Changing phone habits Options

[Caissa]

Hi,

I am trying to make people email my company instead of phoning. I feel it is necessary to have a phone number available to look legitimate on the Internet,, but I wish they would not use it.

I do not have a 1-800 which, I think, cuts down the calls. I have placed all over my site that emails are handled very quickly. That phone calls should leave messages.

I realize that this is hurting sales, but it is necessary. Can anyone give me some more ideas to gently push people to sent an email? The phone is ringing constantly!

Many thanks!

[Respree]

You could remove your phone number completely.

Before you do, however, perhaps its wise to consider the possible consequences.

I hear you. In the 'perfect' world, its just click, click, click. That's how an ecommerce store runs most efficiently. However, there are conversion issues to consider. While not having your phone number posted would certainly solve your problem, it may create trust issues that may result in lost sales. Okay, you already knew that.

The compromise, what you're suggesting, is to try to get people to communicate by e-mail. Is that more efficient? You could have a canned program that sends automated responses. I personally can't stand them, as they never 'quite' answer the question to my satisfaction. Again, this would probably result in an unwanted conversion rate impact.

The alternative is to hand type each answer, one at a time. I find this to be the most personal and probably the most effective, provided you can do so in a timely manner. I find that most people are appreciative of a quick response.

Here's an email I got just a few moments ago.

Hello Garrick,
Yes, I approve the additonal charge along with final charge of $ 164.30
Thank you very much for your quick responses & I look forward to receiving my canvas transfer and ordering future products from you.
Sincerely,
[customer name removed]

in response to my hand-written response:

Thanks for your order. I'm glad you took advantage of our special holiday offer.

Both the ready to hang Gallery Wrap version and the Brushstrokes is the same price; $40.80 each. You get 'one' of them for free.

If you want both, I will have to charge you for one of them, which would bring your order total to $164.30.

I also wanted you to be aware that because the image wraps around the stretcher bars, you will lose approximately 1 1/2 inches off both the width the length. The final dimensions of the product is going to be approximately 17.5\" x 22.5\".

Please authorize the additional charge via e-mail, as per this quote, and I will process your order.

I look forward to hearing back from you.

Warm Regards,

Garrick Saito

However, the downside to this method is that its time consuming. The upside is that is has a favorable conversion rate impact (versus a canned or delayed response).

So how do we 'minimize' these inefficient communications.

My theory is to prevent the questions from getting asked in the first place. Surely there must be pattern to these incoming phone calls that are driving you crazy. I'd let the phone ring off the hook for the next 30 days and take careful notes on what these customers were calling about. Then prepare an analysis to see if you can build some of the answers to the questions that are getting asked over and over again.

Then strategically place these 'answers' on the page they're most likely to ask them on - I would imagine it would probably be the product page. See if the volume of calls don't decrease. If not, perhaps the placement wasn't quite right or the answer was not quite sufficient enough. As always, test, test and then retest to see where you can strike a balance right for you.

That's my suggestion. :wink:

[bragadocchio]

Then strategically place these 'answers' on the page they're most likely to ask them on

It's an approach that I've seen work. You can learn a lot from those phone calls, and the questions that are asked. By seeing if you can put the answers to them on your pages in the right places, you may be able to reduce the number of calls.

You may also want to experiment a little with the placement of your email address on the pages of your site. Would you consider also putting your email address at the tops of your pages too, and seeing if that increases the ratio of emails to phonecalls? It's an experiment that may be worth trying.

You may also want to put your email address above your phone number at the bottom of your page, too. People may be calling more than emailing because it is the first method of contacting you that they see as they scroll down, rather than their preferred method to communication. Again, it's worth a try. :wink:

[Tim]

Where I work, we try to encourage customers to use e-mail as well. Of course, we don't mind if a customer calls with an urgent request (eg. their server is down), or if they want to pay by credit card over the phone because they don't like entering the number through a web page, but phone calls reporting problems that require a lot of information exchange (such as e-mail bounceback messages) are hard to deal with.

So, we try to solve it by encouraging users to use e-mail. If a user calls about an issue that we know is best solved by e-mail, we'll do what we can over the phone, but will often ask them to send the details in an e-mail. Usually they remember this next time. And, when signing up customers over the phone, I'll often mention "If you have any problems, please feel free to send us an e-mail".

Interestingly, on our site, the phone number is actually visible before the e-mail address is.

Another thing to try would be to make it as easy as possible for customers to e-mail you. Don't just list your e-mail address, but also give them a form to fill in that sends off an e-mail to you - thus making the process simpler for them.

Something else to look into may be a form of live chat on your website. It encourages customers to use the internet as a form of contact rather than the phone, but it still gives them the instant answer that they don't believe they will get from e-mail (no matter how much you tell them you respond quickly). Using live chat is good for you as well, because you can manage a few conversations at once.

I don't know if you've looked into live chat solutions before, but www.stardevelop.com is a pretty popular one, as is www.cerberusweb.com/products_chat.php

Hope the ideas help!