The Customer Loyalty Solution : What Works (and What Doesnt) in Customer Loyalty Programs

Where Web response comes into its own is in the sophistication it makes possible and the very low cost. Once your Web microsite is set up and running, the variable costs of each customer response are exactly zero. We should note that we are not factoring in the setup costs here. Web setup can be expensive, but it is much less expensive than call center software. It is comparable to the elaborate arrangements that are necessary to receive, open, and enter data from phone, fax, or email.

The tremendous cost savings from use of the Web are possible only if customers are willing to go to the Web to respond. Whether they do so depends on how good the Web site is. If using the Web site is a superb experience, word will get around, and customers will flock to it. If the experience is annoying, unhelpful, uninformative, slow, or confusing, people will stay away in droves. For the present, do not expect the majority of your customers to respond via the Web. The phone will be the response mechanism of choice. But this is changing every day as Web use grows. For the Web to be successful in database marketing, your company is going to have to put a lot of effort into making the experience satisfying for the responder. Here are some of the things that you are going to have to provide:

• Personal greetings. Find a way to greet customers personally, particularly business-to-business customers. As already discussed, you absolutely must use cookies, unique site addresses, or PINs. The goal is to make the Web site better than a live operator.

• Quick loading. Do away with flash pages that take a long time to download. Most consumers today are still on modems, not broadband DSL, and this will be true for some time to come. You system has to be designed for your current customers, not for the customers of the future. If you cannot make your current customers happy, you may have no future.

• A site designed for the customer. Design your site with your customers in mind. Put yourself in their shoes. Don’t say, “What do I want to sell them on this site?” Instead say, “What would I want to see if I came to this site as a customer who knows very little about our company and its products and who is trying to find information or get prices on a specific item?”

• Search boxes. Provide a search box prominently on every page. Make that search box very informative. Nothing is more annoying than going to a Web site looking for something and not being able to find it. I went to the Hewlett-Packard Web site trying to find toner for my HP Laserjet 4—the most common printer in the United States. I couldn’t find it. Even if you don’t have what you assume many people will be looking for, give them an answer. HP could have said, “We don’t sell toner for our printers. Go to www.Staples.com/HPToner.”

• Three-click rule. Use the three-click rule. Make it possible for anyone to find anything on your site with just three clicks.

• Constant modification. Study the things that people are asking for every day, and update the site so that it answers the questions that are asked. That is what call centers do. If a number of people ask the call center operator, “Is your product made in the USA?” he will quickly ask around to be sure his answer is correct. You have to design your Web site to do the same thing. In designing and managing your Web response site, spend a few hours a week sitting next to a call center operator and listening to the questions and the operator’s answers. Your site has to be that good.

• Pictures, lists, and diagrams. Capitalize on what you can do on the Web site that a live operator cannot possibly do. You can have pictures of things, maps, references, articles, lookup tables, and diagrams. Incidentally, while I am at it, let me take a swipe at Acrobat. Many Web sites use Acrobat software to display pictures and text. It produces attractive results, but you cannot copy it or download it easily. I prefer screen content that you can print directly on your PC printer or copy directly into Word. Acrobat is annoying and turns me off. Figure 7-2 shows the entire process in a nutshell.

  Figure 7-2: Customer Service Link through the Web

Of course, there are still millions of Americans who do not yet make a habit of going to the Web in response to promotions. That number is going down by thousands every day. Before you finish reading this chapter, several thousand additional U.S. households will have come online. Today nearly everyone above the poverty level has a computer. Just about everyone is using email at work or at home. While people are looking at their email, it is an easy step to click on a Web site contained in the email to respond to your promotion.