[8] 2002 e-business-strategies-for-virtual-organizations

e-business strategies in the virtual organization
10.4.6 Letting customers help
themselves
We can all learn how industry leaders are making a success of
letting customers help themselves. A stroll though the online
customer interfaces of Dell Online and iPrint shows how
customers who want to help themselves can do so. They not
only simply find information, but also order products via the
Web. These companies have thought through each step of the
customer’s decision-making and procurement process. It is time
to measure your organization against this standard. How far can
customers go in self-service? What happens when they reach a
stumbling block? Can customers interact with your organization
24 hours a day from anywhere?
Once you get people to order online, or through any channel for
that matter, you need to allow them to check what is happening
to the order. The Web provides the cheapest and simplest way
for customers to do this – and give them an empowered feeling
of importance while saving the company money. In Cisco’s case,
as soon as they made online order status-checking available,
calls to the call centre dropped to 10% of the former volume.
Customers simply went to the Web, and liked it.
10.4.7 Helping customers do their jobs
Do you really understand your customers’ decision-making
process? Do you know how your product or service fits into
your customer’s job? Do you know what it would take to really
integrate your product or service seamlessly into your customer’s
job?
10.4.8 Delivering personalized service
Dow Jones’s Wall Street Journal Interactive and Liberty Financial’s
Stein Roe Farhnham websites are great examples of
delivering cost-effective personalized service on the Web. Both
build dynamic websites for each individual based on that
person’s profile. Personalization may mean tailoring the offer
directly for each customer, as in the two examples above, or it
may involve simply making account information available, or
selectively alerting customers to items of particular interest to
them.
What, we may ask, is the difference between handmade shoes
made to measure by the local cobbler, and the kitchen made to
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