Call your mother. And your customer support center. (eTail Insights #5)

Clearly you don't call your mother enough. But have you ever called or emailed your customer support center? I bet the answer is no.

Think about this: you've actually gotten someone to convert at your site, fabulous-store.com. They bought something. They gave you their credit card and they are happily waiting for their purchase. Many of them get it and love it. Hooray!

But what about the customers whose purchase comes with a free white elephant gift: an interaction with your customer support system? For example, let's imagine Sarah is worried that her order from your fabulous-store.com isn't going to arrive by Christmas. She emails your reps. What happens?

Possibility 1: Cheerful robots

Sarah gets an auto-generated email saying an email server was happy to receive her message. The next day she gets an email from a 'human' who's bonus is based on how fast they can respond using pre-written blurbs carefully designed to answer a completely different question. Sarah responds, now in even more of a panic because it's one day closer to Christmas. The server is delighted to hear from her again. The next day she gets a different blurb. And guess how helpful it is.

Possibility 2: What kind of fruit falls off a phone tree?

Sarah calls your customer support center. She does the whole 'press one for orders originally made in sanskrit' thing. She listens to music designed to produce seizures in small children, interspersed with messages about promotions that repeat at least four times. She ends up with an operator who asks her for every bit of the same info she 'entered' by pushing the buttons. After five minutes, the rep tells her that he needs to transfer to another rep, who, you guessed it, asks for all that information yet again...and so on.

Possibility 3: Happiness is a warm rep

Sarah gets a response that was clearly written, or at least edited, by a human being. The human being makes sure that the package is expedited, even though the company now has to eat $15 for quick shipping. The cost of the support interaction is around $5. Sarah is so amazed and impressed that, when all of her friends start talking about their own shopping hell, she excitedly tells her story about the fabulous experience at fabulous-store.com. Hmm...wonder if that was worth the $20?

Before you talk about how expensive this would be, let me get this straight... You're spending how much money, exactly, trying to get customers to come to your site? And how many initiatives do you have to improve conversion? What about projects to try to get them to make a second purchase or increase average order volume?

And let me guess...you're trying to save money by increasing throughput in your customer service center? So basically to spend less time with each customer who has a problem, most of whom are among those you have converted?

So, Tamara, what am I supposed to do?
Go order two things from your site. Tomorrow, before they arrive, email customer support to ask where one of them is, and call customer support to ask about the other one.

How was it? Annoying enough to grumble about it to anyone who will listen? Surprisingly good enough to tell your friends?

The most recent interaction many of your converted customers have had with your site, your brand, and your products is a customer support experience. You got them, you converted them... don't piss them off.