I’ve always been a keen advocate of customer self-service. For most things, I would prefer to get my task (buy, pay, research, gain information) in a quick and efficient manner without relying on anyone else.
In today’s harder economic times, this is even more true, especially when the call center is outsourced and I know more about the issue than they do. But now, I see something different brewing on the horizon.
We take it for granted that sites like eBay and Facebook are web only – i.e. you can only interact via a computer.
At Amazon and Hotels.com – you have a choice, you can either buy directly on the web site, or you can converse with a human. They want your business and created channels to increase conversion.
Amazon is an interesting case. Even if I am not planning to buy a particular item from Amazon, I do my basic market research there. They have great product descriptions and community reviews, which I have come to depend upon.
Nowadays, the airlines want to charge you to speak to a human being. I am okay with this for the most part – but I feel unfairly penalized when the transaction that I am trying to do cannot be done without a human. I would suggest that they make all business processes self-service capable, if they want to charge me for human intervention.
And now, I see something entirely new. Recently, I received an email from the bank holding my mortgage. Since I had paid the bill online, they decided that the only way that I can receive my year end tax statement is to logon to their site and download and print it. While this doesn’t sound onerous, and in general I am a believer in “green causes”, I was taken aback by this stance. Where was the choice, what is my alternative? In this case, green was all about saving money, the bank’s.
What this means to me is that when the Web goes from “self-service” to the only channel for interacting with an organization, the web site better work, it needs to be more than just reliable, it needs to be convenient, adaptive and delightful. I’m not sure if my bank is up to this challenge, but in these days of doing “more with less”, I expect to see a lot of companies acting this way.
When the website becomes the only option to convert, transact and communicate, I guess I still always have an option. If it fails, I take my business to www.somebodyelse.com.
Since consumers still have that option then protecting the success of the online channel is no longer an option for companies, it’s a mandate.
-- Robert Wenig, Founder and CTO
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