Friday 24th July 2009 by James Skinner

I recently bought a neat little Netbook to use as a sofa companion whilst tolerating various abysmal American drama shows. It runs Ubuntu, the geek's choice of operating system, and although my fingers are probably built more for a full-size keyboard, it's a very decent little thing overall.

Until, that is, i deveoped a edious fau wih he keyboard.

That's 'it developed a tedious fault with the keyboard', of course. The 'T', 'L' and '5' keys would no longer work, even after fishing out various biscuit crumbs from underneath them. Now, I know a bit about computers, and I know that the keyboard on a two-month-old laptop shouldn't just stop working, so I guessed (correctly, as it turned out) that it would have to be returned for repair. And so began a journey through the minefield that is the 'technical support' area of the manufacturer's website.

Through the maze

Undoubtedly the answer to 'how do I return my laptop' is in there somewhere, but between the self-help system that only works properly in one browser and the strange classifications applied to the various components of the laptop, it was virtually impossible to find. The only route through the maze was to tell the system which component you are having problems with, and the only keyboard listed was a USB keyboard with the advice to unplug it and plug it back in again. Little use when dealing with a laptop.

The opportunities for reducing customer service costs by dealing with as much as possible online are huge. The issues arise when not only are the costs reduced, but also the quality of customer service. If the maze of information only leads to a phone number, you still have to manage a huge call centre. Worse, if the customer doesn't know the precise terminology you apply to your products or services, they won't even find out how to call the right department.

Recycling terminology

We often help organisations who are struggling with content findability and the solution doesn't usually lie within a clever search platform or with live online chat with a customer service representative. Internal naming conventions are a minefield for the average site visitor - go to your local authority's website and find out about recycling collections for a good example - it will almost certainly be classified under something entirely strange to the average punter.

Five tips for findability:

• Step out of your departmental constraints and think about what the site visitor is actually looking for
• Use clear navigation and calls to action that guide people to what they want to do rather than where they want to go
• Learn from your customers - allowing them to tag your content will reveal exactly how they refer to it
• User semantically correct mark-up to give search engines a chance to help guide your site visitors for you
• Prototype your ideas and let real people try them before you launch - you'll be amazed at just how many of your core audience simply don't see things you thought were obvious, and vice versa

My laptop is being collected tomorrow to go back home for a new keyboard. Once I found the right person to speak to, the whole process took no more than a few minutes. But finding that person took hours.