Your site’s lost tourists and why they won’t ask for help
Flickr: Jen SFO-BCN
Ever sat and watched hopelessly lost tourists? Those so far wrong they might never return? With noses in maps they’ll fight and tussle, much later conceding defeat to ask a local. Maybe.
With no way of gauging the stupidity of their question, they’d rather not ask at all.
People don’t like to look stupid.
My scientific test.
The other day I walked slowly, deliberately, past 4 groups of lost tourists.
- I was smiling.
- I wasn’t walking a pit bull.
- I didn’t have on headphones.
- I wasn’t in a hurry.
- No tattoos.
Short of wearing an “Ask Me, You Bloody Idiot” badge, there was no better option. Nope. They all preferred to suffer. Each group in my little test stood, bewildered, for ages before heading off in (3 times out of 4) the wrong direction. Hey, they had their chance.
People never ask.
Online, such reticence is, in part, user laziness. Yet where most questions burn unasked – you’ve got confused and lost prospects simply afraid of looking stupid.
- The subject matter is too large or too new for them.
- They can’t gauge how much they don’t know.
- They assume the answer (or Vancouver’s Sun Yat Sen Garden) can’t be far off – they’ll find it one way or the other. (Ha!)
- They don’t want to interrupt you or waste your time.
- You seem busy… and kind of mean.
- They’ll work it out themselves.
Where do you come in?
If I’d walked up to these 4 groups and asked them, “Can I help you?” they likely would have been thrilled. But that’s not my job. Online, we’d better make it so. I’ve already written about how Freshbooks does exactly this and approaches their lost tourists directly. Yet most of us don’t maintain relationships with registered account holders – we just want to come off as best we can to our nameless, faceless traffic – visiting unannounced.
- Do you have a Google search feature?
- Do you have easy to find FAQs?
- Do you have ‘contact us’ options for the visitor too impatient to read your FAQs?
- Are your FAQs categorised and linked within an inch of their life?
- Do you have different FAQs for different types of customers?
- Do you have ‘self-help’ guides or easily understood PDFs for the stubborn DIY crowd?
- What do you tell visitors to do if their question isn’t answered?
- Does it include a contact form?
Hold the phone. Hold the bloody phone.
Your contact form.
The vile contact form is the online equivalent of the city centre help desk that’s closed. Why bother waiting?
- I’ll just get a robot response.
- My email will get lost in the ether.
- They’ll take 2-3 business days to respond and I need the answer now.
- I can’t be bothered to fill in all that info – it’s just a simple question.
- Oh well, never mind.
Here we have a visitor willing to possibly look stupid, weighing the added price of sticking out her neck to receive no answer at all. Why should I trust your shoddy form? I just want a few seconds of someone’s time. A person with a name and a smile.
Call to mind a time you were lost, out of your depth and didn’t speak a word. You didn’t want to trek across the city to find a help desk that may or may not have helped. You wanted the smiling face of someone who seemed trustworthy, who spoke your language, now.
What does your contact page say?
- Do you reassure there are no stupid questions?
- That you’ve got the time and are happy to help?
It should be inferred, right? It’s not. Many of you have companies or service departments small enough that you can provide a name and maybe even a photo. (Stand up to the firing squad if you think for a second we’re going to fall for a stock photo of some insipid ‘90s girl in a bad suit and headset, manning her telephone. No, no, no).
Dial down the crap and insert a human face.
“Questions? Of course you have. Call us now to speak to a person – if you have to sit on hold for more than a few minutes, we’ll buy you a piece of pie. If you’d rather email us, don’t forget to let us know your X, Y and Z requirements. Your query will arrive at Henry’s desk – he’ll know exactly what to do with it and how best to answer you. He checks his email every 2 hours so put your feet up and let us work out the rest. Thanks and speak soon.”
Any sized brand can take steps towards this – to laying out a welcome mat and removing the ‘beware of dog’ sign.
You’ve been warned.
If you don’t minimise the hurt, the potential for embarrassment and go out of your way to hand visitors their answers on a plate, they’re going to end up lost (or in the neighbourhood with the highest per capita heroin usage in North America). They won’t come back.
What’s better than the last day of school?
Flickr: SuperFantastic
5-4-3-2-1. Bell rings. Books forgotten. You’re free. FREEEEE!!!! It was the best day of your life.
Fact. It’s summer and people want to be outside.
They’d rather be on a boat, up a mountain, under a sprinkler – anywhere but in an office. Help their daydreams and enable their escape.
We’re talking content – lots of it – and goodies, too.
Whether you market to the public or to other businesses, take action this month to help your clients out. I’ll use travel as an example here but, whether you’re in the travel trade or not – eliminate your clients’ need to research. Do it all for them so they can stay longer at the pool. Pile on the helpful, the content, the PDFs, the pre-arrival guides – and put them on a silver plate.
What info can you provide now that your customers will love?
Start with this rule: summer means you can have more fun.
What if you were the business to provide an anti-whining kit for family travel sanity? Make a PDF activity kit specific to your destination. Parents everywhere will love you.
What if you were the service that took all the guess-work out of landing in a new city?
- Heathrow for first-timers?
- Your first day in Toronto: What you’ll need
- (Blah blah blah extrapolate as it applies to your business)
I don’t mean take on Lonely Planet, I mean that people will spend hours online this summer anyway (while stuck inside wishing that they weren’t). They’re dreaming of their vacation in your destination, learning how to have more fun and probably how to save more money.
Go ahead, be that guy.
Be the business that does better than the chronically disappointing rack of brochures that suck.
Hand out something better to guests or (please-oh-please), email it to them when they make their booking. It’s free.
Here’s where I get all genius and excited. Involve your staff. Poll them.
- ‘Our staff’s top 25 packing tips for a perfect San Diego holiday’
- ‘The 10 places in Seattle we think you should watch the sunset’
Excitement level: 100
If we’re really talking knock-your-socks-off good, create a series of emails to send to guests as their arrival date approaches.
Even if your working life exists in a more corporate, sensible sphere – out of town visitors and colleagues from distant offices will always appreciate similar strokes.
All summer, your customers will rest easy. They’re in good hands. They’ve got great material to read at work, edging them a few minutes closer to their perfect holiday.
So take a moment from Tweeting and dream up a few downloads.
Remember, there’s sucking up…and then there’s just plain awesome.
I wrote this for my May newsletter – going out to the hot little hands of important people everywhere.
Want the June edition for yourself? Sign up now – you don’t even have to say please!
Set sail for awesomeness: why you need new website content
Ever tried really hard to spend someone else’s money? It’s not as easy as it sounds. Might someone in that position be visiting your company’s website right now? It’s more than possible.
In a past life I was a proposal writer for a corporate events and conference company. The finished products were lavish, worldwide affairs, produced long after I’d chewed my nails to the quick. No expense spared.
Getting in the way of my proposal writing? Research. P-a-i-n-f-u-l-l-y extracting info from would-be suppliers about their products.
Whether the event was held in Denver or Dubai, it was my job to unearth the destination’s myriad possibilities: whatever ridiculous experience money could or couldn’t buy.
1. Setting sail
Me = square one, lots of someone else’s money to spend
Google = my trusty navigator and best friend
Broad searches to begin with:
Orlando bus company
Montreal spa
Bahamian restaurant with view
Edinburgh t-shirt supplier
2. Land ho?
From these potential venues and suppliers I needed basic info. Seating capacities, menus, floor plans, an imaginative range of options.
9 times out of 10, the details weren’t there.
Whether they were big town, big company or small town, small company the result was so often wasted time, a poor first impression and a frustrated customer trying hard to spend lots of someone else’s money. (Did I mention lotsa money?!)
I got really good at Solitaire. A dead ace. It’s not that I wasn’t busy. I was stuck – left at the mercy of nonchalant suppliers – waiting to receive information about their products or services.
3. Desert island, no signs of life
“We’ll force you to contact us”
Withholding key details on a company’s brochure website is a common tactic. The hope is that a forced phone call will enable time to give the schpiel and add a prospect’s details to the “warm” list. Square peg round hole! A venue or service is only going to work for a customer if it works. Schpiel be damned.
Busy sales reps with irregular email access
Sales people are busy. They’re rarely at their desks. This doesn’t work for impatient prospects who need to know if your product or service suits their needs now.
*gnashes teeth* *gnaws on knuckles* *stifles scream*
I’ve been there. I’ve been that frustrated (sometimes livid) would-be-if-I-could-be client.
4. Marooned
I spent most days on hold, leaving follow-up voicemails and repeating information requests until I was blue. Jack Bauer’s interrogation services would have been appreciated.
5. Full speed ahead – see ya
Your website needs to do all your bidding. The poor prospect is simply trying to do his or her job and research at the speed of light. We web visitors don’t have time to play hide and seek. No time!!! The love will always go to the website that provides it NOW. We don’t care how cheery your phone demeanour.
6. Siren song
So much good business can come your way from prospects who find you through Google. You didn’t know they were out there and they hadn’t heard of you either. Let it be love at first sight.
If you make it easy. If you provide all the answers. If you leave every necessary detail for them, available on a silver plate, then they’ll come calling and they’ll arrive happy.
- Got a Google search feature? They’re free and easy to install.
- What about the 5-star frilly bits? Does your website make sure to tell me all the many ways I’ll enjoy what you’re offering?
- How’s your online brochure looking? Let me know if it needs an update.
Put in the effort: so few websites do.
Related posts:
Home Alone: 12 steps to a better website, screams and all (Part I)
These are my socks. Sparkly white. Now please knock them off.
Is your customer service this good?
Not just a storage locker
I move a lot. It’s the textbook result of an expat childhood. When required, my various things are sent on their holidays to the storage facility nearby.
My recent call to book a storage locker – for the first time in 18 months – went like this:
“Hi, I need to book one of your lockers, please.”
“Sure!” He took down the starting date and we agreed on the size I’d need.
“Can I take your name?” I told him. It’s not an unusual name.
“Oh, hi! You’ve rented from us before!”
His reaction was instant. There is no way, no bloody way, he had time to type my name into a customer database. A remarkable memory a year and a half later.
It’s exactly why I love the ‘mom and pop’ experience. My call didn’t need to be monitored to ensure quality. It was quality.
Moving can be so tedious and awful and stressful. Storage facilities seem the unlikeliest place for kind-hearted interaction. Watching this company’s level of service more carefully when I arrived with my boxes, it was clear that’s exactly what they provide.
Consider why someone might need a storage locker: a lost job requiring a downsize, a death and unwanted inheritance, a new separation or divorce…. Any number of sad circumstances. Perhaps the storage company is exactly the place where a little bit of humanity goes most noticed.
It’s good to realise that the smallest detail of a service, the part that comes for free, is always the most appreciated. And, apparently, it doesn’t need to happen in person.
Could you remember customers of years past with only a name cue? The bar has been raised.
(Need storage in Vancouver? Call these guys.)
Your ideal raving fan
Last time, I covered my distinct disappointment with greedy mobile phone companies (well, one in particular). In a happier turn, I’d like to toast their opposite: Skype. (Cue ticker tape parade).
Compare and contrast:
Mobile phone company… “wants my every last penny. Might eat me alive.”
Skype…”wants to make my life easier. And much, much, happier!”
-
- Skype offers something (something pretty amazing) – for free.
- Their paid services come with no strings attached. Cancel at any time – you’re the customer, it’s your prerogative. What a concept!
- They use technology to connect people; not as a very thick, convenient curtain to hide behind (Witness emails ignored and phone calls unanswered).
Skype’s relaxed, happy, helpful brand tells me “they’re here to help.” Approaching customers as such, rather than going first for their wallets, must be commended. In this week alone I’ve brought up how much I love Skype with at least five people. That’s some marketing power.
Mobile phone company = pit bull
Skype = golden retriever
…I know which I’d rather have at my side.