JEFF: You know, when I was an editor of a newspaper, I would have given anything for a connection with my readers like I have now on the Web. It seems ironic to me that companies doing business on the Net would be disconnected from their customers. Why do you think this is? Is it cultural, or just a matter of maturity not yet fostered in this embryonic medium?
MARK: That's an excellent question. The Wall Street Journal ran a piece, about a year ago, talking about the state of customer service on the Web. The reporter sent an email to several consumer-oriented companies, asking each a simple question about their product, and then timed how long it took to get a response back. The results were astonishingly bad: Most companies took forever - days or weeks - to send a note back, and most of the notes had little or nothing to do with the original question.
The obvious conclusion is that, as you pointed out, most companies are severely disconnected from their customers. It's obvious from the results of the WSJ article, and even more obvious to the millions of consumers who are irritated every single day by firsthand experiences with these companies. For example, I can't tell you how many Creative Good readers have written in with their own frustrating stories about how Netscape has snubbed them, either by not answering their emails or by giving incomprehensible "help" to their problems. But if you go to the Netscape Assistance page, what does it boast? "World-class customer service." Someone at Netscape needs a boot to the head.
So, you're wondering why this happens. I see two main causes: a lack of competence online and an entirely wrong attitude about business.
Of course, no one is a true expert online right now, since everything is too new for us to know anything, really. But it's safe to say that many companies out there simply don't know what they're doing. Either some Net-clueless VP is running the show ("Give us some Java! I don't know what it is, but just get it!"), or the Web staff hired by the company just isn't up to speed, or some other lack of competence. I see it all the time: Companies don't know what they want online, or they don't know what to do to accomplish their goals - I spend a lot of my time talking about basic goals and tools - and this lack of competence impacts the customers' experience with the company.
My solution for these adrift companies? Define your goals and learn the tools to get there. Of course, I recommend a good consulting firm to help, since clueless VPs need to get their clue from somewhere, and full-timers are too expensive for a "jumpstart" task ... but then, I'm biased.
I'm going to be very judgmental here and tell you that, in my humble opinion, many companies doing business on the Internet have absolutely the wrong mindset. These companies have forgotten the reason they're in business (to make people more productive, or knowledgeable, or entertained, or whatever) and have gotten caught up in IPO fever (or some equally destructive obsession about money).
One potential client I met with, and I am not making this up, literally stopped the meeting so that they could check the company stock price. Here I was suggesting some ways to improve the ease-of-use of their Web site, thereby making their users more loyal - a real win-win, right? Nope, they were more interested in the money than in the user.
I could go on and on with examples I've seen that support that same attitude - show me the money, and screw the user. It's sad. A few people might get rich with this kind of attitude, but on the whole the industry will suffer. Surveys have shown it, and my own reader email shows it: Users are fed up with the lack of ease-of-use online. If the industry wants to keep its consumer base, it has to focus on - gasp! - its consumer base. What a concept.
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