Newsletter

It happens all the time

Umlungu has been going for more than 10 years. In that time, we have seen many companies make the same mistake over and over. We thought we’d share the mistake with you, and how it can be avoided.

Out with the old system, in with the new

We give you Company X, which:

• Is a customer-centric business. No customers, no revenue.
• Has had the same system in place for a number of years. Without this system, there would be no users and therefore no business.

They want to advance their old, tired but otherwise functional system that lies at the heart of their business with a new one.

The new system will be bigger, faster and more efficient. Sure, it’s expensive, but it makes complete business sense. The world is changing and Company X has to advance, or lose out by having a diminishing share of a growing marketplace. At least, this is what management and the IT department tell shareholders…

But here’s what the IT department doesn’t say

The IT department, for various reasons ranging from customer ignorance to corporate pressure, neglect to tell shareholders that despite its shortcomings, the old system was at least predictable. More importantly, the staff (and customers) who used the system had learnt to live with it, warts and all.

The business jumps on board…

The project goes ahead. Engineers engineer, developers develop and project managers cajole and threaten. A deadline is set. As it looms, developers work longer hours and then nights. Then weekends. The testing phase is nibbled into. Finally, system functionality is cut as the deadline is shifted one last time. Then, the system is unleashed…

Only to find the ship is on stormy waters

First there is relief: It is done. Then, the users do what users do. They use. Or at least they try to. Frustration builds when they realise they can’t do what they need to do, or what they used to do. They get unintelligible error messages. They can’t log in. They try again. And again. The system starts to grind. The call centre is flooded. Users complain, and finally… give up.

The business tries to make nice with the customers

After all this frustration, the final straw for most customers is a trite message posted to the system that starts with the words “Thank you for your patience…” and ends with the equally conciliatory but completely untrue “…for your benefit”.

The ugly truth: It was never to the customer’s benefit

The fact is, throughout this long, expensive process, Company X never paused to consider the simple truth that: “Our only source of income is our customers. Customers use our online systems. We must consider their experience and the customer process when we build these systems.”

Umlungu believes in benefit to the customer

Whenever we are asked to build or consult on a new system, our engineers and developers always design the system with your customers in mind. We’ve seen the story described above time and time again. We can simply bow our heads in sympathy. For the customers.

Talk to us today about customer focused systems.

You’ve just decided to buy a new car (yes, we know there’s a recession, but let’s pretend anyway). Think of all the steps you’ll follow before, during and after you’ve bought the car, and you’ll see your experiences have phases:

Eeny, meeny, miny, mo

You gather as much information across the different car brands as you can, until you decide on Car Brand X.

Okay, tell me more…

You start getting to know Car Brand X, probably taking different models for a test drive, until you know exactly what you want – down to the colour of the seats.

I’ll take it

The sale is made. You fill in forms, organise finance, and arrange for delivery.

Will they look after me?

Getting your car serviced will bring you in contact with Car Brand X again. Together with your day to day driving experience, these interactions will influence whether or not you buy another car from Brand X.

Psst…

Depending how step 4 goes, you’ll tell your friends, family and acquaintances about your experiences, and the cycle may start all over again.

These steps form part of a widely acknowledged customer life-cycle.  You can read more about this here.

But cars aren’t our game – good online experiences are

Your online channel needs to be thought of in terms of these steps too.

They need to choose you

Are you making the most of your digital channel to be top of mind when potential customers are comparing products?

• Do you perform well in search engine results?
• Do you market your company and products equally effectively across email, social networking and paid online advertising models?
• Are these efforts well integrated into your website from inception through to completion of the sale?
• Are you driving offline marketing to your online channel?

Make the benefits clear

Your web channel has to give potential customers the right information, in a format they can understand.

• Does your website communicate well to people who don’t know about your industry and specifically your products?
• Do you present your products in a way that is transparent and allows for easy comparison to your competitors?
• Do you help people match their needs with your products?

Sign, seal and deliver

Ideally, you’ll want to close the sale online. But if that’s not the nature of your business, your web offering has to at least provide the means for them to get in contact with the right people for what they want to do.

• Are you tracking the online sales process and monitoring its effectiveness?
• Are you optimising this process when you see a step that is ineffective?
• Are you using all the tools that the online environment gives you to help close sales like online chat and integration into mobile technologies?

Consistently show them you care

Ensure your online channel brings all the benefits of web-based customer service to your business.

• Are you driving customers to your most cost-effective self service channel – the Internet?
• Can customers service themselves online, or are you still relying on email-based service request and fulfilment?
• Do you do regular customer testing on your self-service content and functionality to ensure that it delivers on customer needs?

Let them build your reputation

Help your customers tell their friends how great you are.

• Do you invite and participate in public communication with your customers through blogs and online forums?
• Are you making the most of social networking opportunities like Twitter and Facebook?
• Do you make use of referral campaigns and competitions?

When customers have a good online experience, everyone is smiling

A good (online) experience with your brand means everybody wins. Your customers will feel they’ve found a brand they can trust, and you will have their loyalty and a bigger customer base. Loyalty means an almost-captive audience when you launch a new product or service, which in turn means (you guessed it): more sales.

Make sure your online channel is all your customers want it to be

Umlungu can help you at each step of your customers’ lifecycle and make your online channel be all it can be. Talk to us to find out how.

…ask the major search engines

A client recently asked Umlungu to help them understand how visitors experienced a couple of websites. Even we were somewhat surprised at the results.

We’re not saying it, they are

Real people who live in the real world visit websites. We wanted to make sure our findings represented their experiences. So we designed the tasks to be as close as possible to how people use the web.

For example, when asked to find a person’s contact details, we asked them to do the task once by starting at Google, and once again at one of the websites under review.

What the tests told us

Search engines can:

• Be an efficient way for people to locate content on a website.
• Also be a very confusing way of navigating a website.
• Expose visitors to some relevant alternatives, for example visitors can see better prices, better quality, greater convenience and much more at a single glance.

In a nutshell, if there is some dirt (or polish) on a business, search engines will lay it out for all to see.

Need proof? Try this

• Choose a company that you have an account with. For example a clothing store, supermarket or cellphone company.
• Pretend (if you have to) that you have just received a ridiculously large invoice.
• Insert personal choice of expletive and reach for your preferred contact method. (Okay, okay, we know it’s the phone, but let’s pretend it’s the internet.)
• Fire up your favourite browser and look for the contact details of the company’s accounts department.

And experience it first hand

See what you got by following the steps above? Instead of (hopefully) finding the accounts department’s contact details, chances are you will also find:

• The odd press release
• Opinions from customers with similar issues
• The odd offer from competing companies
• A myriad of other results that may have a lot (or nothing) to do with what you were looking for

Following these links could take you to the right page on the right website, a wrong page on the right website or an entirely different website altogether.

Now contrast this with a situation where a visitor lands on the home page of a website and then tries to get hold of the accounts department.

A company’s ability to influence the experience of its website visitors depends heavily on how they enter the website.

How you can make sure Google works with you, not against you

Well for starters, do you know how much of your website traffic comes from search engines? Once you know this you can decide on how much emphasis you need to place on designing different paths through your website.

If you feel these paths are important then:

• Ensure you cater for many entry points to your website, and not just the home page.
• Do good search engine optimisation on these additional entry points, because you need the search engines to know they exist (talk to us about our search engine optimisation services).
• Optimise the communication, design and processes that flow from these pages.
• Monitor the pages and refine them over time.

Even if you don’t receive a lot of traffic from search engines, it may be valuable to stop thinking of your website as a self-contained whole, but rather as part of the deliciously entangled World Wide Web.

Get to know your website’s visitors. Talk to Umlungu.