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Originally Posted by NETbilling
Excellent topic points Shap and its great to see you still around here even though you are not in the biz so much anymore. Mucho respect for the business you built, the decisions you made and the interest you still take in the state of the industry.
I love seeing some good business threads here on GFY.
Treating the customers well are points that I always preach in seminars that we speak on at shows. Customer interaction is important and when the customers get to see the human interaction behind these sites it makes for better member retention. That mixed with honest billing and great content are the 3 keys for success.
However, I don't agree with your point about handling your own customer service and not to outsource it. While it is important to have member interaction and provide 24/7 customer support, small-med sized programs don't have the staff of ability to effectively provide it alone. A mixture of using an outsourced company that handles billing support, cancellation and retention offers, order fulfillment questions and password help etc, and the program owners provided support, is a very viable solution, if you are working with a call center/support team that can provide custom support features.
Mitch
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Mitch Great To hear from you!
I should expand on what I wrote and clarify.
Customer support is one of the most important parts of any business. It is important that it is done RIGHT! Your first priority is to make sure it's done right and timely. If you can't make that happen yourself you have to outsource it.
If you do outsource it I believe it's very important that you have full access to the support tickets. It's important that you can take a look at common complaints, problems and issues. Having access to those tickets is a must. It's also important that your brand is being represented properly in the support tickets. You will be judged and remembered based on how those tickets are answered.
I also believe once a company gets to a certain size they should try to internalize the handling of customer support. It's not glamourous, it's not fun but it is vital. From personal experience us handling our own customer support has helped us trouble shoot problems on our site either with the members area or join process. Not only did it help but it sped up the process immensely. Our support staff would let us know that they've had repeated tickets about being unable to join or a video not working and we were able to jump on it right away instead of losing a lot of business had we not been told.