It's hard enough to get people to visit your Web site. Then, if they have a bad experience when they finally get there, you'll never see them again. Worse, they'll tell their friends, and you won't see them, either.

Once you get beyond the technical whizbang of putting up an electronic storefront, you have to dig in and actually run your cyberbusiness. Like a real store, this means servicing your customers, from providing information to selling and shipping products to handling complaints.

It doesn't matter how well organized, designed, and coded your Web site is. It doesn't matter how good your products are or whether your prices are low. Some online customers will have questions. Some will have complaints. Some will want to return or exchange products. Some will want to talk to an honest-to-goodness real person.

Because the Web can reach into a customer's office or home, customer service involves more than helping someone while he's in your "store." You'll not only have to hold your customer's hand while he's buying a product, but you'll help him use it once he takes it home, and you'll provide follow-up (especially with software sales), ranging from bug fixes to compatibility updates.

If you do it right and provide customers with a positive buying experience, they'll trust your site and buy from you again. Unfortunately, it isn't easy to provide this level of service.

Few Solutions

Unlike the growing number of software packages that take most of the pain out of putting up an online store, there are few off-the-shelf packages that help you provide online customer service and track customer service requests and responses.

Why the shortage? It’s partly because a comprehensive customer service package should, ideally, touch every corner of your online store. That means one big package for a mighty big price. Another reason is that customer service on the Web comes in so many forms that no one's figured out how to boil it down into a generic software package. While real businesses (like Compaq and Borders Books) are discovering they need an online presence, online merchants are discovering they need some decidedly unvirtual people to take phone orders.

For example, suppose Aunt Alice wants to make sure the green soccer beanie baby she wants to buy for little Abigail is really and truly in stock. Aunt Alice is a computer-phobe and calls instead of buying online. When customer service gets Aunt Alice's call, a representative starts a customer service ticket. Then he has to check the inventory database to confirm the item is indeed in stock. Since she's already made the call, Aunt Alice asks the operator to go ahead and take the order for her. The customer service person must exit the inventory database, open an invoice, take Alice's information, and close the sale. Then he has to enter or transfer all the information into the customer service ticket, so when a pink soccer beanie baby arrives and Aunt Alice calls up fuming, someone can figure out what went wrong.

However the order is taken, businesses need a system that will track orders, sales, names of service reps, dates, how the sale was made (Web, phone call, e-mail), and so on. You'll also want reports detailing the number of support calls, products called about, questions asked, and complaints. Browser-readable charts analyzing trends are handy, too.

To do this kind of tracking, you'd need a networkable application that can be accessed by a number of people simultaneously. Full-fledged customer service applications start around $50,000, with the necessary hardware (not to mention installation and maintenance) several times that. You'd also need to pay programmers to customize the software for your business.

In short, there are many different levels of support, and what you can offer depends on your budget, staff, and network setup. Do you need to offer lots of live, interactive assistance online and via phone? Is support software available for your intranet? Do you need more server hardware?

Support Solutions

The simplest cheapest way to connect with your customers is via e-mail. If you get just a few e-mails a day, you probably don't need a sophisticated tracking system. However, if you have more than one person answering e-mail, you get a lot of e-mail, or you're selling a lot of different products, then you'll need a tracking system. One example is Internet Messenger Center, from veteran Mustang Software, the makers of QModem Pro (www.mustang.com). IMC automatically assigns each incoming e-mail a tracking number and routes the message to the right person. IMC Business Edition costs $1,500 for five agents and $250 for each additional agent. An enterprise-level edition with oodles of users starts at $10,000. (For more creative e-mail uses, see "The Wages of Spam," The Wages of Spam.)

You could also deal with customer queries through online forms. Customers supply their name, phone number, e-mail address, and, of course, the question, and send it to your server with a click. That's where they always seem to get lost. I know I rarely get an answer to a question I've submitted this way.

The problem is that customer responses have to be culled from the code, which is a pain. To turn the code into readable data and get it off the server, you'll need a program that generates HTML or text reports. There are dozens of such tools and many of them don't require a programmer. However, if you need complicated forms, say, invoicing or supply applications, on your network, you'll need the services of an experienced programmer.

Get Personal

The easiest but most costly way to offer customer support is to provide live support. You list a phone number on your site and tell people to call you. You can even prod them by putting a call button on your site, which alerts a sales agent or tech support staffer to interact with the customer by phone, by e-mail, or via an online forum. One service that does just that and a lot more is iConnect from Juniper Communications (www.junipercom.com). iConnect can quiz customers on what areas they need help in, then it will forward an alert to the right agent. The agent can call the customer or work through a problem on the company Web site, showing the customer what to do online. Pricing for iConnect starts at $30 per month, depending on the number of alerts you expect.

Still another way to interact one-on-one with customers is via a chat program. But chat programs can be tricky to use and require customers to download software. NetDive (www.netdive.com) has overcome these problems with CallSite, which only requires a Java-capable browser to conduct an online chat with a company representative. All the customer has to do is click a chat button on your Web site, which signals a representative to begin "talking" (via the keyboard) to the customer. It works like a chat room, except only the customer and the representative can see the conversation. CallSite is a client/server application and costs $6,999 for a 10-agent system. The client can run on any Java-enabled browser; the server component runs on any Java-enabled server on your network.

The real money in E-Commerce will come to those who can make online purchasing--and everything that goes along with it--a comfortable experience. That means chanting the mantra "service service service" and making it happen.

The Support Hierarchy

How much support is really necessary? It depends on what you're selling and to whom. The support products discussed here are especially apt for sites selling products to customers who are uncomfortable with technology (such as Etoys or Amazon.com), sites with complicated or unusual products, or sites that don't give customers enough information to make the decision to buy.

A rough hierarchy of support, from easiest and cheapest to the most comprehensive and expensive, is as follows.

E-mail. Very low overhead, slow turnaround, low level of customer satisfaction.

Forms. Low live overhead, slow turnaround, too rigid, low customer satisfaction.

Voice mail. Customer leaves a message and company calls back. Slightly higher overhead, low customer satisfaction.

Browser-based chat. Customer clicks a button on the Web site to initiate a one-on-one chat with a representative. Medium overhead, medium customer satisfaction.

Call back. Customer clicks a button on the Web site and enters a phone number, representative calls back. High overhead, medium customer satisfaction.

Live telephone support--limited hours. Requires an 800 number and support people who know the product. High overhead, medium satisfaction.

Live telephone support--around the clock. Requires an 800 number and support people who know the product. Highest overhead, highest satisfaction.

© 1999 Robin Schreier Hohman. All rights reserved.

Robin Schreier Hohman is a senior editor at Network World, where she covers emerging Internet technologies. She was previously a design engineer at a software company and designed user interfaces for online banking applications.