Parcel Delivery – Customer Support by Email?
When choosing a parcel delivery company you may want to be reassured that in the event of things going wrong you can telephone someone. Customer support is vital and the ability to contact them is important. Is telephone the gold standard though – are you and the provider not better served by an efficient e-mail service?
As a retailer booking a courier service with one company who in turn contract another to carry out the collection and delivery there would appear to be plenty of opportunity for things to go astray giving you more reason to speak to a representative.
Many retailers look for a telephone contact number, rejecting or at the least being wary of companies not providing this. The growing trend is to provide e-mail support. How effective is this, should it be a concern and on balance which method is actually the most effective?
The scenarios; a customer is telephoning you because their delivery hasn’t arrived. You want to know how much it will cost to send a parcel to New Zealand by air. Your goods arrived in a damaged state and your buyer wants a refund, you want to know what to do next?
The case for:
It’s natural that you want to speak to someone as soon as you know there is a problem. You want answers and a solution and instinct tells you that speaking to a person is the best way of achieving this. You phone a number, which may well be costing more than the usual cost of a standard phone call. Listen to an introductory announcement and a menu of options, press 1 for this and 2 for that. After selecting the appropriate number you are told that all of the operatives are busy, your call is important and that you are in a queue. Greensleeves plays in the background, you are reminded every minute that you are an important person and your call will be dealt with shortly. Eventually you are speaking to a person – you exchange pleasantries and maybe some unpleasantries if you have been on hold for a long tome. You can hear the operative on the other end tapping on a keyboard as you give the details. What happens next will depend on the problem, the solution options and time of day – however all of these are available not because you have phoned but because there is a problem requiring an answer.
In total the time taken to telephone, hold, discuss the problem and solution can be anything from a minute or two right up to a disproportionate 15 minutes plus.
All of the above is of course only relevant if the number you call is actually answered by someone – leaving an answer phone message is both frustrating and unsatisfactory as it leaves you in a state of limbo. You may not have left a message that enables the staff to resolve a problem, you don’t know if they are calling you back when the issue will be addressed and resolved – this is the least favourable option.
E-mail. You don’t have a telephone number but you do have an e-mail address. By definition you shop on line and are computer literate – you may even deal with your own customers by e-mail. You decide what information to put into the message you write – some background information, parcel details, an order number maybe. If you have been on the receiving end of an unhappy customers call to you about a failed delivery you may also want to pass this on. Conversely a short sharp message may be more appropriate – order number xyz didn’t arrive, why not?
The customer service staff need the order number. Invariably all of the other detail isn’t needed, and order number and the problem is enough for most issues to be investigated and resolved.
For an e-mail service to be effective and for you to feel supported it is vital that your messages receive replies. An auto responder – thank you for your message it is being dealt with is the equivalent of the answer machine. A prompt reply with a solution is the gold standard but a personal response with an acknowledgment that your issues are being dealt with is an excellent reassurance
Cost – providing a telephone customer service support services is costly – staff wages, office time etc – and these are costs which any business will be passed on to you as the user of the service. One operative will be able to process x number of queries per hour etc.
E-mail – vastly reduced costs to provide this service – questions can be dealt with much more quickly.
One phone call and the message you give is heard only by the operative (unless taped for ‘training’ but this is unlikely). If you have taken the time to make an issue or emphasis a point there is more of a chance that this message can be passed across an organization and kept for the record.
More usefully, an e-mailed issue can be quickly passed to the right person to get a solution.
In my own organization we manage e mail via an IMAP account and we all have access to all of the messages on each of our PC’s – in the office at home and on hand held mobile devices – what does this mean – to you as a customer it guarantees a quick response almost at anytime of the day. We do not advertise or claim a 24/7 response rate but in reality we do provide this.
Problems need the carrier to be responsive – customer service staff need their carrier to be available
The best solution is having customer service staff who respond to e-mails – this really is the best solution and should not be seen as a provision less than a telephone one.
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