January 1999

BY NADJI TEHRANI,
EDITOR IN CHIEF, EXECUTIVE GROUP PUBLISHER

Throughout the last 17 years, we have kept you abreast of the changes that have impacted your business and your contact point with your customers: your call center. We have seen call centers go from completely manual systems with agents using 3x5 cards and dialing manually from phone books through the automation of the dialing process with predictive dialers, the advances in call routing brought about by automatic call distributors to the process changes ushered in by data mining and entrprisewide customer interaction systems. Indeed, any business that is prospering today has in place a call center and uses the techniques, hardware and software we have featured throughout the past 17 years of covering the changing face of electronic marketing and communications. The advent of computer-telephony integration and the inception and use of the Internet for business transactions has brought to fruition the vision I had in 1982 of electronic marketing and communications, which has taken on the sobriquet of e-commerce.

And e-commerce has caught on in a big way. The growth estimates on e-commerce point to staggering numbers in just a few years. A report by Forrester Research has shown that average online spending per U.S. household in 1998 was $899, but it is predicted to reach $2,678 per household by 2003. I've seen other predictions that by 2002 we may see upwards of 350 billion dollars in trade on the Web. The stock market has certainly taken the hint and has lifted (sometimes irrationally) the Web stocks sky-high. If you thought that e-commerce was the proverbial pie in the sky, think again. E-commerce is in fact a tangible and dynamic field proving its worth and value every day. Major commerce sites such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, eBay, Dell and Compaq are reporting accelerated revenue increases and consumers seem to show an unsatiated appetite to get even more from the online realm. With the increase in e-commerce (as more browsers turn into shoppers) comes the growing pains of managing all aspects of the e-commerce site. For these predictions to come true, companies must remember that the call center is and will continue to be the heart and soul of e-commerce.

The call center is at the heart of e-commerce because it is in the call center that your company is in one-to-one contact with your customers. The call center is the soul of e-commerce because it is where you provide your customers with the human touch of live agents. Whether it is through an 800 number for a help desk, answering an e-mail, talking with customers in an online chatroom or answering a Web "Call Me" button, it is your call center that gives you the opportunity to create customer loyalty.

As we all know, companies live or die by creating repeat business. Call centers are essential to generating customer loyalty because they provide the human touch that can put customers' buying fears to rest, ease customers' frustrations and guide them through a difficult software installation on a home computer or gently guide them into a cross-sell or upsell. While the Internet is a wonderful tool for reaching more potential customers, it can also be a great equalizer - the site of your smallest competitor, who may not even be on your radar yet, may have the same look and feel as that multimillion-dollar behemoth you see as your main competition. And that small but smart company that you are not even aware of today may be siphoning off much of your business tomorrow because they are using their call center in conjunction with their Web presence to create a loyal clientele.

And how would they go about doing this? One way would be that they had the foresight to capture a phone number for anyone ordering a product through their Web site and then use the call center to place a call to the customer to check they received the product they ordered and was it satisfactory and could they interest them in another product that will enhance the one the customer just purchased. This will generate a sense in the customer that this company cares about me enough to give me a call just to see if their product is what I wanted and if it is working the way I had anticipated. This example follows the simple principle that we have been espousing for years - that inbound feeds outbound. What I mean by this, is that if you do a proper job of data mining, you determine the people who are the proper prospective buyers. You can use this highly targeted list for cross-selling, upselling and parallel selling for variations of the product they bought: this is the most efective way to telemarket and build your business. Ordering through a Web site is analogous to picking up a phone and calling an 800 number to order a product. In both cases, you should follow up with your customer as a courtesy. That courtesy call will engender a good impression in that customer and they will remember that your company took the time to call them and check on their satisfaction with your product, so that the next time they have to buy one of the products you offer, they will remember the good service they received from your company and buy your product instead of that of your competitor.

Differentiate Your Company
As I stated in my November 1998 "Publisher's Outlook," no matter how good of a product or service you have, there will be no long-term benefit to your company if you do not differentiate your company from your competitors. Perhaps the most important criteria in the success of an e-commerce site is the level of customer service that is extended to the shoppers, and that is where the modern call center enters the picture. If your site is easy to navigate through and provides the opportunity to interact with a live agent through either a "Call Me" button, live chat or an easy-to-find phone number, you are on your way.

More than any other time in history, online customers may need to be assisted in finding your site, searching for items, making payments, and understanding the site's terms. This is especially true as e-commerce begins to take shape and many beginners flock to these sites.

Enter the cyber call center. With agents spread over time and geographic zones, working from home or office, they must be equipped with the right tools and the right knowledge to help customers with any questions or problems they may have, on or off-line. Some of these tools include:

• A PC with fast and slow Internet connections and multiple browsers and versions,
• Voice and video capabilities,
• Back-end access to appropriate databases and forms,
• Application sharing tools to take over customer's browser and provide guidance, and, of course,
• The traditional phone and fax.

The virtual (or cyber) call center will contain virtual pools with agents signing in and out at all times providing around-the-clock support. Intelligent skills and language-based routing will assure that customers will always connect to the most appropriate agent, and the agent will be informed of all customer data prior to the first hello. Managing and supervising such call centers will also require a special set of tools and capabilities and a shift from the current paradigms where the call center is a physical room with agents answering or making calls.

We are on the brink of a marketing revolution and it's time to stake out your claim on the new frontier. To ensure the future profitability of your business, make sure you differentiate your company by making your call center the heart and soul of your e-commerce solution.

Sincerely,

Nadji Tehrani
Executive Group Publisher
Editor-In-Chief
ntehrani@tmcnet.com

BY MARC ROBINS,
TMC ASSOCIATE GROUP PUBLISHER

As traditional retailers, direct mail companies and the rest of the business world rush their "storefronts" to the Web in hopes of capturing additional revenues from surfers ready and willing to buy online, recent attempts by the editors of this magazine to buy online highlighted some glaring problems on the road to e-commerce success. Why harp on such problems? Because the companies that tackle these problems early during this initial e-commerce learning period will end up with the lion's share of business from the online world.

One of the most important issues surrounding e-commerce today is the necessity of providing high-quality customer service. Many new e-commerce entrants come to the game unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with the reality of doing business in general - let alone doing it online. Just because e-commerce employs "virtual" - and not brick and mortar or paper-based - storefronts and customer contact is purely electronic in nature, it doesn't mean that customer service can be conducted as an afterthought. It must be an intrinsic part of the venture from the moment the Web server goes live, with procedures and processes designed to provide the highest quality of service possible.

After a series of attempts to use the Web for holiday shopping, a number of suggested e-commerce "Best Practices" emerged:

1. Think Like Your Customer. When you are in the process of designing your shiny new Web storefront, start thinking like your typical customer who is visiting the site for the first time. Design the site's navigation with convenience and ease-of-use in mind: Does it take one or two mouse clicks to find information on products or twelve? Is the order form and transaction process customer-friendly or will it scare away serious buyers? Does the content and presentation show the products in the best possible light or does the site create perceptions of bad taste and poor quality? Do you provide an easy and effective way for visitors to reach your company and receive a prompt reply to e-mail or speak to a live person, or are you just smoke and mirrors?

2. Plan For 5 To 10 Times The Average Volume Of Visitors. It's the online analogy to a busy signal at the end of a phone line: Nothing is more frustrating to a Web-surfing customer than not being able to access a Web site due to server overload, server resets, inadequate testing or lack of redundancy. Several attempts to log onto the Web sites of companies that will remain nameless generated standard 403.9 error browser messages, error messages caused by SQL errors resulting from null data sets, and a host of other problems. Some of the sites that exhibited these problems were from companies that had recently completed IPOs and are worth billions of dollars. There is no excuse for poor planning! When building your online storefront's Web-based infrastructure, build under the assumption of high volumes - at least 5 to 10 times the average number of "hits," or visits, from customers. This way, your site will never be swamped by the deluge of customers you dream of.

3. Test, Retest And Test Again. In others words, instill quality assurance procedures with your software engineers and your entire website staff. Test and retest every link on every page. And when nifty features are added to the Web site, test the page offline before any code is posted to the live Web server. Access the site remotely while it is still "offline" to ferret out bugs and server errors. This way you'll avoid downtime and the bugs that might prevent a serious buyer from completing a transaction, and generate confidence in your online brand to boot!

4. Provide Flawless Customer Service. If your current customer service operation provides various tiers of service, such as standard and premium, add yet another tier - Platinum Service - to the top for the precious customer who has decided to do business with you on the Web. Treat all complaints as if they were from your most important customer - provide immediate credit on returns, and put the customer first at all times. This course of action will do more to instill deep and abiding customer loyalty than any price discount ever could.

5. Your Call Center Takes Center Stage. Your existing call center, in light of the above, takes on an added importance. Rather than being relegated to the back stage, your call center agents and operation are essential factors in the e-commerce equation. New technology is available that allows you to Web-enable your existing call center to allow online customers to perform a live "chat" via text with customer service reps. Software that enables "Callback Buttons" allows surfers to request a return phone call from an agent. Internet telephony functions are being perfected that will allow an online customer to initiate a live, two-way voice conversation with your call center staff.

6. People Buy From People. The moral of the story? After all the technology, the glitz surrounding bleeding edge Web-based applications, the initial rush from conducting an online purchase, in the end, people buy from people. Never, ever forget it!