How to train your customers to order online

Meet Dennis, a subscriber to the website service from Marketing Ideas For Printers. He’s a hero to his customers when he politely shows them the efficiencies of placing online orders. Dennis doesn’t force his customers to learn something new. Instead, he provides an easy path for his offline customers to become online customers at a time they chose. Here’s how he does it.

When Dennis and his team receive an order from someone that’s never used his website (i.e. is placing an order over the phone, by email, or in-person), the first thing Dennis and his team do is to place the order online on behalf of their customer. They go to his website and enter the order information they already have, and then, using the customer’s name and email address, create a complimentary account. A short conversation is enough to begin: “Thanks for the order, Bob, I’ll get that going right away. As a bonus, I’ll use this info to create an account for you on our website. That way, in the future, you can use that account to track your orders and view your order history.” So Bob gets an account created on the website and receives status updates as the order progresses through the production cycle. His completed order is recorded in his account’s order history on Dennis’s website. By using this technique, not much changes for the customer. They place the order, and you fulfill the order. However, by adding this quick-and-easy step, Dennis stands to gain major points with his customer in the future. How?

• Every email generated by Dennis’s website nudges the customer back to the website to place future orders or browse other helpful website content. • Dennis’s website generates status updates as the order works its way through the production workflow.

Dennis’s customers appreciate the up-to-the-minute status updates – and your customers will too. • Dennis’s website starts building the customer’s order history in realtime. As They See It. Your newly trained customer’s online order history starts with that first order, but it shouldn’t stop there. If the customer still prefers that you do the online legwork, you can continue acting on their behalf. It takes a little more creativity to access the customer’s account to place repeat orders. You have to know the customer’s account password (which you shouldn’t have access to for security reasons), or you need to use a tool that allows you to continue to place an order on behalf of your customers. On Dennis’s website, that tool is called “As They See It.” When Dennis’s customer is ready to place the next order, Dennis and his team simply go to the back end of the website to locate the customer and click the pair of eyeglasses next to the customer’s account. (That eyeglasses icon is the “As They See It” tool.) Clicking that icon temporarily whisks Dennis away from the back end of his website into a view of the website representing what the customer would see if they were logged in to the website on their own. Dennis can now assume the identity of his customer and place additional orders on behalf of the customer, just like he did for that customer’s first order. Building order history. Every time Dennis places an order for his customer in this way, he’s building the customer’s order history, and at the same time, is training the customer to order online in the future. Every email the website generates as part of the ordering process reminds the customer that their website account is waiting for them. The best time to start building your customers’ online order history was ‘yesterday.’ The second-best time is now. When your customer warms up to buying printing online, all of the orders you’ve placed on their behalf will be waiting as a complete order history – and you’ll be able to “wow” your customers with an easy-to-use reorder system. That’s when your customers will thank you for providing them with the opportunity to place simple online orders.

Dave Hultin is the President and visionary behind Marketing Ideas For Printers. He’s on a mission “to lead printers to success by providing powerfully innovative online ordering solutions and impossible-to-ignore content.” If you’re looking to sell more printing and grow your business, follow Dave on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/davehultin