Customer Service Buzz ? How to Win over Your Support Page

This is the second in a two-part series about the importance of web ownership?earlier we explored WHY your support page is important, and here we will tell you HOW you can get that ownership?

I recently blogged about the importance of your support page, and gave you three reasons why you should be showing it a little love. (As a brief recap, the page is important because your customers love online service, there are huge cost savings, and poorly designed pages drive disloyalty.)

We noticed though, in 2009, that the ?love? for these pages seemed to be missing, and service teams suffered from a lack of web ownership. But we are wondering now if that trend has changed over the years, and so we asked you about your relationship with the web page today.

And the results seem fairly encouraging. The vast majority (over 70% of our members) say that they have at least a modest level of ownership over the support page, with 31% saying that they have gained that control within the past few years. Only 29% of members said they had little to no ownership over that page because another team is in charge of content and design changes.

Though this is a significant shift from the state of affairs in 2009, we think it could be even better. Whether it?s a change in the placement of the phone number or revamping of the FAQs, there are small?but important?changes that every service organization should make on their website. To gain more control over that page, it?s crucial for the service organization to demonstrate value to their business partners. Here are some steps to making your case:

• Step one: Find a current problem or failure point. Identify a shortcoming with the support page that drives customer dissatisfaction ? in increased call volumes, more customer complaints, and lower satisfaction scores.
• Step two: Quantify impact relative to the entire business. Customer metrics and data impact the entire company?for example, high customer effort means decreased customer loyalty, which in turn leads to customer churn and lower revenue for the company. Communicate these KPIs to business leaders in quantifiable terms to show the negative impacts on the business as a whole.
• Step three: Leverage unique advantages of customer service to craft a solution. As one of the few cross-functional groups, service has an intimate understanding of all customer-facing aspects of the organization. As such, you hold three unique advantages: proximity to customers, surveying expertise, and rich data collection. Use these skills to truly understand customers, and share them with your business partners to develop customer-centric improvements.

What do you think? What has been our strategy in gaining web ownership?

Related posts:

1. 3 Reasons to Show Your Support Page a Little Love
2. ?Green? Customer Experiences Are Win-Win-Win
3. The Loyalty Opportunity for B2B Service and Support
4. Is Google+ a Customer Support Game-Changer?
5. Making Your Customers Work Too Hard To Get Support May Be Driving Them Away From Your Products

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