One click away from answers
SINGAPORE - No more uneasy waiting on the phone while switch-board tries to connect you to an operator who is "currently available," or anti-climatic e-mails to administrators when you run into a hitch.
All that may be a thing of the past, when it is possible now to click a button right on a web-site and be instantly connected to a customer service officer right on the Internet.
That's the promises of MSG121, the latest product from ThatWeb.com, an ASP wholly owned by Aztech Systems Ltd.
According to research by Forum Corporation, businesses on average lose as much as 9 to 20% of their customers annually due to poor sales and service interaction with customers.
And questions about products, the purchase process and security can often be stress points for customers looking to purchase something on-line.
Not anymore, with MSG121, when customers have a query about any product or service, or even needs technical help, they can simply click on an icon indicating a 'live' helpdesk, and they are immediately connected to an on-line customer officer via a pop-up interface.
All that, according to ThatWeb, can be done without having to download a software or to configure anything. However, a trial on their site reveals that a compressed Java file may need to be downloaded first before the messaging service can be used.
There is no lack of reason for on-line businesses to pick the service up.
For one thing, now that a customer service officer can handle multiple queries on-line at the same time, companies could save a wallop on head-count alone.
What's more, the officer can work from anywhere that has an Internet connection. Housewives at home, handicaps whose physical access are limited, retirees, part-timers all can be provisioned to work as helpdesk operators with this service.
And the help-desk service comes with a few neat features as well -one of them being the ability of a customer service officer to access an editable database containing pre-formatted responses that can be called up at the click of a mouse.
Touted as a "more cost-efficient alternative to call center operation," ThatWeb.com is marketing the product strongly in the Asia Pacific region and plans to add VOIP and SSL enhancements to future versions.