One weekend this past fall I was planning to take my daughter and her bestie to an amusement park. It was Halloween season, so the park basically turns into a giant haunted house, which is not my particular cuppa. But, it is totally theirs and we have passes so it’s not like it cost me anything to get into the park and so off we went. I figured I’d just connect to the park Wi-Fi and get some work done, but then it occurred to me that I hadn’t noticed on previous visits if they even had park Wi-Fi. Surely the park’s website could fill me in! Their site’s UI is not great, but it’s not awful. I can navigate around it fine, even though some stuff isn’t where I’d put it. Most of the items under Plan Your Trip have very little to do with planning your trip and more to do with park operations
— not great customer experience design, but let’s put a pin in that for now — so I start there. Nothing under Park Services, nothing under Tips for Family Fun. They do have an FAQ…surely other people ask this relatively frequently*? Apparently, judging by the content of the FAQ, not as often as they ask if laser pointers are permitted.
Wait, what? It is 2018. No one has asked about laser pointers in the last decade at least, and probably ever if you’re being really honest with yourself, Amusement Park FAQ Writer. (Except maybe for this gal:
People are also probably not asking if they can bring their selfie sticks, they’re just going ahead and bringing them, causing jams in the security lines.
Which brings me to my point:
The FAQ is for Frequently Asked Questions, not for Questions We Wish Customers Would Ask.
If it was, we would call it a QWWCWA and let’s all be glad we don’t have to try to pronounce that.
It is totally fine to have your company policies on the website. I would encourage it, even. But that is not the function of the FAQ. Your FAQ should be a living document, changing often to reflect…wait for it…questions your customers are asking frequently. If 30% of your incoming customer inquiries are asking what your hours are, put that in the FAQ. If no one asks but people keep showing up or trying to contact you an hour before you open you don’t need to put your hours in the FAQ, you just need to find the underlying issue and fix it — those people aren’t visiting your FAQ anyhow.
Once you’ve added a piece of information to your FAQ, it doesn’t just live there forever now.
( via GIPHY )
Most of the time, questions are being asked frequently because your customers aren’t able to find information where they expect it. Take a look at your analytics, ask your peers (and maybe even your friends outside the company) and try to pinpoint where the disconnect is. Let’s go back to business hours. Maybe you have them on every page, but they’re at the bottom and tiny. Or maybe you put them in the About Us section or the Contact Us section, but people aren’t clicking through to those pages.
Fix that problem.
Make the text bigger, or move the information to your front page — use whatever feedback you’ve gathered and make it easier for customers to find what they’re looking for. Maybe, in our hours example, you even want to add a menu item called “Hours” that literally just goes to a single page with the hours on it.
Once you’re pretty sure you’ve fixed the problem (calls have slowed down, analytics show people are clicking where they need to click to get the information, etc.), turn that FAQ item off. If you don’t see a big uptick in related customer queries, related to that FAQ item, congratulations! You’ve fixed the problem. If you do get a big uptick that holds steady for more than a couple of days, turn the FAQ item on again and try something else to solve your problem. It is important that your FAQ be a living document, reflecting the questions that are actually frequently asked. If you never remove information from this page, over time it will begin to bloat, making it difficult for customers to find the answers they are looking for. Not only that, you run the risk of the information becoming wildly outdated. You know what’s worse than customers not being able to find the answer to their question? Customers finding the wrong answer to their question.
Do your customers, your reps, and your business a favor: make sure your FAQ is truly useful to customers, and use the information in the FAQ as a starting point for determining which customer pain points you need to prioritize fixing.
*A quick Google later confirmed that yes, Virginia, lots of people want to know if there’s Wi-Fi here. And, sadly, that there was no Wi-Fi.