September 2000

BY WILLIAM DURR, ROCKWELL ELECTRONIC COMMERCE

Putting up a Web site with interesting content and an interactive design increases the likelihood that a Web surfer will visit your site. That's step one. But how do you ensure that when the surfer leaves your site, you have something to show for his or her visit and your expense? The Web has already undergone several generations of evolution. Sites have moved from essentially passive brochures to online interactive experiences and, more recently, to channels for commerce. Many studies have been conducted in this area. In a 1999 study, Jupiter Communications reported that online shopping revenue is expected to grow to $41.1 billion by 2002. The most recent Christmas buying season demonstrated that Web sites that had no provision for real-time customer service were far less successful in generating e-commerce revenue. Studies have shown that fully 90 percent of online customers prefer human interaction. Additionally, nearly 50 percent of online shoppers visit multiple sites before making a purchase. A recent Yankelovich study revealed that 63 percent of online shoppers said they did not finish a transaction because they could not find the information they needed.

Online shopping is not the only area that firms should be concerned about. Many consumers have already bought your product or service and are using your Web site for customer service and support. Your ability to provide a satisfying experience for these customers is the key to long-term retention and growth. Satisfied customers tend to buy more and tell others about their experiences, creating the positive "buzz" that every company hopes to generate in their marketplace.

So, the next phase of e-commerce evolution must involve the venerable call center. You remember the call center? It's that technology that deals with voice calls. It involves process, workflow and people. Sometimes, it involves lots of people. They speak with customers and prospects in a one-to-one interaction. If the call center agent has the right supporting infrastructure, the right training and is empowered by management, magic happens during that one-to-one conversation. This is where customer relations are created and where they flourish. If done incorrectly, it can be the place in which customer relationships crash and burn. What is the state-of-the art in customer contact? What is achievable? What can be implemented today?

At the heart of the solution lies the knowledge that voice calling through the public switched network is going to be around for a very long time. Rumors of its demise at the hands of the Internet are somewhat premature. The modern call center, now morphing into a multimedia customer contact center, is ideally suited to the operational challenges associated with handling volumes of telephone calls. The ACD voice server permits users to define transaction proc-essing rules that align with business strategies. The transaction processing engine has a graphical front-end where users can sketch transaction workflows to connected answer resources. Skills-based routing capabilities come into play as answer specialization inevitably sets in. Comprehensive real-time and historical reporting become increasingly important as contact center management teams rely upon them to achieve performance goals.

Because call centers have become so skillful at successfully handling volumes of faceless interactions with customers and prospects, attention is being focused upon them to become involved with transactions over the Internet. There are two general classes of Internet-related transactions that are making an impact upon call centers today: Web page support and e-mail handling.

As evidenced by studies cited earlier, most people visiting your Web site leave without engaging in a transaction. The overwhelming reason is that there was no provision for real-time assistance. The technologies that enable real-time Web assistance include:

1. Callback buttons,
2. Text chat,
3. Voice over IP,
4. Video over IP.

This list is organized along increasing user preference and increased bandwidth requirements. In other words, voice and video over the Internet are vastly preferred by Web surfers over callback buttons and text chat. However, the bandwidth requirements for voice and video over the Web preclude generalized use. There are two choke points involved. While the bandwidth of the public Internet network is growing tremendously, there are too many hops and too much delay in the transmission of the typical Internet packet to convey voice and video with anywhere near acceptable quality. The final mile into the consumer's home is the second choke point. Until digital subscriber line (DSL) or cable modems proliferate, relatively slow data rates into the home limit Web support to callback buttons and text chat. Having said that, the techniques at hand can go a long way to help ensure that visitors to your site are offered the customer support so essential to the buying process.

In a typical implementation, the Web surfer visits your site and is guided to products or services of interest. Prominently displayed on each Web page is a "contact us" button. Clicking on that button offers the browsing customer the opportunity to arrange for a later callback or a real-time chat session. The callback button dialog box usually asks the customer to enter his or her name, telephone number and the desired time of day for the callback. To make the selections as simple as possible, the Web page usually offers a drop-down box of choices ranging from "right now" to some number of minutes or hours later. Better designs also allow for a future day and time to be selected. The information entered into the Web page is communicated to the ACD voice server in the call center, where dialing software triggers the telephone call at the appropriate time and the ACD finds an agent with the right skill set.

In richly featured contact systems, the agent is provided information regarding the "caller's" journey through the firm's Web site. Armed with a so-called "URL history," the agent is better able to assist the customer by virtue of understanding what pages have already been viewed.

The problem with callback buttons is that the interaction is not in real-time. The defining term summarizes the issue: callback. The action is after the fact. The real problem lies in the fact that second telephone line penetration into American households hovers around 25 percent. The majority of households have only one telephone line. When it is used for Web browsing, it is unavailable for voice callbacks. As a result, it is problematic whether the Web surfer will respond to a callback with the same verve when compared to a more real-time response.

This issue gives rise to text chat. Text chat does not require significant bandwidth and yet affords the advantage of real-time responsiveness. In this instance, the Web browser clicks the "contact me" button and the Web site downloads a very small Java applet that enables the browser software (typically Netscape or Internet Explorer) to open a text chat window. Once established, the text chat window permits the Web surfer to engage in a real-time typed dialog with a call center agent. In better implementations, the agent has a set of tools to enhance the text chat communications capabilities. Because text chat is entirely reliant upon typed exchanges, better systems provide the agent with so-called "canned" greetings and frequently used responses. Having an ample array of such canned statements makes the agent's life easier by freeing him or her from typing every letter of every reply. With these kinds of aids, some agents are easily capable of handling multiple, independent text chat sessions at the same time. What this may do to call center reporting systems remains to be seen. Until now, all call center reporting logic began with the idea that an agent performs work serially, one caller and one transaction at a time.

The problems connected with text chat Web page support are clear. Many people are not comfortable with the spelling and syntax requirements associated with text chat. These worries make it less likely that they will engage in a text chat session. There is evidence that this issue is age-oriented. It is thought that younger people, brought up in a text chat world, will find this form of real-time communication perfectly acceptable and, perhaps, even preferable.

Turning a browser into a buyer by using real-time support tools is an important step. But we learned long ago that to keep customers buying your products and services, a firm has to provide excellent ongoing service. Once a prospective customer actually buys something, service and support issues take on a different nature. The real-time requirement for support is less important. Typically, the customer has a question and simply requires an answer. Nonspecific e-mail messages are the perfect format for these kinds of transactional exchanges. Nonspecific e-mail messages are usually addressed to the Webmaster or departmental function at the enterprise. At the bottom of the Web page, in small font, can be found an invitation to send comments or questions. Clicking that button either brings up a generalized e-mail client or, in better implementations, a message form. Message forms yield better results than free-form e-mail messages because the form helps ensure that all pertinent and necessary information is requested. In free-form messages, critical information is often missing or is difficult to decipher.

Handling nonspecific e-mail messages is a growing problem for many companies. Various studies reveal that the majority of such messages go unanswered. These messages can be handled successfully inside an appropriately equipped contact center. A good first step provides for an automated acknowledgment of the initial e-mail message. The e-mail system sends a canned reply so the sender can know for sure that the company successfully received the e-mail. The canned reply also informs the message sender as to when he or she can expect the specific reply to the query. The routing rules engine that handles voice calls to agents is extended to cover the delivery of e-mail messages to qualified agents. This is simply another skill element that contact center management needs to assess on an agent-by-agent basis. Operationalized, agents should have access to standardized replies to frequently asked questions in a fashion similar to the tools necessary for dealing with text chat sessions.

As the volume of e-mail messages rises, firms should look toward the capabilities of e-mail management systems. These systems "read" the incoming e-mail message and compare words and phrases in the message with the contents of a customized diction-ary created through the joint efforts of the vendor and the firm using the system. If the e-mail management system finds a high correlation between the contents of the message and the custom dictionary, the system has a very high probability of determining which canned reply fits the request and sends it. If the correlation between the dictionary and message contents is not high enough, likely replies to the message are assembled and routed to a human agent, who can then determine which, if any, of the canned replies satisfies the message query. Conceptually, e-mail management systems can be thought of as an IVR-like approach to handling e-mail messages. Simple messages, like simple telephone calls, should be handled by automated answer resources.

The film "Field Of Dreams" featured the message, "If you build it, they will come." Today, that same message can be applied to your Web site. Just build it. They will come. However, if you want them to buy something or return to the site time after time, you must provide the service and support they have come to expect.

Bill Durr is director of Field Marketing for Rockwell Electronic Commerce and is the author of Building A World-Class Inbound Call Center.

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