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How to Determine Support Quality of Shopping Cart Companies
By: Paul L Stevens
For the average e-tailer needing a new or improved shopping cart system, it is critical to have quality technical and sales support for you to use the software successfully. If the sales support is mediocre, they probably won't take the time to really understand your situation and help you determine if the shopping cart features will actually perform the way you need it to. If tech support is marginal, your business could be brought to a standstill due to their inability to troubleshoot problems and understand your questions about shopping cart integration and operation. Here's a few steps you can take before you buy to help determine if your shopping cart company prospects will offer you mediocre or magnificent support.
1. Check the availability of support.
The first thing you should do is call or email the sales department to verify that all your critical shopping cart features actually perform the way you need it to. It is preferable to actually call them, as technical issues can easily be misinterpreted with back and forth email responses. When you do call, how often can you get through to the sales line? Are you calling during peak hours, such as noontime lunch, first thing Monday morning, or last thing Friday night? If so, give them some leniency. Most shopping cart companies are not huge Fortune 500 companies like Microsoft or Adobe, so they don't have surplus staff twiddling their thumbs and waiting for you to call. However, if you cannot get through after about 4-5 calls during various times of the day and week, you might question the availability of sales support you will receive if you become a customer. Usually the sales line is not nearly as busy as the tech support line, so you can pretty much assume that if the sales line isn't available, then tech support should actually be worse.
For testing tech support availability, it's usually more difficult accomplish, because they will likely verify that you are a current customer in their free support period before they provide service. However most tech support reps will not find it frustrating or offensive for you to explain that you are a prospective customer researching not only the shopping cart software but also the quality of tech support, and ask them for any strong points about their tech support department, or more information on their support policies and packages. Hopefully they will discuss their credentials and commitment to serving their clients. If they say they are not permitted to discuss anything until you are a client, then thank them for their time regardless. The important thing is that you determined they were available within a few attempts. This may seem like a pointless exercise, but it's crucial to test the claims of the shopping cart company's website about their support. One claims "award-winning 24/7 tech support". With a little digging and experimentation, you'll find out that 24/7 support meant that they'll respond to your email in 24 hours... far from worthy of winning any awards.
2. Check the response time of support.
It's inevitable that sometimes you will not be able to get through on the phone, so you may have to leave a voicemail once in a while. Or sometimes you may not be able to get to a phone to talk to tech support, so you'd rather send them an email. An appropriate response time should be 1-2 business days for them to return your email or call. Be sure to add their support email address to your address book or white list...often tech support is blamed for "never responding" even though their response is sitting in your junk folder. For testing the response of phone support, leave a voicemail with your contact information, and see if they get back to you. The first thing they will most likely attempt to do when they call you back is to establish that you're a current customer, in which you can explain that you are a prospect needing more details on support policies and what to expect as far as response time. Ask them if they offer any mission-critical support if you have an emergency. Most will appreciate you doing your research ahead of time, instead of making assumptions about their policies before purchasing then asking for exceptions afterwards.
Also, be sure to consider the time zone and country the publisher is in and will be providing support from. If you live in Australia but want to buy a US-based shopping cart program, then be prepared for 1-day delays at least between your emails, and some late nights on the phone with tech support. If you want the availability of support during your business hours, then you must choose a company near your time zone.
3. Check the quality of the response.
When you're a prospective customer, it's easier to test the quality of the sales response than that tech support, being that you can't really troubleshoot an issue until you're a customer. But, the sales support may be a fair indicator of the level of detail that the company as a whole tends to work by. For instance, if you ask about the shopping cart script having discounts, do they respond with a simple "Yes it does" or do they ask probing questions into your situation. What kind of discounts do you need? Site wide discounts, coupons, membership tiers, etc.? Do you want a general 10% coupon function or do you want to be able to apply it to a specific product, category, or vendor? Do you want to offer buy one, get one 1 free coupons? A great sales staff may direct you to their demo and walk you through how to operate the feature in question, or at least make an offer to do so. See if you can get them to comment on your current website and make recommendations. If they continually give quick, one sentence responses all the time or keep pushing you to sign up for a trial to figure out for yourself if it'll work for you, then your gut feeling will let you know if they are a reflection of the whole company. If their sales staff provides thorough answers, asks probing questions, and seems vested in your situation, you can assume that tech support will offer you the same service once you're a customer.
4. Check for ancillary support.
Are you going to be working on your shopping cart script during your free time, on evenings, weekends, and the wee hours of the morning? Then you'll be attracted to finding a company that offers 24/7 support, although this is difficult to find with off the shelf shopping cart programs. If they don't offer 24/7 support, quality documentation will be your savior. Thorough, current, in-depth manuals and user communities are just as much a crucial support offering as is someone picking up the phone. Not only will this provide valuable assistance after hours, but also save you money on purchasing additional support after your support runs out.
Great customer support is crucial to the success of your online business, but the costs of providing it are at an all time high, so be prepared for stringent restrictions on how much your license purchase will cover. Following these simple tests before you settle on a shopping cart script will help you verify publisher claims and ensure the successful launch of your online business.
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