| Plugging
Into Success Through Online Customer Service
Copyright 1999-2009 Michael Markette
Don't
be fooled by the recent wave of dot-com doom. The
advantages and possibilities of e-business continue
to attract companies to the Web in ever-increasing
numbers. A 2001 poll by Forrester Research, Inc.
showed that 59 percent of more than 700 senior
business executives indicated they are maintaining
or heightening their Internet efforts, despite the
slowing economy. Learning from the bitter lessons
learned by many of the pioneering Internet
pure-plays, traditional brick-and-mortar firms are
launching online initiatives as an additional touch
point for customers and partners.
Early
model Web commerce focused on customer
self-education and self-service. Businesses went
after the operating efficiencies afforded by the Web
with gusto, dreaming of cost reduction and sales
volume increases. Companies poured millions of
dollars into Internet sales only to find that Web
conversion rates generally hovered at less than
three percent. The lesson learned? Forcing
self-service can cost your business sales,
especially when using the Web for marketing purposes
only.
Successful
Web marketers today know that personalized sales and
service can make the difference between an Internet
visitor and a real buying customer. The goal now is
to find that optimal point that saves operating
dollars without sacrificing new revenue
opportunities. In their offline worlds, these
companies have developed solid processes for
greeting customers, educating and serving them and
closing the sale. The challenge is to bridge the
yawning gap between online marketing efforts and
offline sales support.
Online
Customer
Service
:
Myriad Choices
Determining the right type and level of online
customer service is a critical decision. Too much
intervention destroys Web economy; too little lets
valuable customers fall between the cracks. Three
factors should drive a company's level of service:
- Complexity
of product buying process,
- Disparity
of product sales channels, and
- Gross
margins earned on products sold.
Let's
take them one at a time.
It's
a well-known fact -- no one buys a house online.
Many people shop for new homes on the Web, gathering
competitive information and creating a short list,
but in the end it's the tried-and-true offline
selling that closes the deal. The more complex the
buying decision, the higher the need for in-depth
sales and service support.
There
are complicated products that require buyer/seller
interaction to help the buyer make an informed
purchasing decision. An example of this would be
technology items or electronics. There are also
complex buying situations in which several decision
makers are involved in purchasing a product or
service. Both of these scenarios require more
customer intervention and service to consummate the
sale.
The
disparity of the product sales channel also drives
the need for a greater investment in online customer
care. Web sites that merely list toll-free numbers
for sales personnel or offer maps to
brick-and-mortar locations are slow to deliver sales
leads to the appropriate personnel, often resulting
in customers turning to the competition for answers
to their questions.
Large
organizations that have franchisees around the
country, or even around the globe, are a perfect
example. These organizations must distribute online
prospect leads to the right location based on
geography as well as other factors. Often, these
franchise organizations count on online prospects to
locate the franchisee in their area themselves or
call the toll-free number and endure any number of
IVR choices until they reach their desired
destination. While this achieves the customer
contact goal, it serves as a disconnect from
marketing. All of the marketing data about a
particular prospect that must be included in the
sales interview are lost and must be repeated. This
means duplicate work for the company, a poor
experience for the customer and a lack of valuable
feedback to marketing.
Sales
margins play an important role in online customer
support decision making as well. Obviously, it is
not possible to offer intense sales support on sales
of low-margin items. Fortunately, items with small
margins are typically simpler items that lend
themselves to the self-service sales approach. On
the other hand, broad margins easily fund sales
support efforts.
The
tough business decision is determining levels of
sales and customer support for products with margins
somewhere in the middle. Lower margins can't fund
the resources to staff a full-time sales and service
staff, yet support is often required to successfully
close the sale. With the evolution of technology,
however, often the cost of the final step in
transforming an online sales lead into a buying
customer is incrementally very small compared to the
investment that has been made to attract the lead.
Selecting
The Right Technology
Online sellers grapple with choosing from a
seemingly endless array of online technology tools
that have emerged to give sales support and service
to online visitors. From text chat to call buttons,
voice over IP (VoIP) to toll-free numbers, each has
its own set of strengths and weaknesses for
companies and their customers.
One
popular choice is text chat. Customers open a dialog
box and type their conversation with a sales
representative who is often conducting several
"conversations" at once. The interface is
immediate, but awkward. The clues contained in the
human voice are lost and most customers are not
going to type as complete a conversation as they
would speak. Additionally, the effectiveness of this
method requires a staff ready and waiting at
computers to field requests. These factors suggest
that this technology is best suited for centralized
selling and simple sales situations in which
customers have only one or two quick questions.
Further
along the technology curve are voice over Internet
Protocol (VoIP) solutions. This method is
essentially a phone call carried out over the
Internet. Again, immediate contact occurs, but the
quality of the connection may be poor -- there can
be echoes, voices can be muffled and the
conversation can stutter along as some voice packets
are dropped. Realistically, this technology is not
ready for mass use. While VoIP can be used for large
call centers calling out to traditional telephones,
it will be a while before the majority of calls are
VoIP.
Today,
perhaps the most effective way of connecting online
sales leads with offline sales and service revolves
around a tried-and-true technology -- the telephone.
With just a call button, Web site visitors who need
sales assistance click on an icon. They are asked
for their name and phone number, and a phone call is
connected between the customer and the company.
Beyond
basic Web interaction applications is a new breed of
service that enhances and enriches the process.
Advanced call buttons give online companies the
ability to interact one-to-one with their online
customers as well as manage and track that process.
Every call request from a prospect is logged and
reported to the client, whether or not an actual
call was connected.
The
mobility of advanced call buttons is powerful for
many small companies and independent sales reps.
They can't afford a staff to wait and field sales
requests, and they certainly can't afford to stay in
the office and sit by their phone or computer. With
this tool, customer phone calls can be connected to
their mobile phones. Even when they're in the field,
they can talk with sales prospects who appreciate
the immediate service.
So,
if the telephone is so great, why not just list a
toll-free phone number for prospects to call? That's
an option, but consider all that's lost. First, the
prospect may never decide to call. When a call does
come in, you have no idea if it was motivated by a
Web site visit, an e-mail or some other offer. If no
one at the company can take the call, you have no
record of who was calling or why he or she called.
Additionally, your company may not have the ability
to efficiently try to reach the appropriate sales
personnel at multiple numbers. With enhanced call
buttons, you know what calls are being generated by
your marketing efforts, even which Web pages and
offers are the most productive. All call requests
are logged and reported for easy follow-up at your
convenience.
Automating
The Sales Process
Business' practice of sales process engineering has
been growing right along with the CRM industry. This
makes sense when you consider that most sales
process engineering is performed to determine which
tasks in marketing, sales and service should be
automated. Even though the focus appears to be on
automating processes, the real goal of sales process
engineering is to improve the efficiencies of a
business' front-office processes.
One
of the key questions sales process engineers face
is, "How can I improve the efficiency of
acquiring a new customer?" Opportunities become
apparent when one studies the steps that comprise a
company's sales processes. Although these vary from
company to company, one of the most common ways to
achieve greater efficiency is to move sub-processes
forward in the overall marketing and sales
processes.
An
example of this in the retail sector is the advent
of the online shopping cart. Under the old process,
customers would "dog-ear" catalog pages
and refer back to them while completing a purchase
with the company's telesales representative. Online
shopping moved this process forward. Today,
customers tag all relevant purchasing information
and hold that information in the online shopping
cart for later checkout. Certainly Web-based tools
have enabled retail to gain new efficiencies, but
the question remains: how do you move up the selling
process for a complex product that still requires
human interaction to close the deal?
Web
interaction applications are leading the charge in
enabling online communications. Today, these
applications are designed for communications with
online shoppers via text chat or instant messaging
(IM). But advanced Web interaction applications like
call buttons are software-based switches, capable of
routing communications based on complex business
rules.
In
marketing and sales, these business rules take into
account information tracked and gathered about the
prospect or customer. This information includes his
or her company size, product needs, physical
location and time and day contact is initiated.
Without smart Web interaction applications, Web
sites and e-mail newsletters are disjointed from the
marketing and sales processes.
Likewise,
the data collected in marketing systems are lost
when the customer calls into the business via a
toll-free number. Unsupported customer contact
systems also force the customer to work harder to
gain the information required. Much as the toll-free
number was a competitive sales advantage 30 years
ago, the call button soft switch is an advantage
today.
Activating
The Web Interaction Application
Call button Web interaction applications move the
customer contact step forward in the overall sales
and marketing process, ensuring that prospects are
engaged while their interest is piqued and before
they can contact the competition. With the click of
a Web icon, prospects are immediately connected with
the right sales or service personnel.
One
example of the value to be found with a Web callback
button would be a franchise operation selling
advertising and signage to businesses and consumers
from hundreds of locations nationwide. Before the
company adopted call buttons, visitors to the Web
site had to find their local franchise, jot down the
phone number and make the call. Sometimes, multiple
locations would come up in a given area, and
customers had to decide which was the best to call.
This company also had no way of knowing how much or
which traffic to stores was being driven from the
Web site.
Since
activating a call button Web interaction application
solution, the company is able to route the caller
immediately to the appropriate store location based
on rules developed by the company itself. Callers
can now click on a Web site icon and enter their
name and callback number. The application connects
the call to the appropriate store and alerts store
sales personnel that a prospective customer is on
the phone. This immediate alert allows the company
to have a conversation with the prospective customer
at the point of that customer's highest interest.
With
the announcement that plays at the beginning of the
call button store notification, store personnel know
when a call has come from the Web site. Store
personnel also know which pages the customer has
visited and from which page the call action was
requested. Full reporting at a corporate level
reflects how much traffic is being driven from the
site and which pages of the Web site generate the
most calls.
For
this company, the Web interaction application can
help them meet their sales and marketing goals. It
might not even need to have a call center. Rather,
the company might prefer to drive calls directly to
the franchises and track the volume and
responsiveness of calls to those franchises.
Enhanced call button's advanced routing feature can
help answer this challenge.
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