Your customers expect a seamless shopping experience. They want to be able to cross channels and jump platforms at their convenience without having to re-introduce themselves to you every time they venture into a new area. From their perspective, you should recognize them where ever they happen to be.

That expectation was more realistic in a world where a company operated in a single channel. Customers who frequented the local department store were easily recognized by the owner when their paths crossed at the movie theater. Similarly, it wasn’t unusual for service representatives to recognize a regular customer’s voice when an order was called in.

If a company had more than one channel (store and mail order), they were separate divisions that didn’t share information. Customers didn’t expect them to be integrated. Things change. Today, people know that technology can be used to integrate every channel and platform. They don’t think or care about the expense or challenges in doing it. They simply want it to happen so it will be easy for them to shop.

Integrating channels is challenging. People with unique perspectives have to work together to make systems with different protocols communicate. There isn’t a turnkey system available that provides everything your company needs to cross channels and integrate multiple platforms within a channel.

Adding f-commerce to your channel mix as a standalone platform fragments your customers’ shopping experience.

Ideally, your fans are already customers. They have placed orders, shopped your stores, and may even participate in your loyalty program. If your f-commerce platform isn’t integrated with your order management system, customers will have to provide information that you should already know about them. Instead of being recognized as a valued friend, they will be met with a “who are you?” questionnaire. In a world where easy trumps exceptional, it isn’t either easy or exceptional.

When P&G tested f-commerce, they used Amazon’s platform. Before expanding the test into other areas, they developed their own platform. This works for P&G because they didn’t have a direct to consumer system in place. If your business is already connected with the end user, then you need to recognize them when they buy, no matter where they choose to shop.

If you have an active Facebook fan base, you should definitely test f-commerce but don’t shoot yourself in the foot when you do it. The risk of customer alienation is greater than the benefit of a few extra sales. To venture into f-commerce without the risk:

• Use Facebook as a portal to your website. When customers buy, they will be recognized by your system as an existing and valued member.
• Acknowledge that people came from Facebook. You can do this with a special landing page, pop-up, or trigger email.
• Monitor the activity to see where you can improve the connection. There is a lot that can be learned from your web analytics. Are Facebook customers different from other channels or platforms? You won’t know without monitoring.
• Give it enough time and resources to succeed. Social media is an interactive dynamic channel. It needs regular updates to keep people coming back for more. Participation doesn’t have to be expensive, but it does have to be active.

Use the lessons learned to expand your reach and results. If the testing is successful, using a third party platform or developing your own may be the right answer. The information from the tests will help you define the needs, create a realistic budget, and integrate it with your existing infrastructure.

For guidance in creating a social media strategy that works, check out Social Media 4 Direct Marketers

Trap 1 – Investing Heavily in Unproven Territory

Trap 3 – Giving Your Business to Facebook

Long ago in a galaxy far away exceptional customer care kept people coming back for more. Companies worked overtime to wow their customers. Adages like “the customer is always right” were corporate rules to live by.

Then things changed.

Companies became less focused on delivering exceptional experiences and customers cared less about having them. Sometimes you can look back and identify the catalyst that started the change. It’s only a theory, but I think that the economy contributed to the corporate decisions to scale back service and life challenges kept people from noticing enough to care.

A recent study by the Corporate Executive Board found that service was four times more likely to lead to disloyalty than to loyalty. Customers who had to put forth a high level of effort to resolve issues were more disloyal 96% of the time even when the solution was satisfactory. With the demands of today’s life, people don’t have discretionary time to invest in purchases. Simply put, easy trumps exceptional when it comes to delivering what people want.

The first step to making it easy for your customers is taking a walk in their shoes

Ask people unfamiliar with your business to “shop” it on a regular basis. Give them a list of things to find or do and a rating card for them to complete. Fix the problems and monitor the results. (This is presuming that you have a benchmarking system in place so you can see the effect. If you don’t, get one.)

Next, spend some time thinking about ways that you can streamline the experience and then test your ideas to see what works best. Since people have different preferences, consider adding quick step processes to your current systems instead of replacing them. Here are some ideas to consider:

• Add one-click buying to your website.
• Place QR codes in your catalog or direct mail piece. When scanned it should land on the item with an option for one click buying.
• Use transactional emails to provide status updates every step of the way when people place orders. If you tell them before they ask, they’ll be happier and you’ll reduce your customer care costs.
• Create a comprehensive and easy to navigate frequently asked questions page on your website. People have been trained to look for FAQ’s. Making it easy for them to find the answers increases sales, satisfaction, and search results. Updating it often improves the information and your search results.
• Make your website easy to navigate. If in doubt as to what to do, copy Amazon. They invest heavily in testing to see what works best.
• Use your analytics to improve your game. Website metrics tell you a lot more than how many visitors go to your site. Drill down into the data to find where people get lost and find ways to keep them moving towards purchasing.
• Go mobile. Make your website mobile friendly.
• Rethink the shelving reset process. Relocating items may increase impulse buying, but it can also alienate customers. When people pop in for a quick purchase and have to search the store to find the item, it doesn’t make them happy.

As always, test everything. Testing is the only way to know if your new idea is brilliant or a bomb.

Keeping customers active in the buying process is the best thing you can do for your business. If your customers are leaving, they have a reason. Finding out why they stop buying is the first step to fixing your customer retention problems and improving customer relationships. Here are five reasons to consider:

1. Buying from your company is too complicated.Life is crazy. New challenges and distractions appear out of nowhere. People crave easy shopping experiences. Every extra step or click between first access and completed purchase is a road block. Too many blocks and customers flee in search of less resistance.
2. They can’t find you on their channel of choice. Single channel marketing is rapidly becoming extinct. The only companies that can survive without expanding their presence have exclusive, high demand products or services. There will always be a few around, but if your business isn’t one, you need to determine where your customers hang out and join in.
3. Your products and/or services have become commodity items. It’s a global economy. Someone (or many someones) is ready to offer your best products and/or services at a lower price with a quicker delivery date as soon as you release them. You can continually offer new releases in the hope of staying ahead of the competition or you can establish unbreakable relationships with your customers. Choose wisely.
4. “We’ll get back to you on that” is the most spoken phrase at your company. Resolving issues and inventory management aren’t included in the top thousand glamour jobs, but doing them well keep customers coming back. Some rules to live by:

   - Resolve 95% or more of customer issues on first contact.

   - Never (yes, that is a NEVER) be out of stock on best selling items.

   If you can’t resolve the issue on first contact or are out of stock, reward the customer. (Sometimes the reward can be as simple as a profound apology with explanation.)

5. They were just visiting. How long does it take you to recognize hit-&-run customers? The sooner you identify them, the quicker you can adapt your marketing appropriately. Investing marketing dollars in people who won’t buy again is a waste that has a direct effect on the bottom line.

In 2006 I wrote an article for Multichannel Merchant magazine entitled “Marketing from the Back-End.” The primary point was that marketing and operations were equal and complimentary partners. They have a symbiotic relationship that helps a business reach its full potential if they work together. That is one big IF because marketing and service rarely meet on common ground.

A lot has changed since I wrote the article. Technology is moving faster than the speed of light, changing how we connect with people. Social media has grown into a world-wide phenomenon. People are more mobile, yet remain as accessible as when prime time consisted of three channels. Unfortunately, accessible doesn’t equal easy access. Reaching customers and prospects is much harder today because they have more choices.

Welcome to the world of micro-marketing.

If you thought multichannel marketing was hard, hold on to your hat. Those channels that began as an alternate to traditional venues are now fragmented into mini-channels. Your customers and prospects are scattered all over the place and it is your job to find them.

Social media is the best example of how one channel can have thousands of customer access points. New platforms and networks are appearing daily. Some won’t gain traction, but all have the potential of effecting how and where you reach your customers and prospects.

Your ecommerce access is splintering, too. While people can always connect with you on your website, their attention is split by alternative shopping venues. It’s a virtual town with shopping centers all over the place. Multiple locations for your business increase your access to people. It also increases your costs and workload.

The bottom line is that it takes more resources to access fewer people.

Marketing has to be efficient and effective to maintain the status quo. Maximizing the return on investment almost needs a miracle. The good news is that miracles happen when marketing and customer care work together.

The purpose of marketing is to attract people who need your products and/or services. Marketers are great at identifying opportunities, creating strategies, and measuring results. The purpose of customer service is to deliver on the promise. Care representatives are great at matching products or services to needs, resolving issues, and making customers feel like they are the most important people in the world. Occasionally you’ll find an individual who is good at marketing and care, but it is the exception, not the rule.

Social media is more about care than it is about marketing.

Connecting with people is the foundation of social networking. Shouldn’t the people who are most qualified be the ones who do it? Your customer care team has already been trained. They know the intimate details of products and services. They know the policies. They know what can be done to resolve issues. They know how to diffuse tense conversations. And, they don’t have to say, “I’ll get back to you on that,” because they already know how to fix the problem.

Great customer care teams are also good at conversions and upsells. If you want to see them in action, listen in on a few calls or read some email exchanges. It quickly becomes obvious how well they understand their customers. Why not use that skill on the social networks?

When Amy Africa tweeted that she wished that people would just put social media in customer service and get it over with, I mentioned that marketers resist this idea because they won’t receive credit for sales. She asked me why they needed it. She has a valid point. If the company’s revenue increases, everyone should win. I know that isn’t always the case, but to survive in a micro-marketing world, working together is required.

If your marketing team focused on marketing and the customer service team managed the care across channels, how would it affect your business? I’m betting there would be more time for the marketers to develop and test winning strategies and customers would be better served.

Sometimes people get so caught up in tools and technology that they forget how to make things work without them. Having the latest and greatest customer relationship management is cool, but it isn’t required to deliver an exceptional experience.

Your customers want to complete their transaction with the minimal amount of effort. They don’t want to be your friend, buddy, or pal (unless it comes with great deals or other benefits.) If you can consistently deliver on your promises and resolve any issues quickly your customers will be happy.

The concept that quality customer care is expensive is an illusion created by management unwilling to make the changes required.

Is it because they don’t know how? Or, is it that they don’t want to move out of their comfort zone? Or, do they simply not care? Whatever the reason, they are preventing their company from reaching its full potential.

Poor customer care is substantially more expensive than high quality. The costs escalate with every issue. Let’s start with order fulfillment. The best handled order is the least handled order. Every time the order is touched, costs increase. High backorder rates require multiple shipments and handling. Poor processes create longer fill times and more handling. Again, there are higher costs.

And, then there are the customer calls, emails, tweets, and posts that occur when those orders are delayed, shipped to the wrong addresses, or any of the other issues that happen when customer care isn’t the top priority. It’s a toxic spill that multiplies the costs.

The good news is that most of these costs associated with poor service can be eliminated without spending a nickel.

To get started:

• Find the bottlenecks and wrenches in your processes and systems. Follow orders from their originating channel to shipment. Eliminate every unnecessary task or touchpoint. Individually, they may seem minor. Cumulatively, they delay orders getting to your customers and increase costs.
• Analyze incoming customer calls, emails, tweets, and posts to determine the top issues. Fix the easiest ones first. The benefits will compound as you progress. Continue to work through the list until you are done. Repeat. There will always be new challenges if your business is growing.
• How many times do customers have to contact your company for resolution to issues? How many different people handle the calls? The goal is one contact and one person. Find out why more is required and fix it. If there has to be more than one, the second call should originate from your company.
• It is impossible for a company with unhappy employees to create happy customers. If morale is an issue within your organization, it has to be changed. In many cases, low morale is a side-effect of poor customer care. Dealing with unhappy people every day, hour after hour is demoralizing. Whatever the cause, find it and fix it.
• Smile. Be happy. Smiles are contagious. Spread them like a virus and encourage your team to do the same. Your customers can feel the smiles even when they are on the phone.
• Be honest. If you can’t resolve an issue, tell your customers. Apologize and let them vent if necessary. Empathy goes a long way. (Perks go further. Offer discounts or other options when possible.)

If you still think that having the latest and greatest customer relationship management system will fix everything, you should know that it won’t remove your bottlenecks, improve morale, or make your customers happy. Those things have to be fixed first. Once they are, you’ll have the budget to buy the cool stuff that makes delivering on the promise easier.