"Hello, hi, is that Amazon?"
"Yes, I wonder if you can."
"I need some cupcake baking cases for my daughter’s school cookery project."
"Thanks for asking, yes, she’s 14."
"Well, it’s just I can see on your website you have silicone moulds but also the paper cupcake cases. I don’t know what to choose, both from a cost and an environmental perspective. What would you advise? What do other people do?"
Is a conversation you will never hear. Ever.
The emperors of ecommerce, such as Amazon, have got this nailed. To be successful in what they do, they need to be sure you’re going to click and buy, without ever, ever needing to speak to a real person.
But where does that leave the rest of us? Can you aspire to the same outcome, that the first time you ever hear from a client is when they book with you? What with you offering a service, and all?
At Disquiet Dog we reckon it’s not only something to aspire to, but it’s something that is both achievable and expected. So here we’re going to bust a few myths that might be preventing you from trying to do away with enquiries.
Myth #1 – What we do is unique
You might argue that it’s all very well for the generic widget sellers whose products are pretty much interchangeable. Products are easier than services. But really? If that were the case, every single silicone cupcake mould manufacturer would have cookie cutter (sorry) product descriptions to match. But they don’t. Every last seller of every last product will seek to discern themselves from the competition by pointing out every last feature and benefit, in the hopes that clients will find the information they need to stick their product in the basket.
What to do: Make sure that you are detailing every last element of what you offer. Use schema markup to help you do that. Schema is a way of you telling search engines what a certain piece of info relates to, e.g. 1st November is the start date, 18:00 is the start time. By codifying your service's formats and features, Google will understand it better and display information about it correctly. Ask us to help if that’s too fiddly.
Myth #2 – It doesn’t work for customisable products and services
From Dell computers to Hurtigruten Scandinavian Cruises companies have found plenty of ways of having you book and pay for things which perhaps traditionally, required bags of human-driven support.
The classic approach for both of these companies is that you buy the basic thing, then you customise and add bits on to your heart’s content till your budget runs out. The same goes for cars. 20 years ago, who would have thought you could order an option-laden, made-just-for-you car online?
The great thing about giving your customer the choice on customisation is that it takes that cringe out of an upsell – you can provide all sorts of tables, comparisons, reviews, options and let them do it for themselves. Because who doesn’t want the extra RAM, the low-profile tyres or the chance to cuddle a penguin?
What to do: Follow their lead. Start with the most basic version of what you offer. Use the simplest of cart functions to allow people to add and remove features you know were important to the clients who bought from you in the past, and where they tended to enquire the most prior to purchase. Which meals do you want with your accommodation? What excursions will you pre-book before you arrive? What training modules would you like to include? What are the features and benefits of each? Would you like the paperback or hardback book to go with that course?
Myth #3 – Our clients have lots of questions
This is not a bad thing, but it doesn’t mean you have to remain in the mindset that you should answer all of these questions via email, phone call or social media. On balance the world is becoming happier to find their answers in ways other than speaking to a human being. Indeed some clients squirm at the prospect of having to speak to a real person, and actively prefer to get their info in other ways.
That said, it’s good not to drift the way of utility companies and other mass-solution providers like airlines who, to an extent, are big enough to make you wait. In the early days of Easyjet, and again recently when thousands of their clients wanted their money back, there was significant frustration when you couldn’t get through and it was impossible to get a straight answer elsewhere.
What to do: Don’t only think of an FAQ page, though that remains a good starting point. Go one important step further and anticipate where, exactly, in the buying process a given question is most likely to arise. Is it during a research phase, whilst reviewing your specific offering, when they’re about to pay? Tweak the format and depth of the info accordingly.
Push the boat out and go for an explainer video. Before you baulk at the cost of it, think how long you might otherwise spend trying to get back in touch with people to answer the question they posted several hours ago without catching them on their commute, on another call, or feeding the dog.
Myth #4 - Enquiries are a great source of conversion
Enquiries do, of course, land somewhere in the sales funnel. Depending on the magnificence of your CRM system and the true intent behind the initial enquiry, they do provide great fodder for some poor soul to chomp away at in the hopes of getting a conversion for your business.
But as any business coach will tell you, if you plan for mediocrity, you’ll most likely get it. We want to reframe enquiries not as a perfectly reasonable part of selling stuff to people, but as an undesirable side-effect of a less-than-perfect online experience.
What to do: Instead of getting hung up on your enquiry-to-booking conversion rate, and berating your people for that percentage not being high enough, try focusing on the number of bookings which take place without any other obvious touchpoint. How can you embed a culture of continuous improvement around your digital experience so that everything feels seamless, that every need is anticipated and that more and more of your site visitors transition to a sale all on their own?
Myth #5: Our international clients’ expectations differ more than most
If you are addressing an international audience, for example in the tourism or leisure sector, it’s true that you may have a much wider cultural diversity in your client base. This might indeed make it harder to pinpoint what might float the world’s collective boat.
Add multiple languages into the mix and for sure you will start to see different semantic interpretations of the words and phrases you use on the website.
What to do: Go international, translate your website, apply multilingual SEO and speak to everyone in their own language. Sure, that’s no small undertaking but in the kind of post-Covid digital world we’re hurtling towards, your most viable clients could now quite easily be living on the other side of the planet. Translate carefully, seek out the relevant keywords in each language, then apply the same principles.
It might not be something that can happen overnight, but a mental shift from doggedly dealing with enquiries, to seeing them as a time-wasting anomaly will trigger changes in your approaches, and will lead to better satisfaction, conversion and profitability. Find out how we have helped other organisations, or get in touch to see how we could help yours.
