Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

April 10, 2008

Study Reveals Chat Underused On E-Commerce Sites

By Tracey E. Schelmetic


A new survey commissioned by e-commerce chat company inQ (News - Alert) and conducted by the e-tailing group assessed how 31 retailers and telcos that offer chat on their respective Web sites use the technology to sell. The results? Chat is underused.
 
The highlights of the results were as follows:
 
Chat is not located to sell. Eighty-eight percent of companies have chat on customer service pages while only 42 percent offer it on product pages.

Too-low usage of proactive chat. Only 15 percent of respondents leverage chat technology.

Offering alternative or better products occurs too infrequently. Chat is not being used to cross-sell and upsell. The average rating was 1.7 out of 5.

Insufficient encouragement to buy. The 2.7 out of 5 score means a substantial number of potential sales are ignored.

Unacceptable response time. The thirty-nine second average is below par, especially when half the sites surveyed connect in three seconds or less.

Near-perfect customer service. With one exception, everybody did a great or excellent job at answering the initial question.

The technology works (mostly). With a couple of exceptions that required (unsuccessful) downloads, the technology does not seem to be any issue.
 
"One of the most surprising - and disappointing - findings when I conducted these chats  was how seldom a chat culminated in the agent asking for the sale" said, Lauren Freedman, president of e-tailing group. Freedman added "When a consumer is engaged in a live chat, the merchant should be opportunistic and when appropriate ask for the sale. You wouldn't expect to visit a retail store and not have the associate encourage you to buy the merchandise you had just tested or tried on. Not doing so is missing an enormous opportunity and in today's retail climate getting the sale is imperative."
 
inQ created the concept of "HI Metrics" or "Human Interaction Metrics." Christophe Cremault, senior VP of marketing at inQ, said: "We determined key dimensions of human interactions with online shoppers that are critical to inQ's customers' or live chat's success. We wanted to measure to what degree these dimensions have been adopted across the industry, and commissioned the e-tailing group to conduct a survey."
 
Tracey Schelmetic is Editorial Director for Customer Interaction Solutions magazine, and covers the customer relationship management and call center industries for TMCnet. To read more of Tracey’s articles, please visit her columnist page. She also blogs for TMCnet here.

Don’t forget to check out TMCnet’s White Paper Library, which provides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. The library offers white papers, case studies and other documents which are free to registered users. Today’s featured white paper is, Best Practices in Agent Retention brought to you by Enkata.
 
 


Related Contact Center Solutions Articles

    Interactive Intelligence, One of the Best Places to Work in Indiana

    We in the U.S. know from hard facts the challenges confronting the "Rust Belt" states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. They all for a variety of reasons saw their industrial bases decimated and have struggled to find their economic bearings. [ Read More ]
    05/15/2012

    LivePerson Receives 2012 CRM Excellence Award from CIS Magazine

    Commitment to customers and clients and expanding customer relationships lay the foundation for success, and LivePerson, Inc. was honored with Customer Interaction Solutions 2012 CRM Excellence Award from TMC for its effort to improve customer experience with LP Chat. "We are honored to be recognized by Customer Interaction Solutions for the value that our technology provides to our customers' relationships and ultimately their businesses," Robert LoCascio, founder and CEO at LivePerson, sai… [ Read More ]
    05/15/2012

    Customer Interactions Solutions Magazine Honors 24-7 Intouch as Top Teleservices Provider

    Canadian teleservices provider 24-7 Intouch was once again named to Customer Interactions Solutions Magazine's 27th Annual top 50 Teleservices Ranking list. The company ranked fifth in the Interactive category this year after earning the eighth slot in 2011 and the 31st ranking in 2010. 24-7 Intouch also placed fifth as an International Outbound and seventh as a National Inbound provider. [ Read More ]
    05/15/2012

    Domino's Pizza: Powered by the Cloud

    Domino's Pizza is on top of the pizza-delivery market in the UK and other parts of Europe, with over 720 stores across the UK, Republic of Ireland and Germany. Such popular and relied upon businesses need a solid, effective solution to communicating with customers and taking phone-in orders - traditional telecom solutions just don't cut it. [ Read More ]
    05/15/2012

[ View all Contact Center Solutions Articles ]

FOLLOW US

Contact Center Solutions Glossary of Terms

Featured Product Demo

    Contact Center Solutions eBook
    CIC has always been a powerful all-on-one solution for IP business communications. Now with the release of 4.0, CIC provides an architecture that's even more powerful, user tools to make the customer experience even more satisfying, and management tools that improve the performance of any business - dramatically ...

Featured eBook

    Contact Center Solutions eBook
    In this e-book from Interactive Intelligence, you'll learn about emerging contact center technology trends and newer options like self-service technology, analytics and Web 2.0. Here we've compiled a selection of the top news stories, features, white papers, case studies, podcasts ...

Featured Videos

Featured Resources

Ask the Expert

Press Releases