Learning outcomes

• To develop skills in research, analysis and academic writing
• To analyse the online support options provided to customers to enhance their customer experience

Overview

• Many organisations use a support model that encourages customers to resolve their own issues using various online interactive tools.
• You will perform research to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of the online support provided by two organisations within the same industry. No two students within the class can select the same two organisations. You must email your chosen organisations to your lecturer for approval before you commence with your report.
• To ensure you make an objective assessment you will use a scoring model for your assessment criteria.

Report Outline

1. Introduction
2. Overview of each organisation e.g. products/services provided, market share, history, mission statement, strategic goals, geographic location, number of employees, ownership, customer service reputation e.g. CX Excellence score (if applicable), awards etc
3. Overview of each organisation’s website.
4. Analysis of FOUR different online support options provided by organization A
5. Analysis of FOUR different online support options provided by organization B
6. Comparison of the support options provided by company A and B with reference to the scoring model (see Figure 1)
7. Recommendations for both organizations for improving online customer support
8. Conclusion

Overview of each website

This section will contain the following:

1. First impressions of the website homepage (see next section)
2. Find the ability of the support options
3. Number and range of support options provided e.g. FAQ’s, online chat, customer reviews, email, telephone support, ability to search a knowledge base, virtual tours, social media support channels, etc

First Impressions: Aspects to consider

• Is the website address intuitive? Easy to remember and spell?
• Download time
  • Is the home page slow to download?
• Look and feel
  • Design choices e.g. color scheme, use of images, chunking up of text, navigation, text readability.
• Unique Selling Point (USP)
• Is it clear what the USP of this organization and its services are e.g. price, unique product, customer experience, etc?
• Is the user encouraged to act using a call to action (CTA) buttons e.g. sign up for a free trial, create an account, subscribe to a newsletter, read more about company products/services?

Effective CTA’s should stand out from everything else on the page

• Credential validation
  • Is the company validated by or has links to any third parties? e.g. Cork Simon Community displays its Registered Charity number in the footer, LIT has banner links to Enterprise Ireland and the European Social Fund.
• Statement from management

Analysis of the support options

For each support option you should provide the following:

• A description of how the support option is presented to the user and how the user interacts with it
• Evidence (in so far as is possible ) that you have interacted with the support option personally e.g. for a knowledgebase, you can search for key terms, you could start a conversation with an online agent. You should provide screenshots to demonstrate this interaction.
• Provide metrics where possible i.e. wait times, response times, number of customer reviews, number of FAQ’s or FAQ categories, etc.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of this support option. Outline in detail the factors that you considered when making this evaluation. Note these factors will vary depending on the support option.
• An example of the scoring model is presented below in Figure 1.

				Score 1-10
Criteria		Weight	Aer Lingus		Ryanair
First impressions of the home page		5%	7		6
Findability		20%	6		6
Number and range of total		15%	8		9
support options
Support Option 1 overall		15%	7		8
effectiveness
Support Option 2 overall		15%	4		7
effectiveness
Support Option 3 overall		15%	2		7
effectiveness
Support Option 4 overall		15%	5		8
effectiveness
Total weighted scores			54.5%		73.5%

Figure 1: Scoring model

Note: This section should be an analysis of the support options provided. It should NOT be a user guide. Labeled screenshots should be used to illustrate your analysis.

Sample Evaluation criteria for FAQ’s

Aspects to consider

1. The number of faqs. What is the optimum number? Too many can be overwhelming, too few and customers will have unanswered questions.
2. Presentation of FAQ’s i.e. well written, to the point, accurate, easy to read
3. Are the FAQ’s relevant? Do they reflect common customer issues?
4. Is there any information that is not covered by the faqs?
5. Are the FAQ’s categorized? Is this helpful?
6. How is the FAQ’s present on both desktop and mobile views? Is the site responsive?

For all other support options, you should define your own criteria against which to evaluate the site.

Example of analysis for the FAQ support feature on Ryanair.com

A customer can navigate to the FAQ’s from the home page by clicking on the Help menu item in the top right-hand corner of the screen. This will bring the user to the Help center and by clicking on See all FAQs the FAQ overview page will load. (https://www.ryanair.com/ie/en/useful-info/help-centre/faq-overview). It is relatively easy to find the FAQ’s as the user can locate the page in only two clicks from the home page.

A user can also search through the FAQ’s from the Help center by entering a key term in the search field.

The Top 5 Questions are also displayed on the Help Center page. This is a useful feature as a user can find the information very quickly without having to refer to the entire database of questions.

Figure 1 below shows the FAQ overview page.

Figure 1: Ryanair FAQ overview page

The FAQs are divided into categories e.g. Baggage, Special Assistance, and Passports. There are 35 categories in total. This is a large number of categories however it is probably due to the nature of the organization and the complexities and concerns involved with travel.

When the user mouses over a category on the left-hand side of the page the questions associated with that category are displayed in the right-hand pane. This is a useful feature as it means that the user is only presented with information that they are specifically interested in, otherwise, they could be overwhelmed with too much information. Each category contains anything from three to ten questions with an average of five questions per category. Responses can range in size from 2-3 lines of text to over 100 lines of text for more complex answers.

To see the answer to a specific question the user clicks on either the question text or the downward pointing arrow to the right of the question. (see Figure 2 below). To hide the answer the user can click again on the arrow. This is a useful feature as it gives the user control over how much information they can see.

Figure 2: Answer displayed

The answers are generally very detailed, and a lot of information is provided. If the user requires more detail on a specific topic, they can click on a Learn more hyperlink.

If the questions require a detailed response they are chunked up well-using subheadings and paragraphs for example the response to the How can I pay for my flights? question is divided into four clear and separate paragraphs titled Forms of Payment, Payment Fees, Other information, and Payment security.

The responses demonstrate empathy for example the answer to the question What’s the procedure for a damaged, delayed, or lost checked bag? starts by saying ‘We’re sorry to hear your checked bag was damaged, delayed or lost……”

As more users browse the web using a mobile device compared to a desktop the website was also analyzed on a mobile device. The website is fully responsive on a mobile device i.e. the content is displayed in a way that is tailored to the device. The same information is provided to the user however two columns of information on the desktop view are reduced to one long scrolling column on the mobile view. (see Figure 3 below)

Figure 3: FAQ’s on a mobile device

This appears to be a very detailed, relevant set of FAQs that cover a wide variety of topics that Ryanair customers may have queries on. The information is well presented, and much emphasis is placed on only providing as much information as the customer needs. If they require more detailed information, they can quickly find it using the additional links. The only concern here is that some customers may find 35 categories of questions overwhelming and there are no faqs on the current COVID-19 situation.