IN THIS ISSUE: January 5, 2000 To Archive Index We Can See The man behind The Curtain And He's No Wizard Worth Quoting

We Can See The Man Behind The Curtain And He's No Wizard

Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore. Visitors used to accept only being able to communicate with a site by e-mailing the webmaster or administrator. Not any more.

A recent Jupiter survey showed that 46% of sites failed to answer email in under five days or never responded. That's up from 38% in the identical survey in the 4th quarter of '99! What's going on here?

Why would a company NOT provide the names of actual human beings to contact? Why are Internet businesses such dismal failures at human interaction? Here are three scenarios.

• WIZARD OF OZ SYNDROME On the Internet, nobody knows the real size of your company. Lots of one-man and one-woman magic shows don't give contact names because they don't want to admit they use the Royal "we." Like the Wizard, they don't want you to see the man behind the curtain. But people would rather know they are dealing with one person who really cares than a hundred who don't.

• BEAR WITH NO BRAIN SYNDROME Winnie-The-Pooh said it best. "I have been Foolish and Deluded," said he, "and I am a Bear of no Brain at All." More than one person has told me that s/he thinks companies like Microsoft don't put their phone numbers on their site because they are afraid they will get millions of calls. Well, as my dear nana used to say, "That should be their biggest problem." If you want to have a big business online or off, you have to staff up to handle customer calls. Period.

• CALL OF THE WILD SYNDROME Remember when the three cruel, inexperienced Alaskan Gold Rush prospectors in "Call of the Wild" died just moments after they were warned not to go on because the ice was too thin? (Thankfully, the kindly John Thornton had just saved Buck, the canine hero, by taking him away from the clueless trio.)

  A lot of Internet companies are risking their lives with statements like this one: "Due to the volume of responses we will not be able to respond individually to your ideas. Be assured that your thoughts are greatly appreciated. " Plenty of other sites are equally unresponsive, including http://www.msn.com and many more. In fact, these days, many sites don't even have a "Contact Us" button anywhere.

Whipped Into Shape

Services like Live Person - http://www.liveperson.com, Live Helper http://www.livehelper.com and many others provide live real-time customer support. They are primitive but far, far better than no contact or no response.

Just as phone, utility and cable companies have had their customer service policies whipped into shape by legislation and consumer protest, web companies are going to have to start treating customers like people. How reliable is a web site that won't even give customers a name or a phone number? What are they hiding?

Too much attention has been spent automating sales processes with fancy back end systems for web sites. The systems that really need help involve humans being talking to and helping other human beings.

The web is an instant medium. It requires instant answers.

Recently, I had a less than wonderful customer relations experience with Amazon.com. Long touted for their responsiveness to customers, this money-losing giant seems to be losing their service edge.

Don't You Remember, You Jerk?

I ordered a book several months earlier and when it didn't arrive after several weeks, went to a Barnes & Noble store and bought it. Six months later, the book arrived via UPS. I emailed Amazon to say I didn't recall ordering this book and I didn't want it. They emailed back to say I had ordered it six months earlier. Gee, maybe someone could have emailed me that they had finally gotten the book and asked me if I still wanted it sent. But instead a series of emails went back and forth with Amazon defending its position and even outlining for me, in bulleted points, why I was so wrong.

Eventually, I griped my way up to a higher level and Amazon agreed to send me a return label for the unwanted book. When I wrote back to say it would have been great if that had happened in response to my first email, someone wrote to apologize and sent me a $5 gift certificate. This sixth email from Amazon was signed by an actual human being. I would have called them to have this exchange, but nowhere on Amazon's site is there a phone number. Not anywhere!

The apology and gift certificate would have been a home run if they had been sent in response to my first email. I'd have gone away praising Amazon's customer-centric culture instead of wanting to order my next book from www.barnesandnoble.com. Maybe I'll just go around the corner and buy my next book in a real bookstore.

Customer service separates the wheat from the chaff in the bricks and mortar world and it will soon do the same on the Internet. Ignore this prediction at your own peril.

Not long ago a sales person for www.commissionjunction.com told me that they have a "new policy." They actually answer their phones during business hours without using voice mail. No more voice mail hell for their customers. What a concept! Just watch, any day now more companies are going to give you their phone numbers.

Worth Quoting

Every second 25 new Web pages are added to the 1.4 billion already on the Net. (NEC Research/PC World) "Yes,' says Kushal Dutt http://www.traincentral.com, "and 24 of them are horrible looking."