NOTE: THIS IS PART ONE of a TWO PART PACKAGE. READ BOTH!

For the owner of a small or medium sized business (and the large, come to think of it), the question isn’t whether you want to build a website that makes money; it’s HOW do you build a website that makes money! Right? So you hire an ‘expert’ and turn him or her loose! If that were the simple answer, why aren’t more websites profitable? Isn’t there enough information out there and aren’t there enough experts to point you in the right direction? My answer is: “No!” There are knowledgeable people out there, but there are no pat answers you can pull off the shelf and implement for success. Long before you call in the experts, there are steps to be taken that most innovators skip, including savvy executives of some awfully big companies. Here are some comments & suggestions.

INFORM VS. SELL
Most websites should begin with, or include as a major section, an informing section. For example, my website is designed to inform. You can type my name into any search engine and find many, many references to me, including my website. Just about every reference concerns how to make a small to medium sized business work better … information. When you go to my website, you find tons of information that is easy to read, downloadable, free, and extremely valuable.

On the other side, Amazon.com’s website is designed to sell, and sell they do! Their inform is providing reviews done by others, and then posted for you to read. You don’t get a lot of information from Amazon.com, but you sure can get products at a reasonable price!

HIGH TOUCH
What both Amazon and I have in common is the ability to provide ‘High Touch’, and any website without this feature is doomed to failure. You and I are used to going into a store, and in some way, having a conversation with someone relative to our purchase, politics, the weather, or something. If a website doesn’t have this capability, the only customers you will attract are those who know exactly what they want to buy and are looking for the least expensive way to obtain that product or service. These are NOT profitable customers!

High Touch can either be a fast email feedback (great for the one-person firm), an ‘ask Jill or Jack’ (a real person on a chat or phone line), a personalized introduction and suggestion for other purchases based on past purchases (requires use of ‘cookies’), or some other way of making a personal contact with the customer … a personalization of the website … a ‘High Touch.’ What is absolutely amazing to me is the large number of websites that merely include a phone number for the customer to call, and even more amazing are the websites that don’t even include an email address!

HIGH TECH
‘High Tech’ can be divided into two areas, what’s on the web, and what’s behind the web. For what’s on the web, all I can say is: “Make it easy for the viewer to get around. Don’t load your site with time-consuming material and slow-loading graphics. If you use gadgets & gimmicks, make sure they perform a valuable service and aren’t just for show.

The important items are those behind the web. For example, you need a VERY speedy method of checking credit, verifying orders, obtaining the product; then packing, shipping, and tracking the product, and letting the customer know exactly when you will ship and how. All pertinent information should be immediately available to your customer on line on your website. You need a method of handling back-orders, delays, returns, and all the other things a traditional brick and mortar business has to do, also immediately available to your customer. You also need electronic links and controls to your suppliers, as their failure will cause yours. Failure at ANY point in this chain means failure for the purpose of your website, and will probably result in failure of your web business.

TAKING THE FIRST STEP
We’ll spend more time on these and other web based subjects in future columns, but let’s set the first stage now. There is one and only one initial consideration for your website: ‘Enhanced Customer Satisfaction’. Carefully examine your company, or if you’re just starting, your business plan. You must address this topic everywhere. Remember, we’re talking ‘enhanced’ customer satisfaction, not just plain vanilla customer satisfaction! Product sales will come if the customer receives fabulous treatment.

Take a tip from Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos, who suggests that 70 percent of your resources (including study) should be devoted to creating a fantastic and fabulous customer experience, with the balance used to communicate that fact to your buying public. Set that up as your absolute first and always ‘always-there’ goal. Every time you get a great idea, ask yourself, “Will that help develop a fantastic and fabulous customer experience?” If not, stick it in the round can.

ALWAYS ‘ALWAYS THERE’
Try not thinking of a 6 ton pink elephant with green ears. You can’t do it! Even if you say to yourself, “Why would I want to think of a 6 ton pink elephant with green ears?”, you’re thinking of a 6 ton pink elephant with green ears! And what causes you to do this? It’s that voice that’s always talking to you in the back of your mind, your always ‘always there’ voice. Some call it their ‘inner voice’. Whatever, it is always there.

It’s always there because it is. You cannot shut it off. It is the part of you that talks to you, examining everything, issuing warnings, commenting on what others say, what they do, and how they act; and it performs the same function for what you do, say, or act out.

That’s how you have to think about customer service if you are going to succeed in business, on or off the web. Customer service as you define it must be always ‘always there’, and everything you do must be filtered through that voice. This means you will have to carefully define customer service.

CUSTOMER SERVICE
My definition of customer service is to provide whatever it takes to get the customer to visit your store, buy, buy again, buy more, and recommend your store to others so they in turn visit, buy, buy again, and buy more, and so on. That’s it. There is no other definition of customer service. ‘Good Feelings’ are not part of customer service, it is the result of ‘Good Service’! This holds whether you are a B2C (Business to Consumer), B2B (Business to Business) B2B2C (Business to Business that sells to Consumers) or any other play on words you can dream up. So our challenge is detailing what is good customer service for our specific business. Here’s a few tips.

PERSONALIZED INFORMATION
We’re talking data base here. Whether that data base is available at the counter by asking for the customer’s name, scanning a tag or card, or reading a ‘cookie’ on a website, you need an extensive and well thought out data base of customer preferences that will almost instantly bring up pertinent information the salesperson (or website) can use to thank the customer for their last order, welcome them by name, suggest new items that fit the previous buying pattern, and offer information on subjects near and dear to your customer’s heart. Most supermarkets now can do this automatically, and some (not many) have even trained their checkout personnel to use it. Does this cost a lot? Of course! On the other hand, if your competitor installs such a data base before you, you’re toast.

PRODUCT WAREHOUSING & DELIVERY
We’re talking automation here. The typical product warehouse and delivery system for most dot com and brick & mortar (B&M) businesses is a dynamic and dynamite front end system that promises everything, but sends your customer’s order by fax to the warehouse in Podunk where some clerk who has been around since 1929 sticks it on a nail to be taken care of when he gets around to it. Automation? Well, he’s got a forklift, and he thinks your product order is on shelf 11 in aisle 8, or was it the other way around? Where’s that layout book anyway? Firms new to the call to customer service and those experienced in order fulfillment are looking to specialty houses who promise next day delivery for your product to your customer. Amazon dot com learned the hard way. You’ve got to have a back end system that works instantly. If you don’t, you’re now burnt toast.

PRODUCT RETURNS
I’ve written about this in a previous column, but it can stand another look. Dot com or B&M firms must have a product return policy that is fair to both the customer and the firm. The policy must be viewable at the point of sale, and the terms clear and understandable. Again, there are firms that will handle all your returns, sending unopened merchandise back to stock repackaging some, and selling the remainder at auction for you. You cannot do this yourself without dramatically adding to the cost of doing business, so why would you want to try? Maybe it’s because you like charcoal toast?

DISPUTE RESOLUTION
It takes a person. Not just an 800 number, a real person who has the authority to solve the majority of customer problems right then and there: no argument, no ‘it’s partly your fault’, no ‘it’s not our policy’, no ‘I’ll have to check on this and I’ll get back to you … next Tuesday, or Friday, or maybe Monday.” Will you lose money on this? Review the definition of customer service above, then answer that question.

MORE
The next two segments will discuss how your firm can define customer service, who should be on the group that makes that decision, and what to do with the recalcitrant executive, and where you go from there.