Diane Clarkson [Posted by Diane Clarkson]

These are certainly challenging economic times and online customer service has never been more important to achieving eBusiness goals.


I’m very excited to announce that I will be taking on a new coverage area on the eBusiness and Channel strategy team and will now be focusing my research on Online Customer Service.


My first three reports have recently been published: “Financial Web Sites Need Customer Service Help”, “Travel Website Customer Service is Far From Perfect”, and “Online Retail Customer Service Availability Needs Some Improvement”.


I’ll be presenting a teleconference on “Improving Online Customer Service Availability By Strengthening the Basics: A Review Of Financial, Travel, And Retail Web Sites’ on Thursday, August 27, 2009 1:00 p.m.-2:00 p.m. Eastern time. I’ll present the findings of Forrester’s evaluation of online customer service availability on 90 leading eBusiness Web sites across the financial services, travel, and retail industries. You can register for this teleconference by clicking here.


In the coming months, I will be looking at how online customer service can drive eBusiness, including:
– Understanding consumer preferences
– Developing online customer service strategies
– Best practices for deploying self-service, email, IM Chat, Click to Call
– Social media as online self-service, including Twitter, online communities
– Benchmarking online customer service availability and effectiveness


I look forward to delving deeper into these topics and invite your feedback on current and suggestions for upcoming research.