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.
Michael Markette is president and CEO of Callbutton,
LLC.
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