Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

Altocloud Jumps in the Smyths Toys Toybox to Bolster E-Commerce Presence

April 22, 2015

Those not immediately familiar with Smyths Toys can be forgiven, particularly if they don't live in the U.K or in Ireland, where Smyths Toys has at last report 80 stores to its credit. But Smyths Toys might well be easier find thanks to a new connection with Altocloud, which will bolster Smyths Toys' online presence and make e-commerce that much easier to carry out.


Smyths Toys already stood as one of the largest online retailers in the region, and with good reason; but companies that rate that highly generally don't rest long on laurels; instead, they go looking for ways to improve so as to remain that highly regarded. As Smyths Toys chief technology officer Rob Wilson pointed out, Smyths Toys' priority was to make its customer experience the best it could be, which it looks to do by streamlining the overall shopping experience. Wilson notes that “the best real-time communications opportunities” are highly important to doing so, as well, and that's part of what got Smyths Toys interested in Altocloud.

Having itself been recently declared a Cool Vendor in Gartner's recent report, CRM Customer Services 2015, Altocloud married real time communications with machine-learning technology to not only allow for easy contact between customer and business, but also to predict just the right time to launch an interaction with said customer. This allows the business to step in and attempt to influence user behavior at just what would seem to be the right time. Thus, not only do contact centers get the best means of interacting with the customer right there at the site, but also at what should be the best timing. Altocloud also recently noted that its Predictive Communications Solution, as it's known, is available as a Magneto extension, offering up access to personalized content to help reduce unnecessary calls, and help identify a site's most important visitors, connecting with same via voice, video and text chat options.

Essentially, Smyths Toys is using Altocloud's services to carry out a point recently considered; customer data is a valuable thing, but only if it's put to use. With Altocloud, it can be, and new opportunities are thereby provided to get better sales. Altocloud can tell the best time to make contact with a customer, and though that's not always a guarantee of better sales, it does provide the best chances for sales. It's a variant on the “strike while the iron is hot” maxim, where here, Altocloud checks the iron's temperature. It may not always be right, and even then striking may not be enough to tip the scale, but every little bit helps.

Only time will tell just how well this system works out; it's likely that it will work on at least some level, and especially these days that's not a point to take lightly. It may not mean a turnaround for a dying business, but it might mean a little extra life to help keep a company aloft until overall times improve.


Edited by Dominick Sorrentino



Home