subject: Customer Messages - Stop Losing Them! [print this page] There are several methods of receiving inquiries or support requests from your website visitors and customers to ensure efficient handling.
Method 1: via email. To use this method, you may simply publish a special email address on your website; e.g., support@mycompany.com.
Method 2: using a contact form embedded on your website. Contact or feedback forms usually contain several fields where a visitor enters his/her name, email address (to receive response), the subject, and blank space for message content.
Method 3: through a personal online account. Users must register themselves prior to sending an inquiry. A protected online account may also contain useful information such as order and contact details, a link for quick access to the knowledge base, etc.
Which method is best greatly depends upon your website's purpose and what kind of inquiries you expect to receive from your visitors. If your website is a simple personal page about your hobby, then placing your email address on the home page (method 1) would be sufficient. An online store selling technically complex products which require post-sale support and maintenance should choose method 3 to facilitate efficient customer request handling.
Here are the basic features and limitations of the three methods:
1. Fast writing and sending of an inquiry
The easiest way to send a message is to click a "mail to" link. This opens users' email clients and they can immediately write their request and send it.
A web form (method 2) allows visitors or customers to contact you almost as quickly (i.e., they can compose and send requests without leaving the website). In this case, writers must enter their email addresses in order to receive replies.
Sending a request from a personal online account requires additional actions. To send the first request, users must sign up for accounts in your system. Sending additional requests will require login to access the account.
2. Request classification prior to sending
A reliable method of identifying types of requests is to use separate email addresses for different purposes. For example, you may create several addresses and offer them to your website visitors as explained further: contact@mycompany.com for general inquiries, techsupport@mycompany.com for technical support requests, billing@mycompany.com for payment-related inquiries. By publishing these addresses with clear instructions, you can expect most website visitors to make the correct contact. All the same, it is not possible to prevent a visitor occasionally sending a complex technical request to a "financial" address simply by mistake.
When using method 2 or 3, you may add special fields to your web form which will allow visitors to select the type of request; e.g., product features, prices, shipping, refunds, etc. The probability of correct choice in this case is higher than if customers select from an email address.
3. Automatic selection of useful articles
Customers or visitors often ask the same questions. You can retain the text of several standard replies to such frequently asked questions (FAQs) in order to save time and satisfy customers with prompt and qualified responses.
If your web form requires that a person select a category (as described above) or identify other parameters prior to sending a request, then the selected options will allow your system to automatically extract relevant information from the knowledge base and to display it to a customer before he or she even finishes sending an inquiry!
Quite often, this spontaneously displayed information will answer questions and customers will cancel their requests. By creating a good knowledge base, and correctly setting up an article selection system, you can significantly reduce the number of repetitive requests.
4. Guaranteed request delivery
There are dozens of reasons why an email message may not be delivered: a failure of the recipient's mail server, IP addresses blocked by email providers, badly configured spam filters, etc; therefore, method 1 does not allow customers to be 100% sure that their requests are delivered. When a web form or a personal online account is used, requests are directly saved in a database; therefore, delivery of customer requests in these cases are guaranteed.
5. Guaranteed response delivery
You may almost eliminate the risk of request non-delivery, but you physically cannot guarantee that your replies will always be delivered to them. Any outgoing email message may be rejected by the recipient's mail server or saved in the "Junk" folder where it is not found or read.
A personal online account (method 3) is the only way to guarantee that customers are able to view their requests and your responses at any time.
6. 100% spam protection
Placing an email address directly on a website will often result in numerous spam messages sent to your mailbox. An effective way to reduce the amount of spam when using methods 1 and 2 (email address or web form) is to set up auto-responses to all requests sent from unknown email addresses (i.e., those which are not registered in your database). Note: even though most email handling software supports this feature, you will never be protected from all spam!
The personal online account is a web resource with restricted access where only the customer can send a request to you. It is unlikely that customers will send you spam messages from their online accounts; if this unlikely event occurs, you can simply delete or disable such an account.
7. Unambiguous client identification
The main attribute used to identify customers who send requests by email (method 1) or web form (method 2) is the email address. Problems may occur when people use several different email addresses; e.g., if a customer specifies his/her email address when shopping in your online store and later sends you support requests from another address, it is difficult to match the support request with the original order.
A reliable customer identification method is to use personal accounts. Before performing any actions in the account (e.g., sending a request or editing contact details), a customer must first log in. Email addresses are irrelevant for identification purposes.
Conclusion
You may well ask, "Which of the three methods is preferable?". There is no simple answer to this question. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the ultimate choice depends upon your website's purpose and on the nature of your business; however, we hope that the information contained in this article will assist you in making good decisions.
