Opinion: Web Self-Care - Internet Customer Service

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B>By Dave Martin

I>President

anage Inc.

The customer service (CS) departments of most transportation companies are focused on making call centers more efficient. Few companies are exploring solutions that encourage customers to find their own answers via the Web. But together, traditional customer service and Internet self-service can give a company a decisive advantage over its competition.

Internet customer service — or Web self-care — can dramatically reduce support costs, while improving the quality of your service by allowing your customers to find their own answers to routine questions. Anything from shipment status to inventory levels to proof of delivery can usually be easily displayed directly on your Web site, provided that you are currently maintaining the information electronically (with business software). Plus, the information can be viewed any time, anywhere by your customers, employees and vendors. This is a nice benefit for your customers, and it frees your staff to tend to operations and deliver industry-leading customer service.

Many transportation companies are getting pressure from their customers to provide more and more data in real-time or near real-time. Sometimes this pressure stems from a competitor that provides Internet access to information. Other times, it’s a result of experiencing excellent Web service from their own vendors, such as United Parcel Service or FedEx. But before starting down the electronic highway, remember your goal should be to equip your customers with the information they need without adding complexity to your computer environment.

ere are five tips to consider when evaluating different Internet self-service initiatives:

What data are you capturing now? Naturally, you can only display information to your Web site that you maintain electronically in your business systems. But, in many cases, that’s sufficient.

Walk first, run later. What are the top five questions your customer service agents are asked on a daily basis? If these five questions take up the majority of their day and they simply involve retrieving data from your systems, then this is precisely the type of data that could be and should be displayed on your Web site. For many transportation companies, shipment tracing, proof of delivery and equipment status are common queries that are routinely asked and represent a good starting point. Displaying a few critical pieces of information will also help reduce the implementation costs and justify the project’s return on investment.

Don’t complicate your IT environment. Look for Web solutions that run on the same platform (e.g., AS/400, Unix or NT) as your existing application software to shorten your learning curve. Avoid adding additional servers, databases or proprietary software packages. This can make it difficult and expensive to display real-time information on your Web site, not to mention adding complexity for your technical staff and increasing the odds of downtime.

Speed Counts. Make sure that your customer is not waiting too long (over 5 seconds) for the query/search results. If the customer has to wait for Web site pages to load or query results to be returned, you can be assured they will revert to calling your CS center. This may be challenging if your query has to sift through millions of records, involves multiple data tables or search criteria, is limited by your or the users’ Internet bandwidth or taxes the workload capacity of your existing servers. Don’t be fooled by a vendor that presents a solution involving small tables of sample data or a demo site that are powered by their own servers that are several times more powerful than your current systems. Remember — apples to apples.

Incorporate Imaging. Document imaging is a powerful tool that lets you effectively manage the costs and efforts associated with keeping track of your vital paper documents — like bills of lading, trip envelopes and delivery receipts — by creating electronic copies and indexing them appropriately for rapid retrieval. When you start to Web-enable these documents (display them on your Web site) then you can really start to deliver robust Internet self-service.

By providing your customers with secure, quick and reliable Web access, shipment tracing, proof of delivery and equipment status, you will be providing a tremendous service. No longer will they be tied to your business hours or subjected to lengthy hold times. At the same time, you will be saving your company measurable bottom-line dollars. It has been estimated that when customers can help themselves at a Web site, instead of calling a conventional help desk, savings can range from $10 to $45 per incident. When you wean your customers off the call center and lead them to your Web site, you will free your CS people to deal with more pressing issues and allow them to offer truly excellent service.

The writer is the president of Manage Inc., a programming and information technology services firm serving transportation companies from Seattle.

This article appears in the Oct. 7 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.