication for many people. Don’t make them wait for days (or weeks) before getting back to them with answers. Use your auto-responder to give people an accurate idea of when they can expect a personal reply to their questions.
Tip #4: Make customer service options (buttons, links, etc.) easy to locate. Devote at least one page for each of the following:
After customer input forms are submitted, customers should be taken to a confirmation page telling them when to expect a reply. Be sure to repeat the contact information (phone numbers, hours of operation, etc.) on this page.
Tip #5: Make changes to site navigation. Your website must be intuitive. Keep site navigation simple and don’t deviate from excepted standards. Don’t frustrate site visitors by making them search for information or clicking back and forth between pages.
Tip #6: Write your website content using common language. Think keywords and "searchability" when writing for your web audience. Keep those your keywords front and center when constructing the FAQ page.
Tip #7: Integrate all communication channels. Every business uses multiple forms of communication. Each channel must share a common knowledge base so a uniform message is presented to the customer - thereby eliminating confusion.
Take the time to examine your own communications. For instance, when was the last time you updated your website to reflect changes in your service menu or policies? When was the last time that you changed your telephone "on-hold" message? When was the last time that you changed your web marketing campaigns? Are they aligned with your current offers and promotions?
Tip #8: Apply the "80/20" rule to your website. You’ll find that 80% of website inquiries are related to 20% of the content. It stands to reason that if you provide "easy-to-understand" answers to those questions you’ll significantly improve your customer experience and reduce the number of service related calls and emails. This will greatly free up time for your customer service reps allowing them to focus on scheduling and other high value customer issues.
Tip #9: Refine the wording on your website. Small changes in your wording can increase your customer experience a hundred fold and improve results. Make it a priority to periodically reread your web pages with a fresh set of eyes. Make your web copy easy to digest and be sure that its up-to-date and current. Remove confusing or ambiguous content.
Tip #10: Provide an input form for appointment requests. Allow site visitors to request appointments. This can be accomplished by setting up an input form routed to your email. It’s not necessary to use an online appointment system, although you certainly can if you feel it would be advantageous for your business.
Use your website to give customers an immediate answer to their questions. A clean, easy-to-navigate, customer focused website presents your business in a favorable light and gives people a reason to do business with you. Web self service provides the lowest cost interaction and scales with demand fluctuations. So don’t delay, get started today and put your website to work for your business.
Need help creating a customer focused website? Spa Marketing can help! Call 860-655-2283 or email us at: .
