Implementing Customer-Friendly Select and Buy
Make It Easy for Customers to Select and Sort on the Parameters They Care about!
When your prospects or customers are looking to: a) see what solutions you offer that might fit their needs and/or b) select the appropriate one for their particular needs, they usually have a few key context-specific criteria in mind. We’re all familiar with these parameters. We use them all the time. For example, when researching business travel options, we usually search on parameters like destination, times of departure or arrival, number of stops, seat availability, and price. Ideally, we might really want to see all non-stop flights to the SF Bay area that arrive by 9 pm that have an available aisle seat, at a price under $900, and then be able to relax any of those parameters, if necessary, until we find the optimal compromise. When selecting clothing, we often search/navigate by gender, category (adult/child/petite), type of clothing (pants, shirts, footwear), style (formal vs. casual), actual size, color, and so on. Ideally, we might want to find size 12 petite green women’s slacks. When selecting computer software, we care first about compatibility with our operating system, browser, email, and existing file formats. Then we care about whether it will do the particular job we have in mind—does it have the functionality criteria we need? We also care about performance, scalability, ease of use, and ease of support. We might really like to start by seeing only options that run in our default operating system/browser/email configuration.
Why is it then that so many Web sites (ours included!), don’t make it easy for prospective clients to quickly narrow down and/or sort choices by the parameters that customers care about? Is it because we can’t agree on what those parameters should be? Is it because we don’t think that parametric search and sorting is an important part of the discovery process?
In every Customer Scenario® Mapping session we’ve ever conducted in which a group of customers mapped out their ideal “select and buy” process, typically the second step in their research process (after learn/explore/get educated) is to “find the right options for me/us” (in my current situation or context). This “find the right options” point is invariably a moment of truth in the select and buy process. If the customer can’t quickly find options that meet his/her criteria, she will usually give up or go somewhere else. “Quickly” is usually defined by customers as between 5 and 15 minutes. They are willing to spend five minutes for selecting simple things (ones with two to three parameters); fifteen minutes for narrowing the options for complex choices (ones with four or more parameters). Customers may persevere if they have no other options or if they have time on their hands—or if they get into that mind numbed/zoned out state of mind that we’ve all experienced as we iterate through a set of options that are irrelevant to us, or where there are too many choices. The actual buying part of the process is usually fairly quick, but there’s often time out for consideration and consultation with others. There are additional moments of truth about making it easy to convince oneself and others and easy (or not) to buy.
In "Selecting a Mobile Phone Family Plan for a Family in Transition: Moments of Truth in Consumer Telecommunications," we offer a test drive of selecting a mobile phone family service plan for three U.S. providers: AT&T/Cingular, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless. Each of these companies has invested heavily in their Web sites to make it as easy as possible for prospective customers to do all of their research online. This is a good thing, because one of today’s customers’ typical metrics for success is that to be able to make a decision that they’re happy with without having to pick up the phone to talk to a customer service or sales rep. Yet, as you’ll soon see as you read or skim Ronni Marshak’s test drives of the three sites, each of these providers under-invested in providing sortable selection criteria that would make it easy for prospects to narrow the choices of service plans based on the criteria that matter most to them.
No matter what category of products or services your firm offers, the chances are that you’ll find some important take-aways from these three test drives.
How Do you Provide a Good “Select the Right Options for Me” Experience?
There’s probably no one parametric search/sorting solution that will meet customers’ needs across different categories of products. But there does seem to me to be a fairly consistent hierarchy of needs you should bear in mind when designing your own “select the right options for me” section on your Web site.
1. Let customers enter and/or navigate to select the one to three key parameters (thru navigation or from a drop-down list, so they don’t guess wrong) for their search criteria. In the case of mobile family service plans, our customer persona cared about a family plan (not individual), with coverage in certain cities (3), in a price range (under $120/month).
2. Let customers compare relevant options side by side, and iteratively sort based on key parameters. Let them relax or tighten criteria in order to broaden or narrow their choices.
3. Let customers select the three to four solutions they’d like to compare in more detail, and provide side-by-side detailed comparisons, with the ability to select and sort by (and relax or tighten) the criteria that matter most to them.
4. Let customers enter additional criteria they’d like to be able to search or select upon and provide them an option to a) see solutions that come closest to meeting those criteria and/or b) configure a new option to meet those criteria. For example, if the customer wants flights under $800 with at least 90 minutes to change to connecting flights, you can offer that option AND create a new “lower stress flight change” option.
5. At each point, offer relevant links to bundled offers, FAQs, knowledgebase topics, and customer forum discussions based on the prospect’s criteria and search terms.
6. Offer a “Click to Chat” option at any point that will give a customer service/sales rep the ability to follow along and/or guide the prospective customer through the selection criteria and/or to answer unanticipated questions.
Capture the criteria and/or questions that customers have that appear to be unaddressed, and provide quick follow up emails with answers or links. Capture these answers and add them to your FAQs and/or product descriptions.
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Posted by: car verzekering | March 16, 2009 at 05:43 AM