Live contact comes in many flavors and colors. For most dot-coms, click-and-mortars and traditional companies, however, the big questions still remain: Which technology? When should we implement? Should we integrate with legacy systems, or scrap and start over? Which provider should we use? If your CRM organizations and your company are grappling with these very issues, take a look at the “snapshots” that follow; you may see a familiar image. Then, turn to page 30 for a sampling of live contact vendors.
ByeByeNOW: Choose Your Contact
“This is pretty darn slick!”
exclaims Pete Nicoletti, chief technology officer of ByeByeNOW.com, a Pompano
Beach, FL-based travel services/franchise support organization. He's referring
to the firm's implementation of the CosmoCom (Melville, NY) technology for live
web contact. “We have 104 reps in our contact center, and they're all able to
interact with customers via fax, e-mail, chat, VoIP, PSTN voice, and video
teleconferencing—using nothing but a web browser. There isn't a single phone in
the room.” According to Nicoletti, most people planning a trip will research
their travel on the web, then call a local travel agent to finalize their
reservations. So multiple contact methods are now a must for the travel
enterprises that want to endure. The ByeByeNOW.com website makes it possible for
such customers to do their web research, then click on “Talk to a Travel Agent”
to have questions answered instantly by a local franchisee, through the
customer's preferred method of contact. Customers who click on the button have
two options: Text Chat (after which, a transcript of the chat session is
automatically sent to the customer so that he can retain the details of the
conversation), or Voice Chat. While the text chat requires no plug-ins or
downloads, says Nicoletti, voice (which can be accompanied by video) requires
NetMeeting 3.0. For voice communication, he explains, site visitors are clearly
informed of the necessity for speakers and a microphone.
“ 'If you need help,' they're told, 'click on
Voice Chat and our agents will be happy to assist you.' ”
Customers who log on to the site for the first
time are connected to ByeByeNOW's own contact center, which handles both initial
and after-hours contact. Once a user's information is in the database, all
subsequent contacts are automatically routed to the nearest travel agent
franchisee. “It's really amazing,” reflects Nicoletti. “The CosmoCom technology,
combined with our Onyx customer contact manager, identifies the customer,
matches him up to his record, gets his info from our SQL database, determines
the appropriate travel agent, sends a screen-pop out to that agent, and then
connects the two parties. All of this takes about 200 milliseconds.”
Additionally, customers can communicate with agents by whichever method they
prefer, says Nicoletti, because all contacts, including faxes and e-mail, come
into a universal MS Exchange inbox. Every incoming PSTN call is converted to
VoIP, then goes through the same databases/switches/routing/screen-pops.
Before live contact was installed, ByeByeNOW's
CTO says, over 90 percent of the firm's customer contacts came in via toll-free
phone. Contact statistics for the latest week available indicate a breakdown of
roughly 50 percent phone, 40 percent chat, and 10 percent VoIP, with
video-teleconferencing accounting for under 1 percent. “We're getting a lot more
chat and VoIP than I initially thought we would,” says Nicoletti. “VoIP quality
is usually pretty good, but it still depends on what kind of connection the
customer has to the 'net. You never really know what you're going to get, but
it's working better than we anticipated.” Expect the use of VoIP to become much
more prevalent, predicts Nicoletti, as better compression and more broadband
connections become available, resulting in improved sound quality.
As for how well live contact is working for
them, he admits, “We were lucky. We started off with a clean slate: no legacy
apps. But we knew exactly what we wanted, and put together an RFP nearly 400
pages long. All of the other major providers we contacted told us we were crazy!
So when CosmoCom said they could provide everything on our list, the decision
was a no-brainer.” Nicoletti believes ByeByeNOW has the largest distributed
video teleconferencing call center in existence. By the end of the year, he
expects “we'll have between 2,000 and 3,000 agents, at all our franchise
locations, fully connected by video conferencing.”
IBM: Lightning-fast Callback
When IBM Corp decided to bring web
marketing and call center strategy together to create a seamless experience for
customers, it meant a combination of worldwide organizations—the web (IBM.com)
and call center (Shop IBM) organizations—and their technological
infrastructures. The concept, in fact, was customer-driven: IBM found that
customers didn't want to have to go through a VRU to reach an expert. Research
also showed that over 70 percent of customers wanted some kind of personal
contact before they would purchase on the web. As a result, IBM.com visitors who
hit “Call Me” or “Text Chat” can now interact live with an agent, within a
minute, and ask all the product questions they desire. What's more, because the
callback system is so tightly integrated with IBM's technical infrastructure,
callbacks are extremely fast. “So fast, in fact,” says Dave Ball, Web/Teleweb
exec for IBM.com Americas, “we had to institute a delay! Customers were actually
frightened by how quickly the phone rang after they clicked on 'Call Me.' ”
“Call Me” was instituted in Fall '99, reports
Ball; text chat was introduced before Christmas. Surveys currently being
conducted at the conclusion of callback and text chat web interactions reveal
that 60 percent of customers are either “very satisfied” or “delighted” with
these transactions. In fact, he says, customer feedback has been extremely
positive. One customer put it succinctly: “This is the best web experience I've
ever had in my life.” In addition, says Ball, other than product information,
agents can gauge customer interest in an extended warranty, then push a
functional warranty page and add it to the customer's shopping cart. Other
services are available, too.
“And we're
looking at VoIP,” he reports, “but VoIP quality is really dependent on the
customer's equipment. And there are security issues. A live VoIP connection goes
beyond mere web functionality; it creates a pipeline that goes through
firewalls, and existing capabilities don't stop someone from getting into hard
drives. We're very security conscious, so this is an area we really have to
think about. VoIP is doable today, but everyone seems to think it's still a year
or two away in a consumer environment—and that's also what everyone thought last
year.”
The Freedom Group: VoIP Now
“Because of the need to download
applets, VoIP is still an emerging technology,” says Layton Olson, Business
Development manager of Iowa-based solutions/services provider The Freedom Group.
“It's a technology that requires more of a 'static' communications
environment—multiple contacts with the same customers. But that's perfect for
us! We have numerous repeat contacts over the course of a year.” The company
decided the time was ripe to forge ahead with their VoIP implementation, which
is currently underway. With over 2,500 insurance company clients and Fortune
1,000-class accounts utilizing the firm's financial compliance, regulation
reporting, and policy/claims-administration systems, Freedom Group must back up
its solutions with business-critical support. So, in mid-January, the firm
implemented web-based support for its compliance-reporting software. According
to Olson, the web implementation coincided with a six-week window, during which
the firm takes 60 percent of its support calls for the year—a period leading up
to the March 1 reporting deadline imposed by the National Association of
Insurance Commissioners. And a slight majority—51 percent—of those contacts went
through Freedom Group's website on its very first time out. Now, with the
implementation of Atinav (New York, NY) technology for VoIP, live text chat, and
interactive forms, Olson anticipates moving even more clients away from analog
calls—and with good reason: “One of the primary factors in our choice of
Atinav,” says Olson, “is that they not only offer a choice of customer contact
technologies, but also make it simple to integrate all of these into a single
solution. This allows all customer contacts to be archived, incorporated into
our knowledgebase, and utilized by other customers.”
SmarterKids.com: Why Live Chat?
“In a world where time is limited,
live communication gives customers immediate results,” says Jennifer Aprile,
spokesperson for Needham, MA-based SmarterKids.com, an online educational
product store for parents with children up to age 14. She adds: “We've offered
live text chat since December '99. And that's because any time a CSR has direct
contact with a customer, we see an opportunity to cross-sell and upsell and a
chance to drive up revenue.” An analog callback option was added to the live
chat capability in March, and both options allow for page-pushing and
collaboration, reports Aprile. Utilizing Cisco Systems' (San Jose) technology
(offered on the Smarterkids.com website under the name SmarterTalk) these
methods fit well with the company's emphasis on expert product recommendations
and advice, she adds. And, while overall contact volume has increased since the
introduction of chat and web callback, toll-free phone and e-mail volume have
decreased slightly. According to Aprile, surveys conducted by SmarterKids.com
(as well as other customer feedback) show that their customers get the most
satisfaction from live contact. Calls, callback requests, and chat have been
unified through the use of Cisco's Media Blender and Lucent's Definity phone
switch; customers who choose any one of the above contact methods are directed
to the appropriate agents via skills-based routing. What's more, says Aprile,
all of SmarterKids' agents have now been universally trained to communicate with
customers through any means. The company is presently evaluating VoIP, and will
review other new technologies for possible implementation, as they emerge. “Our
aim,” she notes, “is to ease the contact process for our customers.”
Tarsco: Responsiveness Rules
“Live contact makes all the
difference in the world,” says Scot Gardner, president of Tarsco Technologies,
an ISP startup in Waynesboro, PA, providing webhosting and eCommerce services.
In fact, Gardner is so enamored of live web contact that he is currently
utilizing three different vendors for this technology. “Although it provides
live chat, we basically use HumanClick (Oakland, CA) as a tracking program; it
lets us know when someone is visiting the website, and tracks what pages are
being visited. When customers request a chat session, we can initiate it without
any applet download on the customer side. But we also use Firetalk (San
Francisco), which I like because it allows us to lead customers on a virtual
tour of various sites, and talk to them at the same time, using VoIP. Though
customers must download an applet and the Firetalk program to use either chat or
VoIP, it's a one-time download, after which it just pops up automatically.” Yet
a third live contact method is offered via a “PhoneButton” provided through the
VocalCommerce service of VocalScape (Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada). This
downloads a Java applet, allowing customers to initiate a voice-over-internet
call through the site. The applet then dials Tarsco's number, and the contact is
completed as an analog call on the internet service provider's end. According to
Gardner, the fact that he has these live contact methods available has been a
real differentiator for Tarsco; customers remark that other internet service
providers they've tried often didn't respond to messages or e-mail for 24 hours.
EBeauty: Elegant Live Chat
“We anticipate a 10 to 20 percent
increase in purchasing volume as a result of having our customer care associates
support a selling model through live chat,” says Julie Khalifeh, co-CEO of
EBeauty. A B2B eCommerce company for the beauty industry, EBeauty is based in
Washington, DC and New York City, and provides multiple services to beauty
retailers, including product information and advice. Khalifeh would like to
drive the majority of customer interactions to the Ebeauty.com website, whether
they're requests for customer care support or “hand-holding” technical support.
“We believe customer care and service are vital to ensuring growth in the
eBusiness sector,” she says; “Return on investment will come in multiple ways;
among them, by increasing customer retention and loyalty.” Using Cisco Systems'
Customer Interaction Suite, the company, which was founded in August '99, has
been offering live chat since May of this year. In July, web collaboration was
added, along with analog callback. Khalifeh says Ebeauty has been actively
reviewing VoIP options, and plans to introduce voice over the web no later than
the beginning of next year. “It's extremely important,” she states emphatically.
“It is going to make an enormous difference to have voice contact available
directly through our website, without the need for a second phone line.”
1-800-FLOWERS: Blossoming with Chat
“We were the first company to
use live chat for customer service,” boasts Ken Young, director of
Communications for Westbury, NY-based 1-800-FLOWERS (and its 1800flowers.com
website). “We started in the fall of '98, utilizing eShare Communications
(Norcross, GA) technology.” According to Young, the well-known phone- and
web-based retail florist does the majority of its business in same-day and
next-day gift orders. But those orders tend to be advice-intensive, with
gift-givers seeking descriptions and suggestions along with pricing and delivery
options. Young continues, “Though a large part of our business still comes in
via the 800 number, there are growing numbers of customers committed to using
the computer. We realized that, despite the fact we were answering customer
e-mail inquiries within an hour or two (far quicker than most companies), it
still wasn't good enough. By that time, a customer with a product or delivery
question could have left the office and gone home, or turned off the computer
and gone to bed. We knew we were losing opportunities with those people. The
only solution was to answer their questions immediately.”
Today, in non-holiday periods, the
1-800-FLOWERS contact center engages in from 300 to 500 chat sessions a day, and
may complete over 2,200 chats daily, during a holiday period. Each chat session
lasts an average of seven to 10 minutes, with agents able to handle up to four
simultaneously. “We've reduced e-mail by as much as 50 percent,” says Young.
“Now we look for different skill sets in our agents. We try to crosstrain them
so they can bounce back and forth between phone and chat, but they are
specifically assigned to do one or the other at a time.” 1-800-FLOWERS is also
using VoIP now, says Young, but mainly for international calls. “It's cheaper
than long distance. We have the technology, and we're ready to use it, but most
of our customers are not.” In a business where customer service equals sales,
“Our 'gut,' ” Young notes, “is that live contact opens the door to more sales.”
Bowstreet: Don't call us, we'll call you
“We don't have a 'Call
Me' button, although we're looking at the possibility of introducing one down
the road,” notes Anthony Fiorot, director of Customer Service for Bowstreet, a
Portsmouth, NH-based provider of XML information for the B2B marketplace.
“Currently, we're using live chat as a way to proactively introduce ourselves to
customers without being intrusive. Our site isn't what you'd call 'high-volume';
we deal with a very select group of high-quality customers, mostly Fortune 500
companies looking to build business websites. They want to learn more about our
product and about implementing our solutions and technology.”
Bowstreet began testing chat from Talisma
(Kirkland, WA) in March, and went live with it by April 15. Talisma now
provides, from its customer interaction center in Bangalore, India, both the
chat technology, and the manpower to handle chat sessions and e-mail. Bowstreet
handles voice interactions internally, and backs up e-mail and chat. “On
average, we're fielding a couple hundred transactions a week,” Fiorot reports.
“There are peaks and valleys: sometimes only 20 to 30 interactions, sometimes
400 to 500. But we're able to be very flexible, using Talisma's resources to
provide customer technical support.”
“VoIP is
definitely going to happen soon,” predicts Fiorot. “We use it now as an internal
resource between India and us. The quality has picked up (It's like being right
here on a speakerphone!), so now we're going to push toward it rather quickly;
I'd say within the next 12 months. It's a great technology, which helps to keep
costs down. While inbound 800-number calls are 8 to 10 cents a minute, you can
escalate from chat to VoIP without any cost increase.”
Venus Swimwear: Chat's a Perfect Fit
The busiest time for a
swimwear retailer is Fourth of July weekend, so what better time for Venus
Swimwear—a Jacksonville, FL manufacturer, retailer, and wholesaler of junior
swimwear—to introduce live chat to its website? Since this year's Independence
Day, visitors to venusswimwear.com's online catalog have been able to click on a
“Venus Live” button, and connect with service reps who offer advice and push
pages explaining sizing, fabrics, and more. According to Paula Harrington,
director of Operations, the chat feature (from Seattle's InstantService.com) has
not yet been promoted. Venus gradually phased in availability, starting with 8
am to 3 pm EST, then extended that to 8 to 5. They're currently staffing live
chat 8 to 8. “Initially, the chat sessions were longer than our previous average
talk time,” reports Harrington. “But they've gradually decreased as our reps
(who were really order-processing people) have gotten used to the system, and as
we've added to the library of pages they can push to customers. We expect live
chat to eventually decrease the total number of calls to our 800 number.”
Plans for the immediate future, says
Harrington, include announcing “Venus Live” on the site's “What's New” page, and
launching live chat on the company's two other websites. “We've also looked into
VoIP,” says Harrington. “A lot of telcos have been offering it recently, but
we've chosen not to do it. I don't see a real need for it right now. Instead of
being among those 'testing it out,' we prefer to do what we can excel at. But
we'll reconsider VoIP over the next two to three years.”
Jeff Morris (jeff_morris@intertec.com) is senior editor of Customer Support Management magazine.
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