Julianna
The other day a colleague in Webnames.ca Customer Support took a phone call from an individual enquiring about a tire change. After explaining that Webnames.ca was a domain registrar, the caller seemed confused and quickly ended the phone call. My colleague then related the story to the rest of the group.
A short time later, the same individual called our Customer Support a second time, once again asking for a tire change. It was at this point we realized that the caller thought we would be able to provide him this information because we are an Internet service company. In his mind, our business was like a human search engine – a place where he could find information available on the Internet.
It may seem hard to believe, but we receive calls like this regularly. While the exchanges cause us to chuckle, it shows how many people have no idea how the Internet works. These callers have the impression that people are standing by to provide the information the Internet supplies through websites and search engines. Some callers believe customer/technical support representatives who work for Internet businesses should know everything related to technology and think we are incompetent when we claim we cannot answer all their questions or make things run exactly as the customer would intend.
Truth is, things are always changing when it comes to Internet related businesses – it’s an ongoing effort to keep up with changing technologies and often not plausible to follow “all” the latest trends. I must say however, I am impressed by our company’s willingness to ponder new ideas and how welcoming it has been to the Support team’s suggestions about bettering customer experience. That said, my colleague took the time to find a website related to tire changes and found this caller the contact information he needed.
In summary we do not own the Internet … but we can help people create their Internet identities. And as a bonus, we do sometimes do a little research and help people along the way. As our business and offerings grow, so does our knowledge of what our customers are really looking for.