Respond quickly!
Websites often feel so cold and impersonal. The sense of trust that a customer needs to feel before buying from a company they are otherwise unfamiliar with can often be hard to convey through a website. Warm photographs of smiling grandparents lovingly pushing their grandchildren on a swing on a sunny day might not be appropriate for your business. But you can create trust by being accessible. In addition to making your contact information prominent, a prompt response to your visitors’ questions will go a long way to reassure them that they are safe spending their money with you.
That being said, I rarely see chats on small business websites that are effective. A chat is like a blog in the sense that it is only valuable if it is regularly being attended to and chats can be a definite draw on resources. One trick I personally use is to set up filters in my email to weed out spam and “non-vital” emails and then have the rest forwarded to my cell phone via SMS. Set up is easy and guarantees that I’m notified when important emails come in, regardless of my proximity to a computer.
I get around having an expensive data plan by having my emails forwarded as text messages. Almost all major carriers have an email address you can set up as a forward from your inbox:
AT&T
[10 digit phone number]@txt.att.net
Boost Mobile
10 digit phone number@myboostmobile.com
Metro
10 digit phone number@mymetropcs.com
T-Mobile
[10 digit phone number]@tmomail.net
Verizon
[10 digit phone number]@vtext.com
Virgin Mobile
[10 digit phone number]@vmobl.com
You can also sync your website to a CRM solution like Salesforce to create a log of every contact a potential customer has made through your website. Having a record of all the incoming and outgoing correspondence will allow you to review the frequency and the details of the contact being made to ensure it is timely and processed in an efficient manner. Pre-drafted emails can be sent automatically and email marketing services like Constant Contact can help you keep in touch with your customers, but nothing beats a friendly voice on the phone that is one toll-free call away.
