As companies gear up for a strong finish to 2009 and consumers gear up to acquire more high-tech gadgets from big box stores and online retailers at highly competitive prices, it is a great time to look at how companies can ensure customers are satisfied and successful with their purchases and how companies can plan ahead for 2010.
 
Picture this…Manuel waited in line for more than 24 hours to get the best Black Friday deals. He gave up Thanksgiving dinner with his family and battled cold temperatures through the night so that he could be the first person in line at his local big box technology retailer when the doors opened at 5am on Black Friday. He made it through the long wait and it was worth it because he walked out with a new 50-inch television at a rock bottom price – complete with features in Spanish, a requirement of his family and friends.
 
Now - the moment of truth…it is time to setup his prized possession – his reward for his long wait in line. Manuel carefully unpacks the TV and strategically places it in the family room of his house for all to enjoy. Now all he has to do is figure out the setup and programming. Here, Manuel makes the horrifying discovery…the programming menu is stuck on the English main menu screen and won’t advance to the next menu screen or switch over Spanish. The manufacturer did provide the quick start guide in Spanish to help with setup, but it says nothing to help him troubleshoot this error. The support manual is available on the company’s Website but Manuel knows it will take a long time to find the translated PDF version and navigate the extensive table of contents. His only other option is to call the support line, but on a holiday weekend he knows from experience that he will be directed to a call center and he will be on hold listening to irritating music for more than a half hour while he waits for a Spanish speaking representative. All of a sudden, the time spent in line, the cold weather, and the frustration of missing dinner come flooding back and are aimed squarely in one place - the manufacturer of the TV.
 
This is not an enviable position for most companies and one that it is difficult to recover from. This type of customer frustration won’t lead to positive reviews, recommendations or repeat business.
 
Time spent trying to resolve support issues can send the most loyal customer into a state of anger. To help your company avoid pitfalls like these in the New Year, focus on providing customers with a more positive self-service experience by reducing communication barriers. Here are 3 recommendations to help companies find success in self-service.
 
1) Eliminate the need for customers to call support for simple questions that can be answered online. By providing self-service options on the support site, through a knowledge base, FAQs, chat or other channels, companies can dramatically reduce their support costs. Standard industry metrics cite the average call center cost to be $33 per call, while self service averages between one and two dollars. It doesn’t take long for these savings to add up. From Manuel’s point of view, if the self-service site was featured in the quick start guide, he may have been happy to check there first.
 
2) Provide customers with the same depth and quality of information for self-service, regardless of the language these customers speak. Providing a self-service option on your site is great, but if companies are selling globally or to diverse groups in a particular region, those customers prefer to interact with the company in their native language. Manuel prefers Spanish and would have been thrilled to know there was a self-service option available to him in his native language.
 
Often times, companies will translate product information required for pre-purchase into many languages but stop short of translating support content because of the cost. This sends a signal to customers that they are important enough to sell to but not important enough to support. Manuel was starting to wonder if the company’s Spanish speaking customers were less valuable than English speaking customers.
 
To ensure that all customers receive the same level of self-service support, companies have started to deploy automated translation software to quickly translate support content into many languages. Companies like Intel and Cisco have successfully deployed automated translation on their support sites to deliver self service information to a global customer base without incurring costs associated with human translation.
 
3) Enable Web properties to provide all of their visitors – regardless of location or language spoken – with the same community-contributed content. The next wave in support is the community. Younger generations prefer to get help from peers before going through traditional communication channels setup by an enterprise. These same people also expect answers faster than ever before, so unless you have a huge call center with short wait times, a user community should be in your plans. For these customers and future customers, it is important not only to deliver a community portal, but also to enable contributions from a global customer base. What is learned by customers in France, Spain, China, or Istanbul will be just as relevant to customers in the United States, Germany and Japan. Communities empower your customers to contribute, help each other and interact with the company in a new way, and translation of community generated content enables companies to broaden the reach of a single piece of content.
 
As you look ahead to 2010, think of Manuel and the excitement he had around his new television. That excitement can be harnessed and used to your company’s advantage if communication barriers have been reduced to enable communication and interaction in multiple languages and across channels. If customer loyalty, experience and satisfaction are important to your company, look at new ways for enabling self service, providing quality information across languages and empowering the global community in your plans for the New Year.