No call should strike more fear into the heart of wireless providers than one from a customer saying, "Your site won't let me do what I want to do."

Galat: Is your Website losing your customers?

Chilling words, because only a tiny percentage of online customers actually will pick up the phone to alert providers to a problem. By the time that call is received, the business is likely to have lost hundreds, if not millions of dollars in sales.

As the online channel plays an increasingly crucial role in business success, providers can't afford to fail even one customer. Yet, despite the maturation of Web technologies over the past 10 years, transaction problems still plague sites. Further, online conversion rates have remained steady, and low: between 2% and 2.5%.

The Web is critical for wireless carrier transactions, with all major providers serving up online applications meant to keep their users (whether consumers, employees or other businesses) satisfied by enabling self service. People are also turning to the Web more to research and inform their decisions regarding providers, plans, and devices.

The Gap
Despite the importance of the Web, most businesses do not realize the extent of problems still plaguing sites or understand why. Harris Interactive recently conducted a poll in which 87% of U.S. online consumers were forced to abandon a transaction due to a problem or issue with a site. Of those surveyed, 42% said they would abandon a transaction and go to a competitor's site when something goes wrong.

Many otherwise sophisticated companies continue to rely on customer calls or surveys to alert them to problems. To add insult to injury, they often also ask those customers to retrace their steps in order to pinpoint why and where a transaction went sour. And they wonder why key business performance measures for their Websites, such as conversion rate, remain steady or may even be falling behind the market growth rate.

According to “Making Experience an Integral Part of Customer Service,” from Forrester Research, online customer support from the average wireless voice, residential voice, TV or Internet provider only proves satisfactory to roughly 40% of customers, sometimes less.

Rising Expectations
Previously, companies’ IT departments simply relied on performance monitoring solutions to see how long it took to serve pages to visitors. Today’s online users expect more. It’s not acceptable if a site crashes mid-buy; likewise, customers expect a seamless experience overall and will no longer put up with obstacles. The days of online users as guinea pigs are over – competition can be only one click away, as evidenced by the 42% of online consumers in the Harris survey who abandon a transaction after encountering a problem. Businesses should go further and take complete responsibility for their sites, rather than relying on the customer to report issues along the way – incurring additional costs and losing customer trust.

The Forrester report goes on to cite one U.S. telecommunications provider as garnering better than average customer satisfaction ratings. Why? A focus on improving its Website that centers on customer experience, features, functionality and usability.

Recognize the Customer Experience
With customer experience management solutions, it's now possible, and necessary, to quickly figure out what's happening to lost sales transactions without enlisting your customers as virtual troubleshooters.

By identifying, quantifying and resolving problems, organizations can improve historically low sales conversion rates, with typical conversion rate increases of between 1% and 3%.

Getting to the heart of online issues by taking action to enhance the customer experience has allowed some businesses to improve their conversion rates by as much as 3%. Over the course of a year, that relatively small increase can result in millions of dollars in additional revenue. Beyond that, higher levels of customer care can mean less churn, and less money spent in service centers.

How can you make customer experience part of your business strategy? First, it’s important to bridge the gap between the online channel and other areas of your business by opening lines of communication. You need the online visibility provided by a solution that enables you to see every customer, every interaction, every time. Visibility is a powerful asset that can be used for “answers” across the entire enterprise.

For example, service reps can use online visibility to help solve transaction problems. Rather than forcing customers (who do actually call in) to retrace their steps, reps can search for that customer's site visit and replay exactly what happened, resolving issues quickly and improving customer satisfaction. Management can transform that rich customer interaction data into powerful business decisions. They can determine not just when, but why customers are abandoning or completing transactions.

Businesses are recognizing the importance of customer experience, and analyzing ongoing customer behavior, to ensure optimized online applications. In a competitive marketplace, with other options available at the click of the mouse, providers can't afford to fail even one user. Not only will that one person leave your site - maybe forever - but if it goes unnoticed, that same problem might actually affect hundreds of others.

Galat is vice president of marketing and product strategy for Tealeaf.