The online retail industry is a jungle of rising costs, lower spending, and wafer-thin margins. How do you stay profitable in this economy? More importantly, how do you get through this November through February season when online sales are expected to increase by 20%?

Your online portal is increasingly becoming your storefront—your customer’s window into your brand, your products, your offers and nearly everything you represent.

Inbound traffic and sales is great for your business, but the more you sell, the more you support. Retail contact centres also move to peak season, with companies investing in flexible resources to try and manage the boost in customer activity. It is not uncommon to see managing directors and brand owners pick up the phones or answer emails in an effort to manage inbound volume quicker.

More than any other time of the year, effective knowledge management has emerged as a key differentiator in effectively managing the customer experience and your costs. Quality customer service dictates the ultimate winners and losers of the holiday season—either a positive experience or a nightmare of social media #fails.

With many online brands all competing for your consumer’s wallet, the right content at the right time dictates whether you convert a lead, how much your consumer spends, and how many times they are likely to come back.

So what are the key considerations to implementing an effective online knowledge solution?

1. Your “Help” Site: How do consumers get to help? How does the website “look and feel” when they get there? How your website looks and how content is presented hugely impacts how well your customers use online knowledge. Big, visual icons promote ease of use, and help with time spent on the site. Pay particular attention to your online help journey and how seamlessly it feeds into your contact journey.
2. Categorization: In the context of a self-help portal, how knowledge is organized is important. Take an outside-in look at knowledge categorization. For example, from an internal standpoint, you could be organized as food, non-food, electronics, clothing etc. However, when a consumer is on your site, what would they look for? They’re looking at returns, deliver, and orders, regardless of product line. An efficient knowledge management tool maps customer intent to internal processes.
3. Language: Retailers can get mired in process acronyms and operation team-speak. Take a moment to think about how your consumers are thinking of you as a brand. For example, there is a three page “Deliveries” section on your website that lists every delivery option with caveats and timelines. Imagine your consumer searches on your website “Do you deliver on a Saturday?” The simple answer expected is “ Yes, we do, here are our rates...” They do not want three pages of legalese.
4. Length: How long should my knowledge article be? The answer is, it depends. You are legally required to have a “Terms & Conditions” article. There is nothing much you can do about that. But, you can, for example, break down important sections into easily digestible chunks. Rule of thumb: If you have more than three paragraphs, think about presenting the data differently with images, videos, etc.
5. Keep it current: The most common reason for failure of knowledge management is lack of process around review, maintenance and archiving. Seeing irrelevant and expired coupon information on the site, for example, frustrates the customer and costs you their business. It is vitally important to put a plan for knowledge management in place. Your agents and internal stakeholders should contribute, but there should also be a centralized knowledge administrator who can archive, edit or add content quickly in reaction to spikes in traffic/searches.

Only 20 shopping days left before Christmas and retailers are already planning products and promotions well into next year. Will your service team be ready in 2013?

Read more about Bluewolf’s Customer Service practice here.