The Chatonomics Blog

This is the age of more for less. Or to put it another way, in most business sectors customers expect the quality of service and products to get better and better over time. What they don’t expect, however, is that the improvement will be funded by a sharp increase in costs.

So here’s the conundrum. Even at a time of moderate inflation most companies see their costs rising but don’t necessarily want to pass the increase onto customers. So how do you improve service without undermining your own competitiveness?

And for consumer-facing businesses it’s a dilemma that becomes ever-more acute as e-commerce volumes rise. In the world of bricks and mortar, loyalty is partly based on the strength of a particular brand and relationships built up over time between customers and the merchant. But it’s also based to some extent on proximity. If you live in a town where you have a Boots, Marks and Spencer or John Lewis, that’s where you shop.

On the web, that doesn’t apply. Customers can buy goods from any competitor, regardless of location. Repeat business depends on the whole value proposition, from price, through fulfilment to after-sales service.

Which brings us back to that opening question. How do you offer great service while remaining competitive? Continue reading

Here’s a conundrum. Every year we see both increases in the volume and value of online sales, a trend that shows no sign of slowing. Now that’s great news for online retailers but there is at least one fly in the ointment. As overall sales have risen, average conversion rates have been falling.

According to a report by RedEye and eConsultancy, average conversion rates stood at about 3.8% in 2012 falling from a peak of more than 8.0% over a period when the value of e-commerce sales had risen from £30.2bn to £60.bn.

So how can this be?

Well arguably the decline in conversion rates – which vary significantly from sector to sector and from retailer to retailer – is a symptom of the success of e-commerce. Five or six years ago, when volumes and revenues were lower than they are today, consumers saw the internet as a purchasing channel for specific classes of goods. So they would decide on a product, go to a trusted site and make a purchase.

Today the web – traditional and mobile – has emerged as a primary shopping channel rather than simply a convenient way to purchase goods. Customers enjoy the experience of internet shopping and their journey can take them from search engines, price comparison sites and social media. Continue reading

Special offers. New product information. Advice on complementary items. As customers move through your website there are many opportunities to serve up additional information. And when done well it can drive sales by pointing the consumer in the direction of the best deals and most appropriate products.

But this kind of messaging shouldn’t be one size fits all. Once you understand the customer, you can serve up content that is both relevant and meaningful. That might be a discount voucher, information about delivery options on a particular item or examples of alternative products that other customers have been buying. Indeed anything that will either incentivise a sale or help the customer to make an informed decision.

Traditionally, e-retailers have personalised the information on their sites by serving information based on a returning customer’s previous purchasing or browsing history. So if a customer returning to a bookshop has a long history of buying detective novels, then the personalised home page might well feature the latest Ian Rankin or Jo Nesbo in a prominent position, rather than a random selection of fiction, biography and self-help. Continue reading

“Wouldn’t it be great if….”

It’s the rhetorical question that has prompted the launch of countless businesses and product development programmes. Somewhere an entrepreneur recognises a problem and subsequently hits on a solution. “OK we have a problem, wouldn’t it be great if we could do this to solve it.”

To be honest, it’s a question that most of us probably ask ourselves from time to time. It’s a question that drives innovation.

You can certainly see live engagement in those terms. Businesses that trade online know all about the problems associated with the self-service model. A customer might spend half an hour on the site but suddenly bail out, despite having demonstrated a huge amount of interest in the products on offer. And even more frustratingly, a customer might put one or more items into a shopping cart but then abandon the process before completion. So wouldn’t it be great if you could analyse the behaviour of customers, identify points on their journey when they’re likely to leave the site and pro-actively offer help and advice before they do? It was a question asked and answered by LivePerson.

LivePerson has a growing number of tools that enable online businesses to engage pro-actively with customers. These include the behavioural analysis software that underpin the system through to chat, mobile chat, telephone call-back, video chat and content serving tools that allow agents to communicate directly with their customers. Continue reading

You have a message that you’d like to get out to your customers so you post information on Facebook. Before long your post has been commented on, clicked ‘liked’ or ‘shared’ and your carefully honed marketing communication has been seen by hundreds of thousands possible customers. It’s gone viral. Viral is good.

But here’s another scenario. A customer posts a complaint on the Facebook page you’ve set up as a service hub. For whatever reason the response is slow so the customer posts another message – this time just a little angrier. Once again the magic of Facebook kicks in. The messages are shared, commented upon and seen by thousands of friends and friends of friends. A simple complaint has turned into a public relations fire fight. Viral is bad.

It’s the transparency of the platform that can cause problems. When a customer rings a call centre or sends an e-mail to query a bill or complain about a product, the engagement is taking place in a private space away from the public gaze. When the same query or complaint is posted on a Facebook page the whole world (or at least a significant part of it) can see.

For instance, earlier this year Virgin Media sent a bill to a customer who had recently died. These mistakes happen – no system is perfect – and usually the matter is dealt with discreetly. In this case, however, a family member posted a photograph of the bill – including a fine for late payment on the company’s Facebook page. According to BBC news, within a few days it had been seen by 53,000 people. Continue reading

Success in business is often all about partnerships, with two or more parties working together to deliver on an agreed outcome.

And that’s particularly true in the hugely important field of customer service. While many companies choose to handle their customer service in-house, many others opt to outsource contact centre operations to a trusted partner. Potentially there are many advantages to this. Businesses offering contact centre services typically offer trained staff, purpose built facilities, the necessary telecoms infrastructure and the ability to scale their operations up and down, depending on the requirements of the client. And of course, for the outsource company, running contact centres is a core skill. They can bring years of expertise to bear.

Technology partnerships are also important. In a world of multi-channel selling, the systems you have in place to capture customer information and deal with inquiries play an absolutely vital role in building and maintaining the reputation of the brand while also driving sales.

The experience of British Telecom (BT) provides a textbook example of how such partnerships can work in practice.

The BT.com website sells a broad range of products and packages, from line rental and calling plans through to broadband internet and TV services. As these services can be bundled together there are a considerable number of options facing potential customers. And while the website was performing well, BT felt that improvements could be made. Continue reading

If the first law of marketing is “fish where the fish are”, the second is probably “segment those fish and focus your messaging and resources on those that are most likely to buy your products.”

The question is how do you know who your hot leads are? The answer, of course, lies in clever use of data.

Data lies at the heart of successful internet marketing. Once upon a time, marketing to target consumers was essentially a broad brush stroke affair. You could time your TV ads to hit certain demographics, or place displays in specialist magazines. This took you – more or less – to where your fish were swimming. What you couldn’t necessarily do was drill down to the level of the individual. At least ,not until that individual had at least made a purchase.

Now it’s a very different story. We all generate a huge amount of data when we log on. Smart marketers use that data not only to serve ads and marketing messages but also to provide a better and more tailored service to the consumer.

That last point is the principle that underpins intelligent live engagement.

The starting point is usually behavioural analytics. Customers are tracked as they move through a website and their behaviour monitored . This ‘live’ analysis can tell you a lot. It can pinpoint hot leads by identifying consumers with a real interest in a certain class of product. It can identify high value customers (those searching the big ticket items). And it can flag up the signs of stress or confusion that can lead to the customer bailing out. In all these scenarios – and more besides – the next stage is an intervention, often by pro-actively inviting the customer to chat to an agent. Continue reading

Marketing strategies are seldom static. They evolve according to the requirements of the business and the changing relationship with the customer. Live engagement strategies are no exception. A company that adopts an analytics-driven engagement solution to address a particular issue today might have a completely different set of goals in a year’s time. Thus, it’s important to remember that the way you use chat – or indeed telephone callback, video chat or bespoke content – should be reviewed regularly to ensure it is fully aligned with the business needs.

Take the example of broadcaster and telecoms provider BSkyB. The company began as a broadcaster but today, of course, it also offers broadband internet and phone services. When BSkyB initially deployed chat, the aim was to identify customers who were showing signs of stress on the journey through the site.

This is the starting point for many businesses adopting live engagement for the first time. On any site – regardless of how well designed – there will always be customers who need help. Sometimes it’s because the information available isn’t quite enough to satisfy the customer’s requirements. Sometimes the customer can’t find the product that he or she is looking for. It may be that the product options are confusing. Continue reading

CRM (customer relationship management) systems lie at the heart of most sales and service operations. Whether a customer calls to query a bill, buy a product, or seek advice on an item already purchased, it’s the CRM system that captures the call and provides the agent with information on previous engagements. A good CRM strategy will provide a genuinely 360 degree view of the customer by pulling together information from all the points of contact. Whenever you engage with a customer and for whatever reason, there should be a CRM record.

And that certainly applies to contact with the consumer via live engagement channels such as chat and mobile chat.

Think of it this way. The agents who deal with customers each and every working day are very much the eyes and ears of the organisation. For instance, let’s say a customer clicks on a chat button to seek advice on buying a tablet computer. There’s a huge range of devices to choose from in terms of price point, operating system, screen size, processor power, memory and manufacturers, so there will clearly be a lot to talk about. And the chances are the agent will learn a huge amount about the customer. Why does he or she want it – work, play, to pursue a hobby? What is the comfort zone in terms of price? Are there any cross-sell or up-sell opportunities, either now or in the future?

All this provides an immediate opportunity to make a sale. But there’s also a longer-term opportunity to identify leads and maintain contact through other marketing channels such as e-mail. More fundamentally, there’s also an opportunity to build a relationship by capturing the information and using it to provide a better and more tailored service next time the consumer makes contact. Continue reading

Customers are usually impressed and perhaps even delighted when a company demonstrates a willingness to go the extra mile on service. It’s the front line staff that make the difference. The shop assistant who takes the trouble to find out exactly what your requirements are and then guides you to exactly the right product. The customer service agent who moves heaven and earth to get a replacement product delivered to you within twenty four hours. The store manager who helps you carry a large package to your car.

That’s why live engagement has proved to be such an effective tool in the e-commerce marketplace. Put simply, it places the customer in direct contact with frontline staff without any of the hassle normally associated with helplines and e-mail service.

And it has a certain wow factor. Customers who see a chat invite for the first time and click through to an agent are often genuinely surprised that not only is help on hand but also easily accessible and useful.

Live engagement is also non-disruptive. If we take live engagement via chat as an example, any customer using a laptop or a PC will be interacting with the agent in a user-friendly environment. Although the chat window is open the website is clearly visible. Thus the customer can interact with the agent while remaining immersed in the online/shopping experience. Continue reading