Customer care - talk is good

"We've seen usage of live chat double in the past 12 months and we've discovered that online customers who engage in a live chat were more likely to make a purchase than those who didn't," says Rich Atlas, director of direct mail and e-commerce marketing at the company.

Live chat is just one component of what has become known as the multichannel contact centre. This most recent iteration of the traditional telephone-based call centre brings in new forms of customer contact, such as Web-based self-service, e-mail, Web callback, Web chat, and Web collaboration, in addition to facsimile, another established customer service channel.

While Venus, a privately held company with revenues in excess of $50 million, is upbeat about its Web-based contact centre, there's no stampede toward these applications -- at least not yet.

"The market didn't grow as fast as we expected and, today, organisations have to have a clear idea of the business problem they're trying to solve before they deploy such tools," says Katrina Howell, program leader for contact centre technologies at Frost & Sullivan. Frost & Sullivan pegged the market for Internet-based customer care tools at $79.7 million in 2001 and projects it will grow to $356 million in 2008.

Howell says demand for such products will increase as customer acceptance of the Internet grows and user expectations for receiving effective customer service through e-mail, live collaboration, and Web self-service methods increase. Additionally, she expects to see more businesses direct customers toward Internet-based interaction channels to lower service costs and maximise sales opportunities.

When they do, they'll have plenty of vendors to choose from. eGain Communications, Hipbone, Kana, InstantService, and RightNow Technologies all play in this market, as do stand-alone e-service solutions vendors; CRM suite vendors such as Siebel Systems; and telephony vendors such as Aspect Communications, Avaya, and Cisco Systems.

Companies such as Venus Swimwear that are testing the waters with Web-based communication tools are taking a strategic approach to customer communication. They view these tools as a way to provide customers with the best possible customer service experience and every opportunity to communicate.

At Venus, which established a transaction-based Web presence in 1998, the Web generates 20 percent of its overall business, with the other 80 percent coming primarily from its direct mail business, according to Atlas. "Hundreds of inquiries are made via live chat," he says. "It's our belief that customers shopping online prefer to communicate that way as opposed to using the telephone."

Venus online customers can click a live agent icon and engage in a text chat with a customer service representative. The company uses a hosted service from InstantService for Web chat. Online customers can also opt to send e-mail.

Slower uptake at financial planning firm However, Diversified Investment Advisors, a 50-year-old financial services company, has had a different experience with the use of its Web-based customer care features.

Since Diversified, which focuses exclusively on retirement planning, first implemented these features two years ago--beginning with Web chat and later adding co-browsing--the company reports that only a small number of its overall customers are biting.

"People are curious and are slowly edging towards it," says David Evans, vice president of the Purchase, N.Y., firm.

Managing $50 billion in retirement investments, Diversified works with about 660,000 active participants in its plans, 180,000 of whom participate exclusively through the company's Web site, logging in to check their accounts and perform other functions online.

The slow uptake on Web chat and Web collaboration doesn't discourage John Walker, Diversified's vice president of Web retirement planning. In fact, earlier this year, the company replaced the older, less functional products it had been using with Hipbone's Synetry suite of live interaction applications.

"As our clients shop for new providers, they're looking for firms that provide and use technology in a variety of ways in order to reach their employees who may not be reachable by conventional ways," he says, noting that this was the major driver for implementing Web-based customer service features. Walker also reported that, according to feedback from clients, 30 percent want to manage their accounts and get information via the Internet.

"Ultimately, our goal is to get retirement plan participants to contribute more assets and have a successful retirement, and we're exploring ways to make it easy for them to do that," he says. Educating participants about the company's Web-based communication features is a key part of the process, he adds.

Today, Diversified's plan participants can do Web collaboration when they log on to the company's advisory application for retirement, which was created to help participants reach their retirement goals. By September, Web chat and Web collaboration will be available on the participant's main page. By year end, Diversified plans to add these tools to its public site as well.

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