3/8/2006
Why Do People Ask Dumb Questions?
I have two clients who have recently noticed their sales contact queues were increasingly filling up with questions and information requests concerning information readily available via their websites.
Why?
It’s so much easier to pop off a quick email than actually read. If you don’t read, how do you know what you are buying? Forget the small print… many people don’t seem to be reading the normal-sized (and even bold) print.
Good customer service dictates trying to answer all questions promptly, but that only feeds this behavior.
What to do?
My first instinct was to optimize pages and design to make sure that the data is easily available. We found a few small tweaks to make some of the information more easily found, but the two sites were already very well laid out.
Discussions with colleagues led to some other interesting options:
Prepare a form response stating the information is available on the site. Some provided a place for support personnel to provide a link and others left the requester to let their fingers do the clicking.
Sit on the request for a day, allowing them time to find their own answer (and perhaps feel stupid). This may seem like a good idea, but you still end up spending the same amount of support time fielding the request (eventually), and your customer receives a subpar customer service experience. I might suggest holding on to any dumb requests until the end of the day and sending them all out at once with a form response as above. This won’t interrupt meaningful support functions and the customer shouldn’t perceive a bad experience. Specific support procedures is a whole other post though.
File 13 the requests. Trashing the requests may seem harsh, but if your business requires after sale support (such as a web application) these kind of clients are expensive to support. Are the worth it?
If you site hasn’t been optimized by a professional (and best a fresh set of eyes) don’t even think about these ideas. The problem could be your fault.
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