Forum Moderators: buckworks
Me? Always get them on the 'phone. An argument via e-mail gets you no where. A quick phone call and they usually see common sense and calm down.
Any e-mail slightly abusive receives an e-mail telling them to call us. Usually they do, and usually they are nice as pie.
Couldn't agree more. Sometimes the telephone works far better and faster than email.
Phone or face to face carries so much more non-verbal information and customers appreciate the effort
John
"A quick phone call and they usually see common sense and calm down."
We get emails like "tell me about your products" or "what does that color of yellow look like?"
Hey, we don't have Hemingways working for us.
We know these are often the beginning of an email exchange that could take days. Average email doesn't get a reply for more than 24 hours.
IF WE CAN GET THRU TO THE CUSTOMER by phone, we can clear up almost any problem in minutes...and sometimes get them to add to their order.
Usually we win over the other 1% by the time the call is over.
MANY others on this board have said the same thing over the years. And they agree that follow up calls OFTEN result in add-on sales.
If you could make a few hundred dollars an hour, by talking to people on the phone, would you do it?
If you could make a buck or two would you do it?
Depending on what you are selling, direct customer services offers different returns.
It seems like it would be time consuming and expensive to have to call customers to give them information that sounds like it could easily be put online
We have very thorough product descriptions and FAQs...and we constantly improve them based on feedback. But if we covered every remote possibility, there would be so much text that customers would RUN from our site.
How do you describe yellow by phone?
If we ask by phone what the customer is trying to match, we pretty much know whether OUR yellow will be close. The back and forth would be difficult and slow by email.
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Most of the calls we make are to correct probable customer errors. ie. Customer orders three widgets in Lemon Yellow and a fourth in Pale Yellow. We want to ship right away. An email might get caught in their spam filter or whatever. At best, a reply might come in a day or two.
So we phone ASAP and ship an hour later
I would certainly talk to a customer on the phone if he requested it.
I begged them to get 1-800 numbers from the start.
After awhile, they gave in.
Now when we talk about online sales and I think there might be a problem, they say, "but you don't see our phone sales".
Closing deals online is increasing sales to those that can answer questions quickly, considering so many sites are selling the same product or like product line.
A real time person will convert at least 50x over a late email in my opinion.
Wrong: when there is a complex back and forth exchange to clarify something, phone is faster.
Moreover, if "there is a complex back and forth exchange", there is a complex issue behind. If there is a complex issue behind, it needs to be as clearly explained as possible, not faster!
We get emails like "tell me about your products" or "what does that color of yellow look like?" Hey, we don't have Hemingways working for us.
We know these are often the beginning of an email exchange that could take days. Average email doesn't get a reply for more than 24 hours.
IF WE CAN GET THRU TO THE CUSTOMER by phone, we can clear up almost any problem in minutes...and sometimes get them to add to their order.
I'm sick of marketers insisting to give me a phone call and trying to upsell instead of answering a simple question by an email!
I'm sick of marketers insisting to give me a phone call and trying to upsell instead of answering a simple question by an email!
We're not "trying to upsell," but anytime you contract a customer by phone (or email) the possiblity of an upsale exists. It is especially likely if the retailer sounds competant and honest by phone.
Fact for us and just about anyone: Average telephone sale is larger than online sales. In our case, about 40% larger.
Now when we talk about online sales and I think there might be a problem, they say, "but you don't see our phone sales".
Well, I'm not in a hurry to buy your product! Insisting on to phone me, just means you're in a hurry to sell it. And this is very irritating!
Immediately proceeding our "all orders shipped same or next day" we state "please allow 4 to 5 business days for delivery"
With most of these customers we direct them back to our website and politely ask them to take a look at our shipping policy again.
Some people just like to pick a fight. If you refused to be drawn into to their drama, usually they will calm down and be reasonable. If after directing them back to our website and they follow up with a nasty emails, we simply ignore them and not respond. If they follow up with a call we politely tell them their order has been shipped and if they are dissatified with our service to refuse delivery and we will refund their order when we receive the order back.
Most "awkward" customers are simply people who are unhappy with their own lives in general and there is nothing you can do to make them happy.
About 1 out of 1000 you just gotta wonder how they missed appearing in the Darwin Awards so far.
A couple of years ago, we had some "lady" send us an empty box of chocolates for a refund. Said that they "did not taste good". Biggest problem is that we do not sell chocolate, we sell things like wire and batteries. Yet she was totally insistent that she bought the chocolate from us "a while back". When asked how she decided it was us, she said something about how our web pages were the same color...
Hilarious!
Yeah, you gotta wonder how some people learned to walk upright.
