'Net Features : customer service

Sell More & Reduce Stress with Offerchat Saved Responses

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:42:00 GMT

Providing customer service in a digital world presents a whole host of challenges.

While it's useful to know as much as you can about typical live chat users (see infographic below), it remains essential to have the best tools at your digital disposal.

While many enterprises are turning to automated help desk solutions (check out Website Magazine's 2013 Help Desk Comparison Chart) to lessen some of the burden for these important personnel, more can be done.

Live chat solution provider Offerchat for example has released a new feature that gives customer service agents an option to convert a response to a saved response. As you might imagine, that reduces repetitive replies and could ultimately reduce the stresss that comes with delivering quality high-quality customer support and improve the handling of pre-sales inquiries.

Below you will find an infographic from Offerchat about the demographics and behavior of typical live chat users.

More Live Chat Related Articles from Website Magazine:

- Top 15 Apps E-Commerce Merchants Can't Do Without
- 5 'Net Tactics to Master Live Chat
- 2013 Help Desk Comparison Chart

Minimize Consumer Risk, Maximize Profits

Administrator — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 15:45:00 GMT

Online shopping is meant to be simple and suitable. Consumers unfamiliar with your brand are essentially taking a gamble on purchasing your products. They need an extra sense of comfort to convert and more from you to be a brand advocate (and a long-time buyer). Let's take a closer look at ways your businesses can make your guests comfortable by minimizing their perceived risk.

1.) Free Exchanges: Online shoppers in the clothing industry may order the wrong size, the sizing chart on the retailer's website is wrong or the customer may receive the wrong item. It's nobody's fault, and a free exchange allows the shopper to exchange and correct the problem if needed. Knowing that a free fix is available will allow the consumer to shop comfortably, and the way your company handles that exchange (e.g. placing no blame, apologizing for any mix-up, etc.) will go a long way in providing a positive customer experience.

2.) Free Returns: If a shopper is not comfortable with shopping online - and you've noticed this through cart abandonment, time-on-site, etc. - try offering free returns. Offering your "guests" a free return could perhaps result in first-time conversions and eventually long-term customers. Returns and exchanges, do come with fraud risks, however. The National Retail Federation predicts the industry will lose an estimated $8.9 billion to return fraud this year, but there are ways to reduce the sting, like number three on this list.

3.) Sizing Chart: Shoppers want to touch and feel the items they are interested in buying. In fact, according to a study of 1,200 shoppers from the credit card comparison website CreditDonkey, 33 percent of those surveyed, viewed the inability to touch a product as a deterrent of buying a product online. Online retailers can combat this with one of the many product showcase platforms available. For example, virtual fitting rooms can lower return rates by nearly 30 percent. Every online retailer should, at least, provide a comprehensive sizing chart. This will allow shoppers to match up a particular item with their body type and keep returns down.

4.) Real Customer Service: Having a real customer service agent available can provide a quick fix to an online shopper's questions or concerns. Online companies can both provide telephone service and make good usage of social media as a form of customer service. Adding a personal touch to a customer's shopping experience (e.g. using their name, sending a thank-you note or email, etc.) are other ways to provide an extra sense of comfort. Retailers should also consider live-chat functionality. A recent study revealed that 57 percent of consumers believe that live help is among the most important features of a website. And according to 38 percent of consumers, live chat is a preferred customer service channel because it enables consumers to multitask while they wait for a response.

5.) Free Shipping and a Rewards Program: Shoppers are always looking for an extra incentive to buy a product. So much so, that according to a Comscore report from May 2011, 61 percent of consumers will abandon a purchase if free shipping isn’t offered. So consider throwing in free shipping, even if it's just on orders of $99 or more (to minimize loss on your part), or offer a rewards program with a point system. A rewards program where shoppers can purchase to earn points is always fun and builds brand loyalty. Remember, loyalty programs should focus on the user and the brand.

These are just a few important ideas that online retailers can utilize in keeping their customers comfortable. Online companies can even take these examples a step further with their imagination and some third-party help (like developing gamification elements). In house, perhaps you should consider featuring a ‘Tell Us Your Story!’ section on your website. Customers can share their photos and thoughts here, which help in further engaging customers and building trust and loyalty.

Logan Beam is the Director of Marketing and Communications at the All American Clothing Co. A graduate of Wittenberg University, Logan is passionate about starting a career that allows him to make a difference in the creation of U.S. jobs with the All American Clothing Co. As a writer his work has been featured on CBS Moneywatch, The Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, Fox Business and many other publications.

Mzinga, ISM Deliver a Joint Customer Relations Solution

Michael Garrity — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 16:30:00 GMT

Customers can be hard to please. This is, of course, true in any industry, but it can be especially difficult on the Web, where face-to-face communication between companies and their patrons is virtually non-existent.

Various customer experience and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions have popped up in recent years, but even these technologies can come with their fair share of problems. Often, companies that use a variety of these solutions find that they have trouble providing a consistent customer experience across different channels.

Mzinga, a provider of social intelligence solutions, services and analytics for businesses, and ISM, a company that helps organizations plan and implement CRM and Social CRM initiatives, have joined forces to deliver a suite of social customer experience solutions intended to correct this problem. Mzinga will be combining its OmniSocial platform with ISM’s Social CRM solutions to offer a platform for users looking to implement customer-centric business strategies.

These joint solutions are designed to give organizations the ability to deploy cost-effective, user-friendly online communities to listen to market and client feedback, engage in the mutual sharing and communication of information and analyze customer satisfaction. Moreover, ISM clients will be able to utilize the OmniSocial platform to gather customer feedback and fuel customer relationships, real-time support and loyalty.

“Our mission is to help clients capture and sustain lifetime customers through proven, time-tested business strategies,” says ISM President Barton Goldenberg. “We are focused on providing our clients with customer intelligence, including experiences gathered from expressing views, preferences and recommendations in social media environments.”

Get Social with Customer Service via Jive

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 16:59:00 GMT

Social media is reaching into nearly every corner of the enterprise today, so it should come as no surprise that it is making it has also made its way into the realm of customer service.

Social business company Jive Software has released its Jive Social Customer Service Solution which aims to provide all of the necessary components and services necessary to deploy a socially-focused customer service strategy. For large companies requiring an always-on support team, the platform will likely be a good fit, as evidenced by its long list of available, out-of-the-box features.

The platform provides many of the features you would expect from such a solution such as case escalation and management (integrating with various CRM providers) as well as social media monitoring and engagement tools – which are of course useful in spotting emerging issues and contacting customers that have questions or suggestions. But it doesn't stop there. Not only does Jive integrate with Facebook (a must-have for this classification of software), but also with Microsoft Outlook, which gives support personnel the ability to participate in social conversations from the convenience of their email inbox.

And perhaps the best part of all, through a technology integration with Bunchball, Jive’s solution also offers gamification. The feature enables companies to use game mechanics (points, rewards, etc.) to encourage and reward participation. The platform also integrates with various apps from Jive Partners including LingoTek (translations) and SurveyGizmo (surveys). Last, but not least, Jive’s social customer service solution also offers some mobile capabilities. Customers and support teams can participate in communities, post questions, and access resources from a range of mobile platforms including iOS, Android and Blackberry.

"The world's largest and most valued brands have used Jive to transform their customer service practices and drive real business value," said John F. Rizzo, Chief Marketing Officer at Jive. "We wanted to make the same level of transformation easily attainable by more companies. Our solution is the first to deliver the game-changing advantages that social customer service has to offer in a comprehensive, easy-to-deploy package."

General Availability Comes to Workface

Michael Garrity — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 16:00:00 GMT

One of the fast growing tactics in Web customer service is the use of live customer interaction straight from a business or brand's website. Workface, a company who helped to usher in online customer interaction technology, announced yesterday that their enterprise-ready Customer Engagement Platform is now available to the general public.

Since customer service may be the most important aspect of running a small or medium sized business, and since it is much harder to be effective when operating on the Internet, it is important for business owners to keep abreast of all of the new changes and technologies coming forth to help them work with customers from all over. Positive customer services experiences are a great way to keep customers long-term and build a solid reputation, but, more importantly, negative experiences will almost immediately drive consumers away from your brand.

Workface's platforms use a unique portable profile-based live chat, voice, email, interactive video and content-sharing to mobilize field sales and service teams throughout the World Wide Web as a way to engage with customers and online prospects. It is largely designed for marketing, sales and customer service executives with field sales and service organizations/agents that use personal interaction to sell and support products or services, but it can be useful software for anyone looking to bolster their online customer (and prospect) interaction, as typically these consumers are discouraged by standard, impersonal online communication experiences.

The goal of Workface is to move beyond typical online chat solutions that can be found on the websites of many major companies and to put a "face" (hence the name) on the brand and empower consumers to find the right customer service representative on their terms. Workface claims to most closely replicate "on the Web teh experience customers have when they walk into a business," by allowing consumers to see a real face and read real job titles. This allows them to choose who they interact with, learn more about them and even start talking with them, making the business relationship more personal than ever before on the Internet.

Among the key capabilities of the Workforce platform are:

- Identity control
- Relationship management
- Self-imagery
- Live engagement

Workface also provides companies with a sales force identity management toolbox, content management solutions, a portable Web container, an open network framework, individual and corporate level control, live text, video & audio chat, and it all comes wrapped in simple desktop software.

Some of Workface's more well-known customers include Chevrolet, Northstar Disability and HealthSource Solutions.

Survey Says: Customer Service a Costly Afterthought

Linc Wonham — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 20:00:00 GMT

Online consumers are willing to pay nearly 11 percent more for e-commerce items if it means the highest level of customer service is included in the process, according to an Ovum survey commissioned by StellaService. In monetary terms, that amounts to an additional $17.3 billion that consumers are willing to pay for exceptional online customer service in 2010.

The study concluded that consumers put a 10.7-percent premium on the quality of customer service they receive when shopping online and determined that few of today’s largest e-tailers meet that standard. Exceptional customer service was defined as excelling in the three following areas:

•    Online tools and interfaces
•    Shipping delivery and return policies
•    Human support

In conjunction with the survey, online customer-service evaluator StellaService ranked the 150 largest e-commerce sites, with Zappos.com, Diapers.com and BlueNile.com taking the top three spots. Amazon.com, Staples.com, Crutchfield.com, LLBean.com, BestBuy.com, Apple.com and Sears.com rounded out the top 10.

While many sites still expect consumers to exert the lion's share of effort when returning or exchanging items purchased online, Zappos’ customer-friendly process helped it in the rankings, said StellaService CEO Jordy Leiser. To test the human-support element, the survey-takers called each site more than 12 times to inquire about products and policies and to state concerns, and evaluated the responses.

“Generally speaking, most firms don’t take an obsessive customer-service approach,” said Leiser.

Based on the survey results, and the dollar amount, smart businesses will consider a new approach.

SYKES Offers On-Site, Interactive Customer Assistance

MaureenA — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:00:00 GMT

In late August, Website Magazine reported on survey results from Harris Interactive and IMShopping which showed e-commerce consumers want the same customer assistance they receive at brick-and-mortar locations. One company that is assisting website professionals offer online customer assistance is SYKES. This company offers an ePersonal Advisor channel that offers customers human interaction on-site.

According to the company, advisors can invite customers into a conversation to answer questions about a particular product, or help them better understand a service offering. SYKES' agents are educated in many different platforms in order to provide your customers with accurate assistance. In addition, the company says that by offering client-specific programs, its agents get even more familiar with your company and industry.

As more consumers demand more personalized, instant interaction from their online experiences, more sites will need to offer these types of functionalities. And by offering these types of communication tools to your customers, you can increase your conversion rates tremendously.

What kinds of customer assistance do you provide your visitors?

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