Online retailers struggle with a customer service paradox: How do you provide lucrative, personal customer service without inundating the contact center with unwanted calls? While e-mail, self-service and FAQs have long been touted as alternatives to sending customers to the call center, they often frustrate customers and result in lost sales. As one retail executive recently noted in The New York Times, even a world-class e-mail program was still going to be consistently lower in quality and effectiveness than a phone program.
The ability to instantly unite customers with call centers has long been a coveted goal, and retailers now have the technology to easily enable these connections. No longer worried about if they can connect with online customers, companies now must decide when they should make the connection.
The voice channel remains the most effective - although relatively expensive - customer service channel. This is why it's paramount that enterprises ensure call center agents' time is used efficiently. This is where click to call technology can help bridge the gap between low-cost online tools and standard telephone contact. When used strategically, click to call's deployment options and features can help companies optimize their call center operations. Click to call is a flexible technology with a wide array of deployment options:
- Static
- Dynamic/Rules-Based
- Proactive
- Integrated
1) Static Deployments' Ubiquitous Click to Call
Static deployments are part of the most basic click to call strategy. Companies simply paste a few lines of code into their Web site and a click to call button is permanently embedded as an ever-present option for page viewers. Static deployments do not, however, help in qualifying incoming sales leads and are, therefore, the least effective strategy among the four for optimizing call center agent efficiency.
2) Contextual click to call with Rules-Based Deployments
Dynamic or rules-based programs allow enterprises to set specific conditions that must take place before a click to call button is visible to online shoppers. Any number of business rules can be established to prescreen would-be callers. For example, a retailer can decide to show click to call once a site visitor's shopping cart reaches a specific dollar value. Alternatively, click to call may be set for general access during specific hours of operations or according to call center availability. When set to deploy when a customer is presented with an error message, click to call buttons are especially effective at preventing online browsers from abandoning the site.
3) Proactive click to call
Using a secondary click to call function like real-time Web analytics in conjunction with rules-based triggers allow companies to take a proactive approach to their click to call deployment. In this scenario, call center agents can determine if and when to engage customers to deliver a truly customized online shopping experience. With a proactive click to call deployment, agents are not tied to any specific guidelines for customer engagement so they can contact as many online browsers at key points in the sales process as their abilities allow.
So when would a proactive click to call program be preferred to a rules-based one? Three words: Big- ticket items. Let's say that a call center agent sees an online browser bouncing between landing pages that feature expensive, high-definition televisions. Because of the item's complexity and cost, it may prove worthwhile to proactively reach out and ask the browser if they are interested in speaking over the phone to address problems or issues that are causing uncertainty. A short conversation that demystifies a large purchase significantly increases the likelihood customers will make a purchase through your site.
4) Bridging the Web Divide, an Integrated Approach
The final deployment option is click to call's ace in the hole: cross-channel data passing. Cross-channel data passing relays customer information and customers' Web session context to call center agents the moment a click to call button is activated. When integrated with a static, dynamic or proactive deployment, call center agents can target consumers with deals specified to their tastes while providing a seamless customer experience for consumers jumping from the online channel to the voice channel. Gone are the days where customers need to restart the sales process when they move from the Web to the phone.
Although technology has become infinitely more complex in the past few years, the power of voice has remained unchallenged in the customer service industry. A leading online retailer cut an average of 72 seconds from its average call time by harnessing click to call and deploying it strategically throughout its' Web site. Savvy companies that learn how to selectively integrate personal communications will deliver a higher level of customer service and increase sales conversions.
By John Federman, CEO, eStara
September 6, 1:00 Eastern: Contact Center Performance Management Roundtable - The Shift from Efficiency to Effectiveness. Presented by CRMXchange. Join a group of distinguished industry leaders in the theory and practice of contact center performance management as they discuss the critical issues of performance management and the optimization of contact center performance in terms of hardware, software and 'peopleware.'
September 10, 1:00 Eastern: How to Improve Your Forecasts, Your Capacity and Hiring Plans, and Your Budget Planning Process. Presented by Bay Bridge Decision Technologies. This webcast will discuss how improvements in the strategic planning process will yield terrific benefits in reduced center costs, more accurate and plentiful network analysis, optimized just-in-time hiring, and, more importantly, better decision-making.
September 13, 1:00 Eastern: Capturing Real-Time Business Intelligence in Direct Customer Feedback; Closing the Gap between the Contact Center and the Marketing Department. Presented by Island Data. This webcast focuses on how best to use and exploit all of the customer feedback and insights your customers share with you in their online communications. Hear how Microsoft uses customer insight analytics software tools to proactively identify and address operational, product, and PR issues, identify new revenue opportunities and reduce expenses.
September 18, 1:00 Eastern: Workforce Optimization for the Small-to Mid-size Contact Center. Presented by Calabrio. Workforce optimization combines workforce management, quality management, elearning and some level of performance management, and requires a commitment to instituted practices that are focused on. This workshop is specifically designed to help the small call center understand applicable tools, techniques, and strategies to make the most of their valuable personnel.
September 20, 1:00 Eastern: How to Include Customers in Your Unified Communications Strategy. Presented by Aspect. Listen to this webcast and learn how a well constructed Unified Communications strategy gives you the ability to access experts throughout the organization, regardless of their location, and gives the knowledge of their availability to interact with customers throughout the day for high-value sales and service interactions. We will discuss what Unified Communications mean to the contact center.
September 25, 1:00 Eastern: Building Customer Relationships One Interaction at a Time. Presented by eGLue. This webcast will explore strategies for success, and explore how to achieve an efficient and optimum result during every customer interaction.
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"Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly."-- Stephen R. Covey
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