Service With a Smile Follow these basic steps to create a solid customer service program for your site.

Neil Closner ran a brick-and-mortar store for baby products, hecould look his customers in the eyes, answer their questions inperson and tell by their smiles-or frowns-how satisfied they were.As president of 2-year-old, 12-employee BabyUniverse.com, the27-year-old entrepreneur can't perform any of those basiccustomer service functions. "Online, you don't have thathuman, physical interaction," says Closner. "We have tomake up for it in any way we can."

Closner and other e-business entrepreneurs are making up forthis lack of human contact in multiple ways: e-mail, telephonesupport, well-staffed chat lines and easily accessible FAQs. Theseautomated and semi-automated customer service tools are admirablysuited to the 24/7 schedule of e-commerce. But there's no doubtthat replacing the friendly smile of a salesperson with all thesetechno-tools raises some very relevant questions. Here are thebasic steps of creating a solid customer service program for yoursite.

• Good e-business customer service allows shoppers to do allkinds of things with ease: find ordering information, check thestatus of orders, view their order histories and account balances,and, of course, get live help via e-mail, chat lines or telephone.Decide which of these things you'll need the most byconsidering your customers' needs. For instance,BabyUniverse's customers tend to be first-time parents who havelots of questions about safety and want product recommendationsfrom experts, so direct communication with live customer servicestaff is essential.