** Continued From: Reducing Chargebacks! - Part #2

Humans do it better.

"Auto-replies are great. Support tickets are fabulous. Email alerts are wonderful but the human element is the magic element."

Porn is hot but the web can be a cold lonely place for the paysite subscriber who’s locked out of your member’s area. Not to mention, the member who never got their email confirmation or the one that can’t get your webcam chat to load. These disgruntled customers can do you a lot of damage if you don’t take care of them properly. Your members have the ultimate power. They have the power of the Chargeback and Chargebacks are bad.

In parts one and two of this series, “Reducing Chargebacks”, I showed you two ways to keep members happy, thus reducing the number of customers that complain to their credit card issuers about your paysite. Part one covered the importance of building a tour that told the truth. In part two I extolled upon you the value of online customer support. In this last part, I’ll expound on the merits of human contact with your paysite members.

Auto-replies are great. Support tickets are fabulous. Email alerts are wonderful but the human element is the magic element.

Whether it’s via telephone or live chat, when you provide an understanding tone and an open ear to your paysite subscribers, you will be rewarded with both gratitude and loyalty. People the world over are sick and tired of robot responses to their flesh-and-blood problems. The consumer market is over-saturated with services and companies that seem to avoid speaking directly with their clients.

You know this feeling yourself. When was the last time you called your ISP or PC manufacturer? How long did it take before you got to hear a voice that wasn’t pre-recorded? Don’t you get tired of pressing numbers on your phone only to get another digitized message?

Your paysite members are no different. They’ll be positively delighted when they call your number and hear a human speaking on the other end of the line! There’s so much that’s hard to explain in a text box, chiefly among those not proficient with computers. Can you imagine a doctor or a mechanic making a diagnosis from symptoms described through email?

If you run an adult paysite, you are in the services industry. That means you have to interact with your customers. You have to be able to explain their questions, smooth their feathers and resolve their issues. The very best way to do that is with real-time, person-to-person conversation.

Set up a phone line specifically for member support and man it.

You might have to hire one or more people to handle the phones depending on the size of your business but you’ll save money by satisfying patrons. If you want to get really fancy, pay for a toll-free line so members don’t have to shell out money to talk to you. If you want to get super-fancy they even have International toll free numbers so you can talk to members worldwide. Maybe you can’t be there to answer the phone 24/7 but you can at least be there during business hours.

When you aren’t around, you can set up an answering machine so customers can leave recorded messages about their problems. Some paysites hire a receptionist who can offer support for basic trouble-shooting as well as redirect calls to tech support or to you. These phone specialists can work miracles with an angry caller.

Another way to give your paysite support a human touch is with live chat. Whether you use something as simple as ICQ or something as extravagant as an onsite chat script, if you incorporate live conversation into your support, your members will greatly appreciate the courtesy.

People want to talk to the humans in charge when things get messed up. If you give human support you get the chance to solve problems and answer questions before your customers give up and chargeback.

So many times all a patron needs is an explanation of the situation in a language they can understand. The human language.

Maybe you can’t end chargebacks forever. Your biller will do everything in their power to prevent customer fraud via chargeback, but VISA doesn’t make it easy. Just the same, there are measures you can take to keep your paysite subscribers content so they won’t zap you with the dreaded Chargeback.

Tell the truth in your tour. Provide ample online support. Let your members know they can call you on the phone or chat with you live if they have a dilemma. Be honest. Be up front. Be available. Be there!