On the Web with Kim Vallee » customer service http://ontheweb.kimvallee.com A Guide to Social Media for Bloggers Wed, 07 Sep 2011 18:23:11 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v= Bad Search Results Hurt Customer Service http://ontheweb.kimvallee.com/2009/06/bad-search-results-hurt-customer-service/ http://ontheweb.kimvallee.com/2009/06/bad-search-results-hurt-customer-service/#comments Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:53:14 +0000 Kim Vallee http://ontheweb.kimvallee.com/?p=2026 Here is another missed opportunity to provide good customer services by a telecommunication company.

I am going to San Francisco next week. I read on PCWorld that with iPhone OS 3.0 AT&T will deliver free Wi-Fi access non-U.S. carriers who include Wi-Fi access in their plans. Naturally, I am curious to see if the plan I have with Rogers (my Canadian provider) covers me with a Wi-Fi access. Since I unable to find the information on Rogers site, I did a search.

rogers useless search engine

Here are the search results I got on Rogers Web site. Totally useless since the description repeats the menu instead of highlighting some content of the page. To make matter worse, the results were not even filtered for iPhone due to the fact that their search engine considers menu items. This is what happens when you failed to implement the most basic don’ts and do’s in search engine.

iphone search Closeup

At minimal, a search engine eliminates menu items and only considers the content of the page to deliver relevant results. At least if they were providing me with the content of the page instead of repeating the menu items in the short text highlights I may be able, with patience, to get a clue of where to find what I was looking for.

Basic WordPress Search Engine

To reassure bloggers on WordPress, the basic search engine used by default on WordPress blogs limit the search to the content of the page. It is far from perfect, but at least it does that.

Search Engine is the Last Resort

A well-designed site should give me easy and obvious access to the information I need. A good navigation system and gathering related links are a must. If the Rogers site was better structured, I could have find the information I was looking for without using the search engine. In doubt, ask yourself these questions:

  • Is it too complicated to navigate your Web site or blog?
  • What I can do to make it simple to understand?
  • Do I need a portal page easy to navigate that contains absolutely ALL the links relevant to the single product, its options and accessories and latest news?

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