FAQ as a Sales Tool

J

jewin

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How many hosters here actually view their FAQ as a sales tool as well as a customer service tool? Remember that your FAQ is a frequent stop for potential clients as well as existing clients. Why not put your uptime guarantee or that you have 24/7 phone support as Q&A's #1 and #2? Or better yet, reword your USP (unique selling proposition) as question #1?

Q: "Is it true that every member of your support staff is US based and has at least 5 years experience?"
A: Absolutely! We started XYZ Hosting, Inc. with the idea that support should be knowledgeable and easy to access."
 
It is a good idea, the only problem that i see is that too many people don't like reading at all - they don't read the ToS, they don't read the FAQ, they don't read the announcements, etc.
 
RE Zach, what I'm talking about is really structuring the FAQs so that they pitch the prospective customer while informing them.
 
We certainly do have a "Most Frequesntly Asked Questions" (FAQ) section on our website for potential customers as well as for already existing customers. It's a great tool and a very valuable asset (IMHO). It also helps reduce the amount of support tickets, a lot.. :D
 
Juan -

I like the visibility of your FAQ and the nice little CTA at the top of the FAQ ("START A WEBSITE TODAY !"). Good job!
 
jewin said:
How many hosters here actually view their FAQ as a sales tool as well as a customer service tool? Remember that your FAQ is a frequent stop for potential clients as well as existing clients. Why not put your uptime guarantee or that you have 24/7 phone support as Q&A's #1 and #2? Or better yet, reword your USP (unique selling proposition) as question #1?

Q: "Is it true that every member of your support staff is US based and has at least 5 years experience?"
A: Absolutely! We started XYZ Hosting, Inc. with the idea that support should be knowledgeable and easy to access."
Click to expand...
Great tip. Note to myself - review our FAQ's and optimize where needed. :D
 
We absolutely use it as another tool in our sales arsenol. Personally, I like FAQ's. If I can locate my answer in a wello organized FAQ rather than asks someone, all the better.
 
We built a custom knowledgebase, rather than using WHMCS's

With the SEO work, we get thousands of hits of people searching for help and how to do things, we fill it regular.

And it seems to get plenty of hits direct from google and sales also.
It is great!
 
You're correct, I think the FAQ/Knowledgebase can be a very powerful sales tool. It is excellent for SEO, as well.
 
rds100 said:
It is a good idea, the only problem that i see is that too many people don't like reading at all - they don't read the ToS, they don't read the FAQ, they don't read the announcements, etc.
Click to expand...

I agreed with you. Most people were too lazy to read.

But I also agreed with the Thread Starter, FAQ is a good way for sales tool, coz prospects and clients would read the FAQ to find relevant information such as how to pay, when, what. where, things like that. Once they are satisfied, they will start buying. :)
 
Building FAQ / Knowledgebase should be a continuous process and hosting provider can take the clue from the actual queries generated by its clients for this. If a visitor goes through such FAQ / Knowledgebase then he will save his own as well as web hosting companie's time on live chat. FAQ / Knowledgebase should include not only pre-sales questions but also some small posts of solving basic problems which can be solved buy webmasters at their own.
 
I think people who genuinely want to know about another host will read the faq, because we as customers want to know what to expect from this host. I'm sure some people don't want to read, and I'm equally as sure that those people soon switch hosts because they didn't pay attention to details. I spent a week looking through different hosts, reading their faqs and wikis, and trying to decide what host would be best for me. It's like shopping for a new car- are you gonna get the one that looks fantastic until you drive it and find all the problems it actually has? If customers don't put effort into choosing a worthwhile host by researching and reading through the host's pages, then part of me says that they deserve the trouble they may receive by not paying attention.

Sorry, bit of a rant there.
 
I honestly think that FAQ / Knowledgebase is a great tool for several reasons:

1. It entices people to buy from you if they can get good, clear, easy to read, easy to understand questions answered there.

2. It helps you with search engine rankings (providing that your FAQ/KB is public).

3. It also helps cut down on your support costs & time. People find answers that they need in your FAQ / KB and your support staff / customer service / sales staff don't have to waste time answering meaningless, pointless questions cause they are already answered in your FAQ / KB which customer's are urged to access first, prior to supporting a ticket.

4. I noticed that a lot of companies are now 'charging' or telling you that they are at least if you ask a question that is already covered in their FAQ / KB. I noticed that Nocster/Burst does that and a few other hosts.

5. I would put a disclaimer in your 'Submit a Ticket' page, telling customers to review your FAQ / KB before submitting a ticket or else there may be a charge for the support that you provide to them.

6. I noticed that most customer's don't want to search for their answers, they rather just ask it and get a 'personal response' from someone. Those are the customer's that tie up our support reps all the time!

7. Overall... an FAQ/KB is a MUST for ANY company, no matter what you do! So get one today and pack it full of information, but don't give too many details about your company!
 
We find with our extensive KB that most of our clients are using this rather than submit tickets.

We took the decision to only allow logged in clients to read our KB as we were finding that our KB was being accessed by many people on a daily basis and some were searching through every single KB item, which was increasing our B/W foir the site and none of these were even going to our sales pages.
 
Various Functions

I find that the FAQ section of a site is very useful and that is the default "go-to" whenever a potential customer wants to find out more. (The other one is the "Contact Us" page)

It could be a very good tool for promoting but IMHO, people go to that particular section on the site to be genuinely informed about the products and that sells on its own. No need to subtly plug-in to the questions how good your service/product is. Some might actually feel that they were tricked into reading an advertisement instead of finding out more about the product.

I think if we want to promote, we can have a main FAQ section and sub-sections for "Why Us?" and "Why the Product" - One good example is a cloud service benchmarking site called Cloudsleuth. Every provider is given sections where they can add in resources and they separate the "neutral" ones from the ones that are "self-promoting". Nonetheless, all these are good for organic SEO.
 
rds100 said:
It is a good idea, the only problem that i see is that too many people don't like reading at all - they don't read the ToS, they don't read the FAQ, they don't read the announcements, etc.
Click to expand...

I agree, i include our FAQ link in all intital emails as well as the welcome email but clients still ask me the questions instead of even looking at it...
 
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