Alright, I’m not really going to present an entire case, but it sounds so darn official. I will say I love using online chat with websites that offer it. Most notably, a couple of years ago eBay added Live Chat to their website in an effort to assist their customers. It makes getting answers to quick questions much easier, and is sure to stop frustrated customers from leaving.

For larger ecommerce sites it can significantly cut down on your call center needs. One customer service agent can handle multiple online chat sessions, however, most humans I know, are limited to one phone conversation at a time.

For the average small merchant Live Chat might not be a feasible option. Since many of us (me included) have regular 9-5 jobs we’re unable to attend to customer service all day. However, if you do have the staff to handle this, it is an economic and powerful feature to add to your site. If you search for Live Chat services you’ll find many that offer easy website integration, and usually a month long free trial. After that the cost is very reasonable. I have seen as low as $9.99 per month. Think of all of the abandoned carts you’ll save!

One neat feature you may not have been aware of is that with most Live Chat services, you can see customer’s (IP address) as they visit your site. You can see what page they’re on, and even initiate a chat conversation. It’s pretty cool to watch live traffic travel through your site.

Let’s face, not everyone likes to pick up the phone and wait for a customer service agent. Why not give them an option?

Back during the dot com explosion at the turn of the century, I heard a story about some guy who received such poor service from Dunkin Donuts that he started a website called dunkin donuts sucks, or something like that. Shortly after, it was rumored that the happy donut people bought the domain for millions of dollars so they could shut the site down. Now I’m not sure if this was motivated by greed or by a deep routed hatred for the brand, but it stuck with me.

This winter my wife and  I went on a Carnival Cruise from Fort Lauderdale all the way to Panama and back. It was our seventh cruise, and we expected it to be just like all of the previous cruises… absolutely wonderful.

Well that was not the case. Through some venting issue on the back of the boat we had garbage compactor smell pumped into our room through the A/C about three or four times a day. The smell was so foul we had to open the door and kill the A/C making it unbearable in the room. Despite repeated complaints, and seemingly weak attempts to solve the problem, Carnival was unable to do anything. Final on the last day we were granted a meeting with the captain of the hotel division. He was of course apologetic but powerless to offer compensation.

To make a long story short, we ended up with an insulting compensation offer, and were left pretty unsatisfied. In the spirit of revenge, I hatched a plan to buy a domain like, CarnivalSucks.com or something of the sorts, and start my own site to post our experience on. Unfortunately, other web projects tool priority and I was unable to find the time.

Anyway, this is my solute to those who use the internet to keep big corporations with terrible customer service in check.  Greed may be their ultimate motivation, like our D&D friend, but I’m okay with that.

It always amazes me when I deal with some company and their sales or customer service reps are really rude. Yeah, I can understand the huge companies with thousands of people in a call center will occasionally hire a bad apple. However, there is no excuse for a small business to be rude to its customers.

This week I called a gift card manufacturer to get 5,000 custom cards made for a trade show in two weeks. I was informed in a really blunt and rude manor that the cards would take two weeks, and I had better get my artwork in today! Oh, and if I didn’t hurry, there would be a $250 rush fee. Okay, so my deadline was tight, but why was I being treated like I just asked her to move a mountain? There was no excuse.

Instead of dealing with this company, which I had done business with before… ya hear that, I was a return customer! I decided to search the net for an alternative. I easily found another company who could produce the cards in half the time, and half the price. Bam! Problem solved.

When I wrote a customer service column for Practical Ecommerce magazine, I use to stress the point that the internet is a vast land full of competition. If you’re rude or difficult to deal with, someone can easily hit Google and find the next guy.

When I evaluate websites, I always look for ease of use and availability of customer service. It’s too easy to lose customers these days, and merchants need every advantage they can get. I’ll be posting more tips and tricks for making your web business as easy as possible for the customer.