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What do you do with customer requests where you know before you start that you will not earn anything from them?
Why should you even answer them or waste any time on them?
Let’s look at the two live chat examples below, which we have experienced on our partner site WebsiteToolTester.com. There we help beginners to find the right website builder for their needs.
Example 1: The customer without a budget
We often receive requests from people who want to create their own free website. Naturally we can say straight away that ‘free of charge’ doesn’t bring in any money and it is therefore not worth answering the query.
But what if I nevertheless do my best to help this person? A visitor with just this request was so thrilled by our support after a 15-minute chat that he wrote a complete blog article about our website two days later, in which he strongly recommended our website to his readers.
And as you are surely aware: a recommendation by a friend carries much more weight than any conventional form of advertising. Furthermore, every recommendation via links or social media has a positive impact on your Google ranking, which ultimately leads to more visitors and more business.
Example 2: The customer who is looking for a product that you do not offer
A customer recently asked us if we could set up an online shop for her. However, at WebsiteToolTester we limit ourselves to the testing of tools.
I now had two options: either to fob her off with the reply that we don’t do such a thing (bad), or to find a solution for the customer.
The solution was the development of a new line of business (something I had been considering for some time, but constantly postponed). We now cooperate with partners who look after the creation of websites for our customers. And what do you know: what was initially a “useless” enquiry has now developed into an interesting business. It’s good when the boss himself answers chat enquiries sometimes.
Conclusion
There are very good reasons to take your potential customers’ questions seriously:
- On the one hand you discover what is demanded on the market,
- you can build up a positive relationship to the questioner,
- Facebook, Twitter & co. reinforce your customers’ voice: both positively and negatively.
There is no doubt that this requires long-term thinking. But if you listen closely to interested parties, you can benefit thousand-fold. Nowadays companies unfortunately tend to make their first savings in the field of customer service – despite the fact that these employees are the point of contact for potential and actual customers.
For this reason you should make the live chat and the contact form your top priority! In the long term this will prove its worth to you. And incidentally: this exchange can also make a lot of people happy.
