eMergent Marketing in the News

eMergent Marketing’s Vice President and co-founder, Suzanne Galvez, was recently featured in an article in the Plain Dealer discussing best practices for online customer service. Galvez heads up the usability and conversion practice within eMergent Marketing and was tapped for her expertise in Web site usability and the customer experience.

The Plain Dealer article, titled "Online means 'on own' for many", talks about the trade-off that often goes hand-in-hand with the convenience of e-commerce shopping: the lack of personal customer service. Phone numbers are sometimes hard to find, if they can be found at all. E-mail queries often are answered by anonymous customer service representatives writing from "Do Not Reply" addresses.

Proponents of self-support options like these cite a variety of reasons for the decreased emphasis on live, phone-based customer service including: efficiency, simplicity, and cost. Instead of being on the phones, smaller customer service support teams may concentrate their efforts toward improving their company's Web-based support.

eMergent Marketing’s Galvez warns that whether those savings are passed on to the customer could be irrelevant. "We live in a world of instant gratification," Galvez said. "If you've got someone on your product page, and they can't figure out what they want to know, they won't wait - they'll go to the competitor."

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