With very little effort, even a good company can force prospects and customers to the competition using their website’s contact form and customer service e-mail.
Oh… I get it! You want prospects and customers to contact your business – not your competition.
That’s great… but are you doing the right thing to make that happen?
Let me share with you this quick story…
As a business professional, I’m sure you know that consistent and timely follow-up with your prospect’s and customer’s questions is crucial to the success of your business.
And some people… and for certain questions… they’d rather shoot off an e-mail they found on your website instead of picking up the phone.
When I have a quick question, I do. Mostly, because I think it’s usually a more efficient use of my time, as opposed to finding the right phone number, and waiting on hold forever, just to get disconnected.
Actually, I’ve sent off short e-mails to customer service departments of two good-sized companies recently, both with simple questions, assuming I’d get a quick (or at least timely) response.
NOT!
In both cases, it’s been more than 2 weeks, and I even sent a second e-mail using the “email customer service” link on their websites. Grrr… Lack of follow-up really puts me in a foul mood.
Now… one will never get my business, and the other… they just lost any future business.
Come on… isn’t responding to your prospects and clients, no matter how they communicate with you, just common business sense? Not to mention common courtesy. Jeesh…
Seems like both are seriously lacking in today’s businesses, where many companies let their “Sales Prevention” department’s bad habits ruin any chance of profits or success.
No wonder they’re bitching about poor sales and profits. If people don’t think you care about their questions and comments enough to even respond to ‘em, you’ll push them right to your biggest competitor’s doorstep – gift wrapped with a big bow.
The moral to this story…
If you have a customer service e-mail address or contact form published on your website, and tell people to contact you with it… For crying out loud, when your prospects and customers use it… Give them the courtesy of a response!
If you’re like the two companies I spoke of, and not going to respond, you might as well tell people not to contact you, or at the very least, remove those pages from your website.
What are your thoughts?
If you need help with website design, writing SEO optimized web copy, email marketing, or other online marketing strategies, I can help!
To your marketing success!
Merrill Clark
Website and Marketing Copywriter
Join my discussion by leaving a comment below…
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