Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

A new survey commissioned by e-commerce chat company inQ 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."