At Red Gate we enjoy talking to our customers. Really! If you've read recent blog posts by members of some of our customer-facing teams, you'll have spotted the pleasure they take in their work.

In case you missed those posts, here they are:

• From our Finance team: Finance: Friends, not foes!
• From our reception desk: The Front line of Communication

However, we recognise that sometimes our customers would like to be able to solve their problems or answer their questions without talking to us - they're in a hurry, it's outside office hours . or perhaps they just prefer not to pick up the phone and call.

Self-service customer care

So we've begun a programme of work to enable more self-service; whether it's finding the answer to a "how do i.?" question or getting access to a record of what product licenses they own, we want to make it much easier for our customers to get hold of this information for themselves. If they want to.

Phase 1: make it easier to find information

We decided to start by tackling findability. We've got loads of useful information on our website, but it's sometimes difficult to find, so we've been working on improving our site search. Step 1 has been to replace the search engine, clean up the search UI, and make it consistent across the site. We're nearly there!

The idea is that if we improve the site search it will be easier - and much more pleasant - for people to find the information they need. The new search will go live some time in April, and then we'll be gathering feedback, looking at web analytics (more about this in an earlier article), and working out what improvements we still need to make. We'd love to hear what you think, so do give your feedback or drop us a line. Or pick up the phone and call, if you like.

What do you think?

While I've got your attention, I'd love to hear what people think about self-service customer care.

• Do you like to call, email, live chat . or do you prefer to dig around and find out answers yourself?
• Who's getting it right: what self-service sites do you like?

p.s.

Watch this space for news of phase 2.