Don't Forget "Welcome, how can I help you?"

I decided to buy my wife a digital camera for her birthday. My purchase criteria, or better yet my wife’s criteria, was it had to be easy-to-use, have a big viewing screen for reviewing pictures, be compact and durable, long battery life, and easy uploads to our home computer. Okay. So, I did what over 80% of Americans do, which is to go online and do some basic research.

I went to a big retailer site and found myself instantly bombarded with “Buy now and don't pay till January 2009”. Or, “Click here to open a credit card account and save 10%”.

Remember, all I wanted to know was some basic digital camera stuff, and instead got fifty reasons why I should ‘buy’ from their site. Worse, after 10 minutes I couldn’t find any information on the general use of the camera. Meaning, in this YouTube world we live in, I could not find a video demo on how to use the camera. All I got was bulleted features and benefits that left me needing bullets to explain what the bullets meant. Oh, by the way, what exactly does 2.5" color TFT-LCD monitor with auto image rotation and 172,000 pixels, mean, anyway?

What I am really saying here is where’s the customer service people? Just because it’s a web site doesn’t mean you still don’t have to say, “Welcome to our store. How may I help you?”

It’s the “How may I help you?” part that is missing. Had I been able to interact more with the products I probably would have stayed longer, bookmarked the site for future purchases, sent the link to a friend for their opinions, and maybe even ordered the camera right then and there. Instead, I left the site unsatisfied taking my inquiries, and my purchase intent, elsewhere.

The site broke one simple rule; it focused so much on the sale, it forgot about the customer. Despite the fact that more and more consumers complain that they can’t find the information they seek online, organizations continue to offer this ‘one-way marketing’ approach.

Now, the site owners might say, if you want to interact with the products – come on down to the store. Once again, thinking only about what they want. I don’t want to go to the store, that’s why I’m online. What every organization that interacts with consumers online should be doing is building solid, consumer-focused, mutually beneficial relationships with their customers.

So, why aren’t the retail/marketers getting the hint? Simple. Their marketing folks are still trapped in the old school of traditional methods where all they care about is to push their agenda onto the consumer. Thus, consumers are left with the, ‘Satisfaction Gap’, the deep chasm between what marketers want to say – and what consumers want to know.

All this focus on consumer targeting and consumer insights must not replace simply asking the consumer what they want or need. Or, better yet, let the consumer ask. Imagine the virtual equivalent to, “Does this come in red?”

If this idea seems strange, over-the-top, or just plain radical – wake up, because the Internet is all about consumer engagement, and engagement means participation.

It really can be as simple as opening your virtual door, smile and say, “Thank you for coming – how can we help you?”

And mean it!