Making it easy for customers to get in touch

Simplicity is one of the key principles of conversion rate optimisation (CRO). If you want a customer to complete a goal, you need to remove all the obstacles that could potentially get in their way. Part of that process is making it easy for a customer to get answers to their questions.

If it’s difficult for a customer to contact you to explore a potential purchase, they’ll quickly move on to a competitor. Communication is also vital to nurture loyalty after conversion, since problems can arise. In an age of social media and instant communication, great customer service and faster response is the key to unlocking ROI and preventing damage to your brand reputation.

The problem with poor communication

On the Econsultancy blog, there’s a case study on Made.com, a UK furniture retailer. Made.com made the decision not to have a business phone number, and funnelled queries through email instead. This caused a wave of bad publicity when the young business couldn’t resolve customer complaints fast enough. Many people felt lost and unable to get their problems put right.

Even if you prefer to filter all customer interactions through email, you must provide a business phone number. It comes back to the first point in this article: if you want healthy conversions, make it easy for people to contact you, and give them the contact methods they prefer.

If you don’t make it easy for people to get in touch, the consequences could be severe. For Made.com, a positive brand launch quickly turned into a PR nightmare when customers flooded social media with complaints. It’s now got a business phone number, and it’s taken steps to improve customer satisfaction.

However, those negative reviews will always be lurking, and customers who had bad experiences may never return.

Your obligations

Legally, any company trading in the EU has to offer a “direct and effective” contact method that provides rapid resolution to customer enquires. For most businesses, a business phone number is the best way to fulfil their legal obligations.

Email ticket systems definitely offer efficiency for your team, but they can also drag out resolution times for relatively simple issues. If you want to turbocharge conversions, you need to offer instant contact with a human being, and that means having a business phone number. If your customers can quickly pick up the phone, they know you’re there to respond to queries and support them if anything goes wrong. It’s fine to offer email as a back-up, but you need to let people know you’re there to help if an urgent problem arises.

Switch to VoIP

Small and large businesses are realising the power of internet phone services to improve conversion rates. VoIP telephone services are affordable, portable and easy to manage, and you can choose from a range of telephone number prefixes, depending on where your customers are.

An 0330 number is perfect if you want to have a non-geographical number, since mobile users won’t be charged extra for calling it. If your customers are in one area, choose a geographic number with the area code corresponding to their location.

Making contact easy and fast isn’t an optional extra when doing business online. It’s an essential part of offering good service and retaining your customers long-term. Whether you choose to use an IVR or not, a VoIP service is an affordable way to give your customers a quick way to reach out.