'Net Features : BoldChat

Tweeted Out? LogMeIn Offers Relief

Amberly Dressler — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 13:25:00 GMT

One in five consumers have used social media in the past year to obtain a customer service response. Expect that number to rise – fast.

In addition to these findings by American Express, the study also reported that customers who posed inquires on social channels will spend 21 percent more with companies that offer a great experience, and are likely to tell an average of 42 people about good customer service experiences and 55 people about bad experiences.

Consider customer service on social media channels imperative to the success of any business - both big and small. However, regardless of size or industry, there is a learning curve for companies on how to manage these interactions. But companies don't have to go at it alone. LogMeIn’s new Twitter integration and social media management capabilities for its BoldChat Web chat and multi-channel, online customer engagement offering can help. These new capabilities are designed to help businesses and customer service agents manage the rapidly growing number of customer interactions on Twitter, from pre-sales inquiries to post-sales support. Additionally, the new capabilities complement BoldChat’s multi-channel suite for Web chat, email, SMS and click-to-call features. As a result, the offering lets customer service teams use a single, unified tool to manage customer conversations across online, mobile, email, phone and social channels, while providing a wide view of customer interactions.

“Our customers are increasingly turning to Twitter to resolve issues and inquire about our services, but handling these important conversations too often require disjointed marketing tools,” said Curtis Hays, Co-Founder, Quotegine.com, a BoldChat customer and beta tester for the new Twitter management capabilities. “What we’ve been looking for is a solution that can handle the unique characteristics of Twitter, while empowering us to quickly engage with our customers across multiple touch points. The BoldChat solution makes it easy to manage customer conversations across all channels, while introducing a highly effective means of handling the rapid, quick-response nature of Twitter engagement.”

The new Twitter management capabilities in BoldChat give customer service teams the ability to:

Automatically thread related tweets into conversations for context, more efficient response, and to de-clutter the UI
Auto-assign incoming Twitter conversations to agents based on availability, skill, and/or department
Maintain and show historic customer conversations for faster resolution and better service
Report on total Twitter-based customer interactions and agent responses
Manage and respond to tweets using multiple Twitter accounts from within a single interface, without having to switch views
Iteratively and intuitively build advanced searches against Twitter streams to sort through the noise and find critical and valuable conversations

“Twitter is quickly becoming a go-to channel for customer engagement, but to date, managing these customer conversations has meant trying to turn a social media marketing tool into a customer service tool,” said Steve Castro-Miller, VP, Chat Products, LogMeIn, Inc. “In contrast, BoldChat Twitter management is designed from the ground up for engaging and managing customer conversations. We believe that the right approach is not just adding one more social tool to the mix, but rather giving sales, marketing and customer service teams a single, unified tool for managing all customer interactions, regardless of channel.”

Bringing the Sales Team to the 'Net

Allison Howen — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 22:24:00 GMT

The holiday season is quickly approaching, which means that e-commerce merchants need to be prepared for an influx of consumers that will inevitably be shopping at their brick-and-mortar stores and on their online retail destinations.

And while it is easy to hire seasonal employees to help with an increase of foot traffic in-stores, merchants must also take steps to prepare a seamless online shopping experience for their digital guests. For example, a customer who is looking for a product while at a business’s brick-and-mortar location can easily ask an associate for assistance, but this is not the case for online customers – who most of the time will get frustrated when they can’t find something and either leave the site, or even worse, abandon their cart.

In order to combat this problem, merchants should have technologies set in place – such as live chat or virtual assistant options – so that their online customers will receive the same shopping experience as in-store customers.

Live Chat

If you haven’t implemented Live Chat into your website yet, you are probably missing out on some valuable conversions. In fact, a recent Oracle study reveals that 57 percent of consumers believe that live help is among the most important features of a website, while a BoldChat survey shows that live chat is the preferred communication method for 20 percent of the online shopping population.

Not only can live chat help answer basic consumer questions, but it can also help retailers build stronger relationships with their digital customers. This is because live chat provides consumers with a personalized experience, which can lead to an increase in trust, as well as higher average order values.

Live chat platforms, like Velaro and BoldChat, enable retailers to monitor their customers' actions in real time. By doing this, merchants can decrease abandonment and increase conversions by starting a proactive chat with the right customers at the right time. Additionally, merchants can evaluate the paths that consumers take to make a purchase – to see if promotions, such as free shipping, are driving conversions.

Virtual Assistants

Although not yet as popular as live chat, virtual assistants also provide merchants with an avenue for interacting with their digital customer. This unique technology can be instrumental in increasing engagement and helping consumers navigate a website.

In fact, online ticketing provider LottoGopher recently implemented CodeBaby’s virtual assistant technology into their site.

“We chose a virtual assistant to better position ourselves with customers that use the Internet to make their lottery ticket choices,” says James Morel of LottoGopher. “CodeBaby offers state of the art technology that will certainly help our company convert more site visitors into customers.”

CodeBaby’s CIVA (CodeBaby Intelligent Virtual Assistant) technology guides site visitors to specific actions, improves site navigation and Web self-service to enhance the customer experience, as well as decreases abandonment rates and increases conversions. Additionally, CIVA reduces the number of times website visitors need to escalate to calls through a company’s call center.

Another virtual assistant platform worth checking out is VirtuOz. This company’s virtual sales agents can help provide assurance to customers both online or on mobile devices, as well as help merchants eliminate common abandonment issues, such as common product and shipping inquiries. Additionally, VirtuOz's virtual sales associates can even be implemented into a brand's social network accounts, including Facebook, so that brands can offer their customers a similar experience across channels.

CodeBaby Virtual Assistant:

VirtuOz Virtual Assistant from Facebook:

BoldCCM and BoldChat Receive Upgrades

Linc Wonham — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 03:00:00 GMT

Bold Software has released some new features for its website communications software BoldCCM and BoldChat versions 7.0.

Heading up the list of new functionalities available in BoldCCM version 7.0 is an enhanced Agent Workspace that allows operators to manage multiple customer interactions in a prioritized, rapid manner – all from one screen. It also offers a new SMS capability, which enables companies to provide a text-based solution for customers and manage in-bound texts as they would other communications channels within the software.

These features complement the existing live chat, click-to-call, email management, active co-browsing and remote-control features already available in BoldCCM.

BoldChat version 7.0 also features new functionalities, including additional controls and flexibility around proactive invitations and Adaptive Messaging feedback to agents. BoldChat and BoldCCM versions 7.0 are both available immediately.