SEO and Investment on Customer Service
We all know that SEO is essential if you are considering launching your business online, and this is why SEO is becoming one of the most powerful mediums of advertising.
Without SEO in this current day and age your website is bound to fail. This is exactly what companies around the world are coming to realise as they seek to optimise their sites. But I have noticed that a lot of firms are concentrating so much on their SEO that they are forgetting about another of the most important business aspects which is great customer service.
What happens is that businesses aim for a target in terms of SERP’s, and when the in house SEO’s or SEO agencies deliver, the businesses are unable to cope with the sheer volume of enquiries, which will infact end up hurting your reputation a huge amount.
Personally I have experienced businesses that have great rankings and get a huge amount of traffic and enquiries but are the unable to cope with it all. These businesses leave you holding on the phone for hours upon hours and the worst thing is that the calls are not even freephone, so you end up having a huge phone bill at the end of it.
What I am basically trying to say is that companies should invest in both SEO and customer service at an equal level, because without customer service no matter how many enquiries you get, people will end up leaving simply because they are not satisfied.
Have you had any previous experiences with great ranking sites that fail to deliver on the customer service end of things?
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Tags: custmer service, investment, SEO
[...] tips that we all tend to forget, but can make all the difference in the world. Musa talks about SEO and customer service, there’s a neat piece on PHP Nuke and social media rather than SEO that’s really worth [...]
customer service is extremely valuable – even more than SEO. SEO will bring you the customer for the first time – but good customer service will keep him.
I am with you on this. This case also applies to Google, very good search engine with poor customer service. I have got my money refund after 3 month and 30 emails.
@Musa: Great point about customer service. I believe in making systems so that customer service is minimized. You can take Google as an example. I have to rarely send them an email for support.
@Baxy: That’s a rather rare phenomenon. I hope you will get your money back soon.
The problem is that ranking doesn’t necessarily lead to sales – and good CS is a substantial investment. But it’s ironic that people don’t try to retain the customers they have when the whole point of SEO is to bring in and retain visitors.
The same can happen when a company wins a prestigious award for their work. All of a sudden they have a massive influx of customers and they can no longer provide the high quality they were offering before. I feel a sense of dread whenever one of my suppliers wins a top industry award, “Here we go again. I shall have to find a new supplier.”
I think a good example of a company that dominates its market both with SEO and massive advertising is GoDaddy. You can talk to 3 different customer support people and you are likely to get 3 contradicting pieces of advice.
And finding your way to their check out page is like going through a maze of additional offers. I keep wanting to leave them but somehow, they still have my business.
I agree with u that people will leave the service if one did not care for them…SEO can be the secondary option…but customer service is 1st….
I am totally in favor with your post. To secure your business in the long run you need to be very professional with your services and your conversation with your customer.By doing this the customer will be satisfied that his site is in right hands and you will be serving him for long enough.
have ebook for this post? i’m very interested
The SEO is just a necessary professional background in the life of a company. The costumer service is another thing. It must be separated because it has different knowledge request.
I’ve always been amazed at how businesses ruin a good thing by offering horrible customer service. You’ve got good ranking, you’re getting customers, why not invest a few dollars in completing your business with customer service that people can appreciate.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been impressed with a business, bought their products only to find out they were a poorly organized and gave me terrible service. Did I go back? Not a chance. If you are a business that depends on backend sales, it’s really too bad.
You are very right. Personally I though I feel that most websites can become 99% self reliant taking out the need for customer assistance. Of course this does not apply to e commerce sites which usually need a lot more work from the corporation running the website. Anyway good post though on how seo applies to running a website.
Nice..article..
keep success..
Quality is much more important. Due to excess work many of SEO firms are coming down in their quality and it is very difficult to find one who is consistent in terms of quality.
I agree with Jeet – prevention is much better. Of course you can’t do it in a perfect manner, so customer support of some sort is unavoidable, but it is certainly worthwhile to keep it on minimal levels. That way you get both satisfied customers and less CS costs.
Customer should be given more importance than anyone else. If you treat the customer well..no matter how your service is he will surely be back to you
Bring the customer with SEO and keep them with good Customer Service. SEO will never work without good customer service
The customer is the most important thing to your business.
I have seen this happen many times and often tell myself that if I ever experience the explosion of traffic I desire, I hope I can deliver on my promises.
To me, it’s eBay.
NO customer service at all. You can’t reach them except through cheesy online chat with reps who give a …. It’s ridiculous. I got e.g. scammed by somebody selling the same kind of cell phone to 5 people at the same day and not delivering it. Forget about eBay investigating the obvious fraud. Nothing. They suggested that I sue the guy myself and all they delivered was a fake phone number, not even an address. And the guy still has his account and does the same scams and collects negative feedback…
Every company which doesn’t take phone calls to listen to their customers is a bad company to me.
There are many who provide services good services but their customer services i bad. While many people are not that good in providing services but are very good in customer services. No matter if ur not that good service provider and if handle customer very well then you will definitely retain the customer.
I’m always a little skeptical of automated tools. I’ve seen a lot of people that claim various products work. However, when I look them up 95% of the time I find that they are just scams.
Bob Whitehurst
One depends on the other … they are inter connected
Yes i agree everything is inter related ans i am sure if we put in a lot of efforts then i am sure that it will be a good respect for the customer and we will surely get respect in return.
Many people are aware of the SEO requirements but forget being able to back up their increased popularity with service. Customer service still has to be the number 1 priority for any business.
What is the point of having great customer access but not being able to keep customer satisfaction up. Soon the word spreads and eventually all the work that was done to improve sites and customer flow is wasted with negative reports and in the end the inability to offer what is supposed to be provided.
I have also had many experiences with those big businesses that have great rankings and get a huge amount of traffic and enquiries and them then being unable to deal with the inflow. The ones that are the most annoying are the ones who offer great customer satisfaction in these not free phone calls and promises to deal with any concerns and then in the end.nothing actually happens requiring you to call back and pay again.
In the end there doesn’t seem to be any culpability on behalf of these big businesses they just seem to rely on one time customers and if that is the way they do business they should loose their rankings just based on these facts and therefore get less customers altogether!!
Wow, that is off my chest!
nice post..
The problem is that many businesses tend to rest on their laurels once the seo has been implemented and traffic has ramped up. The bottom line is to increase your bottom line – and the only way to do so is to keep and add to the customers you have with stellar customer service.
I am glad that landed on your blog. I found already a lot of interesting information and links, so hold on!
It is very hard to find an seo company that works well for you and specialises in your niche. As said previously, when an seo company grows, they tend to take on too much business and loose their quality. Any decent seo company is growing but the one’s that are really good will always concentrate on the long term quality. If you are thinking of hiring someone, always seek personal recomendations!