Businesses Need to Go Human Online
Posted by Tom Pick on Tue, Aug 09, 2011 @ 08:35 AM
Search engines, company websites, directories and social bookmarking sites are great for finding things. They help you find products, prices, related websites and other information. About the only thing they don’t help you find is people—the right people to talk to when you have questions about a product or service.
Corporate websites particularly seem designed to prevent real, and real-time, human contact. There is a generic “Contact Us” form, an 800 number usually leading to a phone maze (“press 1 to be ignored; press 2 to be unexpectedly disconnected; press 3 to hear this menu in Esperanto; press 4 to hear other useless options…”), and a mysterious “info@” email address. Asynchronous communication has its place, but what about when you want to talk to someone now?
A few corporate sites have responded to this need with online chat options; however, you know nothing about the person on the other end (often an offshore contractor juggling multiple chat conversations simultaneously). Who are they? Where are they? What’s their background? How much product expertise do they have? And if you do find someone who is helpful, how can you connect with them again the next time you visit the site? (You often can’t.) To put it bluntly, chat sucks.
You generally don’t need to interact with a live person when making a simple online purchase (e.g. a book, a sweatshirt, or toner for your printer). But when you are purchasing something more complex, particularly something that involves online research but an offline purchase (a car, a home, a mortgage, a complex insurance policy, or legal representation), it’s critical to be able to find and interact with the right person in terms of geographic location, product/service knowledge and other factors. And you’d like to be able to do without divulging your contact information—until you are ready to do that.
It can be done. People can be put back into the online buying process, using the right combination of existing technologies and enlightened sales and marketing processes. The rewards for companies that embrace this change will be more leads, shorter sales cycles, and more satisfied customers. The reward for customers is a more productive, comfortable and personal buying experience.
To learn more about how humanizing online business can benefit your business, and your customers, download our white paper Humanizing Online Commerce: Why It’s Time to Use Web Technology to Put People Back Into the Sales Process.