If a customer can't solve their problem online, they'll either persevere by e-mailing, calling, coming to see you, etc… or just give up and leave. Either scenario is bad for you in both the short and long term!

The perception that I get is that despite a proliferation of new low cost channels becoming available to the customer (web, click-to-call, click-to-chat, etc…), companies seem to be providing worse and worse customer service. The new technology has made customers more and more anonymous (think back to the level of service most of us can still remember from those mom and pop store).

I was speaking to the owner of a web consultancy we work with who commented on a support issue he had with an internet provider. He had recently received such poor customer service from other companies, that he was ecstatic that the company provided what I would call an expected level of service (customer visits website, calls support line and issue resolved that day vs. multiple calls, messages, letters, visits, etc…).

Being successful during these moments of truth is not only good in the long run, it can also boost your revenues in the short run. We started to provide an online chat functionality towards the end of 2006 to our online banking customers. The focus was on support, however, the possibility of selling basic products was included. In 2007 we were able to monetise this support function to yield USD 9 per customer interaction on average (this added 7% to our sales revenue, paying for the team and turning a profit vs. just being a cost-centre).

Note: You must be cautious with trying to sell of course – there is nothing that will infuriate the customer more than their problem not being resolved and you trying to ram another product down their throats (hence the important of tracking your effectiveness at problem resolution first and foremost)! However, if you resolve the customer's issue, consider an opportunity to monetise on the goodwill that's been generated.

One area I would like to add here is the richness of studying individual customers' (support) web visits and their call center interactions together ( ie..after the support site failed them and they had to call in) .

There are no analytical tools for this..you have to go case by case and customer by customer, but it tells you a lot about "why" the site failed them, and how to thus re-purpose your content, structure, search engine metatags, etc etc. I dont know how many people do this

I have also noticed that most "eSupport" orgs don't use a fraction of the tools used by their "eCommerce" brethren ( SEO,interactive content/MVT/ advanced analytics etc) and I'm wondering why that is the case. I would be obliged if you can point me, in your opinion, to a leading or best of breed ( in tech preferably) support web site? thanks again.

Very nice insights you sharing.For myself,I'm working on the support section for my company,and I'm thinking about the possiblities of doing a segmentation testing through creation of 3 buttons namely for the first time user, repeat user and the non-IT savy users, in-comparison with the existing call to action buttons and search found the support section, in determining whether the customers are getting their questions solved.

What's your view or take on the test ?

cheers,
deric Loh

In regard to measuring visitors, you may want to measure the ratio of support site to support calls — hopefully your site is handling the bulk of the work, even if your latest release was "buggy." This is especially helpful if you are trying to move customers online — you can measure adoption.

I like the measuring problem resolution ideas — if a customer wont recommend your site, they will probably not buy from you next time. Another factor of timeliness is the amount of solutions viewed. In an ideal support situation, the first solution solves your problem. i.e. Enter site, search, pick one result, the result solution fixes your problem, and you are done.

Which leads me to another approach to consider… I beleive the last page viewed is very indicative to how your customer did on your support site. If the last page viewed was a search result page, they likely failed. Likewise, if the last page they viewed was a solution, it is likely they solved their problem. If you compare this to your survey data, you will likely find that your most successful and satisfied customers viewed a solution just before leaving your site.

Of course this will break down for those users who looked at many solutions. (Again, compare to your survey data before drawing your own conclusion.) Those who last viewed a solution and reported success on your site likely did not look at more than 2 or 3 solutions. For viewers who viewed 4 or more, they likely just gave up, just like the person on the search result page.

So your successful visitors looked at no more than 3 solutions and the last page viewed was a solution page.

The only point I'd make is that moments of truth can happen anywhere in a person's web experience and at any time throughout the cycle we use to think about how the customer progresses through the product lifecycle (Research, Shop, Buy, Use). I definitely agree that the majority of the moments of truth are related to that "use" piece of the equation — I lost my credit card, I tried to pay for something and my credit card was declined — and those are probably the ones that often make the deepest impression on us, but they're not the only ones.

I just want to make sure that the whole concept of "moments of truth" isn't equated solely with support.

IBM has a support site (eSupport) and the way your approaching metrics could be helpful (it's not a project I'm working on today, however).

If you think about it – how many have the opportunity to really work on a support site like the type mentioned?