Online Q&A: A New Way to Do Customer Service

By Kimberly Anderson

As a former manager of nine academic advisors for a large university, I spent hours answering students’ questions. Inevitably, I found myself and my staff having the same conversations over and over again. Those discussions were rushed interchanges of information squeezed in during the students’ breaks, lunchtimes or while they were working and distracted.  Often times, it felt as if we were wasting time, answering repeat questions. Additionally, as a manager, I was trying to monitor the quality of my staffs’ conversations. I listened in on phone calls and sat in on appointments trying to make sure that what my advisors were communicating was both accurate and easy to understand.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but what I needed was an online tool that would allow my staff to engage the students (our customers), address their questions in one central location and record those conversations so my staff and I could refer to them time and time again. Hosting a question and answer (Q&A) website built entirely around our organization would have provided a unique way to accomplish those goals. Here are a few reasons why every company or organization should consider using a Q&A site to augment your company’s communication and customer service efforts:

Stop Answering Redundant Questions

Do you ever feel like you answer the same customer questions over and over again? A question and answer website lets you address frequently asked questions quickly and communicate with your customers as a whole, rather than answering one-off questions from individuals who call into your customer service department.

After you’ve made a list of the questions your customer service team gets asked most frequently, you can plug those questions—and their corresponding answers—into your question and answer site. Then, when someone DOES call in with a redundant question, all you need to do is send them the link to that particular question on your Q&A site.

Once you start pointing your customers to your Q&A site on a regular basis, they’ll realize they can search for answers—or ask questions of their own—on the website and your Q&A community will begin to develop.

Address Customer Issues Anytime, Anywhere

Chances are, you have customers around the world who are sleeping while your staff is at work. A Q&A site will allow your customers to ask questions—and get answers—regardless of whether your customer service team is in the office. Each question asked and answered on your Q&A site is saved to your website’s database of questions, which customers can search 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, regardless of location.

If they don’t see the answer they are looking for, they can ask a question of their own. Employees will receive email alerts when customer questions are asked, so they can address your customers’ issues the minute they return to the office.

Let Your Customers Work for You

According to Gallup Management Journal, you achieve customer engagement by building customer confidence in your company and belief about your integrity and then developing their pride and passion in your product.

If your company is like most, you’ve got more than a few customers who love and are confident in your products and services. I like to call these people your brand advocates, and they will prove to be valuable assets to your Q&A site. Often, your brand advocates (who probably live all over the globe) will answer other customers’ questions before your staff can address them. This not only cuts down on the time your employees spend addressing customer issues but also builds brand identity and increases customer engagement—right on your own website.

Track Employee Participation

As illustrated above, Q&A sites are a great way to enhance your external customer service efforts. However, they are also an excellent way to engage your staff and measure employee participation. Because each question and comment is stored on your Q&A platform, managers can see which employees are posting the most answers and providing the best customer service.

In addition, employees in other departments (who might know more about a certain area of the company than someone in your customer service team) are able to answer questions on your Q&A site as well. This ensures your customers get the exact answer they are looking for and lets managers at your company know who their most valuable employees really are.

Summing It All Up

Had the university I worked for been utilizing a Q&A site, students wouldn’t have had to come into our office and wait in line to get their questions answered. Neither would they have had to call in, leave a message, and wait for someone to call them back. Our students would have been able to search for the answers to their questions online. If the information they needed wasn’t available to them, the would have been able to ask our department a question right on our website. 

For my staff, answering those questions online wouldn’t have just helped one student; it would have helped thousands of future students. It also would have enabled me as a manager to review the quality of the answers my staff was giving. This would have saved all of us a lot of time—and ultimately a lot of money.

About ExpertBase

ExpertBase provides your employees, customers and brand advocates with incentives to ask and answer questions about your products and services. Utilizing a patented point/grade system, answerers earn points and recognition, while askers are rewarded with a quality answer. Solutions are stored on your Q&A help site, providing a reliable resource for future users.

With ExpertBase, you can bring the conversation home: you own the content and you get the traffic, all with minimal startup and maintenance requirements.