RE: Thanks

thinkhost — Tue, 18 Jul 2000 03:49:48 +0000

Thanks to everyone who has responded -- your responses have been EXACTLY in line with what I was thinking. Thanks!!!

Ted — Mon, 17 Jul 2000 11:21:19 +0000

As long as you are definately pointing the customer to the answer, not a problem as far as I am concerned. Getting pointed to an FAQ that does not answer the question is annoying to me.

chicken — Sun, 16 Jul 2000 21:51:26 +0000

Personally I hate not knowing things, and would rather find the info I need via support and FAQ pages than wait for a simple reply to a question.

"How do I..."

You could start breaking them into the FAQ section by:

Emailing them the info, but also with a link to the FAQ where the info could be found or the super secret way of directing them to FAQ's is to require that your clients send support requests from a form and ABOVE the form in big enough letters: "Did you check out FAQ first?"

Chad Simper — Sun, 16 Jul 2000 19:52:09 +0000

I'm not suggesting just sending a URL... You would probably want to say something like "take a look at this URL... It should answer most of your questions. If it doesn't, please let us know".

However, if you have the FAQs and customers know where they are and how to use them, the chances of you getting a message about it are greatly reduced.

TheGraphicsExperience — Sun, 16 Jul 2000 19:02:56 +0000

Well, in my experience being yelled at--told to see a URL, I think it's fine. As long as there is, like Chad and Jes said, a human touch to it all.

Jes — Sun, 16 Jul 2000 18:52:31 +0000

Personally I would only be fine with this if there were some kind of human touch still added to it. A brief message somehow *not automatically generated of course*.

In the case of just an url I would personally feel that the company is trying to distance itself from me, the customer, it's livelyhood. Not a good thing. I would probably leave. Can't say for sure though, haven't had a host like that.

Call me old fashioned, but I like the "human touch" even over the net.

Jes

Chad Simper — Sun, 16 Jul 2000 17:36:32 +0000

Vlad,

We once asked ourselves the same question and customers actually prefer it, in our experience. When you point them to a URL like that, there is often a much more detailed answer than you would provide via e-mail and they like the detailed explanation.

Plus, having those FAQs will actually cut down on your support time once clients learn they are there and have answers to a lot of their common questions.

This is just from our own experience, but I would think it would probably apply to you and your firm as well.