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:

Personalized Customer Support on Facebook Through IVAs

Linc Wonham — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:00:00 GMT

As customer support becomes an increasing priority for online businesses in the age of social media, at least one company is pushing the bounds of virtual reality.

VirtuOz, a provider of intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) for online marketing, sales and support, has announced the launch of VirtuOz IVAs for Facebook. Web companies can use VirtuOz intelligent virtual agents to provide 24/7 support and service over any channel such as mobile devices, websites or social networking sites.

The IVA for Facebook is designed to be a complement to, rather than a replacement for, existing self-service and human-assisted channels such as contact centers and live chat.

One travel website, Voyages-sncf.com, which deployed an IVA on Facebook to increase customer satisfaction and boost favorable wall posts, leapfrogged its competition to achieve 100-percent customer resolution. VirtuOz provided the site with a virtual agent that not only directly answered customers' questions but also channeled issues back to live agents when necessary.

With recent reports suggesting that less than 5 percent of questions asked on companies' Facebook pages are answered, this can be a significant tool for Web businesses.

“Originally considered marketing’s domain, social media is becoming an important customer engagement channel across all functions including sales and support,” says Pam Kostka, chief marketing officer of VirtuOz. “Listening and monitoring social networks is no longer sufficient.”

“Deploying an IVA on a corporate Facebook page helps companies move beyond passive social service to active social service. Through the IVA for Facebook, companies can quickly respond in a personalized way to customer requests, comments or inquiries and provide service through one of the world’s most popular points of entry to the Web for 800 million-plus active users.”

VirtuOz intelligent virtual agents for Facebook are available now and are deployed as a tab within a company’s Facebook page.