Unlocking revenue with proactive web chat

In an ever more competitive economic environment, businesses in every sector are looking for ways to increase sales and unlock additional revenues. There are many ways to do this, including raising the spend of existing customers, upselling, avoiding abandoned online shopping carts and delivering a superior experience to avoid customer defections.

With its combination of real time response, and personal, live agent service, proactive web chat is the perfect solution for improving service and increasing revenues. Think of web chat as the online equivalent of a helpful shop assistant that makes the buying process easier, providing advice and suggestions that improves the customer experience and turns browsers into buyers. As in a shop, it is vital that web chat is proactive. Customers are put off both by shop assistants that hide themselves away and provide monosyllabic answers and difficult to find, reactive chat options.

Proactive web chat provides a direct channel to your customers and enables you to assist them when they need help, overcoming any roadblocks on the customer journey. Spotting a problem and providing assistance can turn a wavering customer into a guaranteed sale. The results speak for themselves – happier customers lead to a Return on Investment of 105%, a 10x growth in conversions and a 19% increase in Average Order Value.

And happier customers and higher sales are not the only benefits for companies. By using real-time web analytics and customer behavioural data you gain a deeper understanding of customer needs and can use this to target offers, introduce new products and smooth out any bumps in the customer journey.

Eptica’s proactive web chat solution is designed to help companies unlock new revenues. By integrating with the Eptica knowledgebase it improves the efficiency of every chat agent and increases conversion rates. Completely customisable rules of engagement allow chat sessions to be triggered by customer events (such as pausing on key pages, shopping baskets and forms), improving sales without pushing up costs. Enhanced co-browsing enables agents to remove road blocks on the customer journey, increasing successful online form submission by up to 25%.

To find out more about how proactive web chat can deliver benefits for your organisation – and to help you build a business case for its deployment, Eptica is holding a webinar on Thursday 30^th May at 9.30 BST. Entitled How to unlock revenue for your business with Proactive Web Chat, it provides a complete guide to the power of this channel to transform your bottom line. To book your place simply click here.

 

Hitting the gold standard for customer service in Asia

Efficiently delivering the right customer experience is the number one priority for every organisation. But in today’s complex, fast-moving world this can be challenging. The number of contact channels is constantly increasing, competition has never been fiercer and the growth of mobile devices means customer service has to operate 24×7, providing the perfect experience quickly and efficiently. Do it right and it will have a positive impact on your revenues, increasing sales and customer satisfaction. Fail to provide the gold standard and customers will quickly move to rivals – but not before telling the world about their experiences via social media.

To help companies across Asia meet these challenges Eptica and the Contact Centre Association of Singapore (CCAS) are organising a breakfast meeting that will share best practice in delivering the highest levels of service. Transforming Contact Centre Productivity for a Multichannel World will be held on Wednesday 29^th May at the Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel in Singapore.

The free event will draw on Eptica’s experience with working with some of the leading brands in Asia, including AirAsia and Quality Healthcare Medical Services Limited (QHMS) to show how you can transform customer service in order to unlock more revenue, greater productivity and a better customer experience.

Presentations include:

• Olivier Njamfa, Eptica CEO, on How to transform Contact Centre productivity and customer satisfaction in a multichannel world
• Esther Tang, Director Customer Services, Quality Healthcare, explaining how QHMS has increased service productivity and customer service using Eptica across the email and web self-service channels. Operating 24×7, QHMS’s Hong Kong contact centre handles  65,000 calls and over 6000 emails per month
• Live demos of Eptica’s future proofed solutions for Web, Facebook and Mobile customer self-service, Email management, Chat and Agent knowledgebase
• Tim North of Eptica explaining how centralised knowledge management can drive improvements in telephone customer service and can then be extended to other channels

As part of the live demos Eptica will be showcasing Eptica Web Chat, now available in simplified Chinese. Part of the recently launched Eptica Multichannel Customer Interaction Suite 8.2, Eptica’s proactive web chat solution is integrated with the Eptica knowledgebase to improve the efficiency of every chat agent and increase conversion rates by up to 10x.

To find out more view the full event agenda on our microsite. To book your free place at the CCAS Breakfast Meeting simply click here to register.

Managing multi language, multichannel customer service

Businesses today operate globally, but need to provide a local service if they are to deliver the customer experience that consumers rightly demand. That means providing information, answers and support in local languages, at the time that customers want it, and of course through their channel of choice.

Managing global customer service is therefore a challenge, particularly for web-based businesses who don’t have physical branches. The customer experience is a key factor in winning and retaining business, whatever sector you operate in. Organisations need to ensure that their operations are efficient, effective and consistent wherever the customer is located.

Eptica customer Easyroommate is the perfect case study on how you can balance delivering a local service with increased efficiency. Originally founded in the US nearly 15 years ago, Easyroommate is now the world’s number one flatshare and houseshare website. It operates in 37 countries and 12 languages, matching potential tenants with available flatshare or houseshare accommodation. With Easyroommate, landlords can advertise rooms or property for rent, while tenants can search for accommodation or post details of their requirements.

With user numbers growing by 30% over the last year, Easyroommate needed to scale operations to provide fast, consistent service to customers. It selected Eptica’s multichannel customer interaction suite as it provided a multilingual, multi-brand platform for both Easyroommate and sister brand Vivastreet, which provides local online classified adverts in 19 countries. Eptica has been rolled out across the email and web channels for both brands.

Eptica’s software is used by 60 agents split between Easyroommate’s main contact centre in London, outsourced partners and teams in Africa, Asia and Latin America who provide local language and time zone support. The platform provided by Eptica ensures that, no matter which part of the extended customer service team a customer interacts with, they’ll get a consistent, high quality experience.

On the web channel, Easyroommate has deployed Eptica’s intelligent web self-service. This enables customers to ask questions online, receiving instant answers that mean they don’t need to switch to other channels. After implementing Eptica calls have reduced by 75% and emails dropped by 15%, despite a 30% increase in users. Over half (53%) of all interactions are now via web self-service, which is available in eight languages on Easyroommate sites for the UK, France, Italy, Spain, USA, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Netherlands, Poland and Germany.

Easyroommate now uses Eptica Email Management to handle its 20,000 monthly emails. This has dramatically reduced the average time to answer, more than halving (58%) it from 48 hours to 20. 80% of emails are now answered within 12 hours. All incoming emails are now automatically analysed and sent to the agent with the best skills to answer them, along with a suggested response in one of 11 local languages. Average time to answer Vivastreet emails has reduced by 66%, to 12 hours, allowing agents to focus on providing a personal service for complex enquiries via the phone channel.

The new Eptica implementation has increased First Contact Resolution rates to above 90% and has provided Easyroommate with greater management control of its operations. It can now analyse all its customer interactions to spot trends and potential issues in real time, enabling it to optimise the customer experience at all times.

On the web the customer experience is vital to growing your business, by retaining existing customers and winning new ones. As Easyroommate’s experience shows, multichannel, multilingual and multi-brand customer service is at the heart of global success.

 

How mobile is changing the travel customer experience

The web has dramatically changed the travel industry, enabling customers to easily research and book the separate components of their break, rather than visiting high street travel agents. Organisations have had to adapt as consumers increasingly look for tailored holidays rather than ‘one size fits all’ packages.

But the impact of technology hasn’t stopped. The rise of mobile and social media channels have made it simple for customers to give immediate, visible feedback on every aspect of their holiday – from the flight and accommodation to the restaurants they eat in and the tourist sites they visit.

Online review sites, such as TripAdvisor, are now the first port of call for many researching their break. And recent TripBarometer research from the company illustrates the importance of delivering an excellent customer experience across the travel and leisure industry:

• 93% of worldwide travellers say online reviews have an impact on their booking decisions
• 95% of UK properties say reviews are important for booking
• Over half (51%) of travellers worldwide have written a review of accommodation after a trip
• 82% of UK properties invite guests to submit reviews, and 70% respond to negative online reviews
• 79% of UK properties actively monitor social media

TripAdvisor is obviously not a new site, but mobile is making it much easier for travellers to provide immediate feedback – rather than having to wait until they return home and access the internet via their PC. The TripBarometer study found that 47% of UK travellers browse the web using mobile devices during their break, and 34% post updates on social networks.

So travel companies are under unprecedented scrutiny. So how can they deliver a consistent, high quality experience that meets the needs of an ever-more demanding customer base? Based on Eptica’s experience working with travel companies including AirAsia and TUI, here are five key areas to focus on:

1          Embrace social media
Monitoring social media for mentions of your company, hotel or airline and responding quickly is vital. But ensure it is integrated with your overall customer service strategy, rather than forming a separate silo or team. This means that customers receive a consistent experience, however they decide to contact you.

2          Make it mobile
The rise of smartphones and tablets mean that travellers now want to contact you through mobile devices. Make sure your website is mobile optimised, and decide whether you need to create mobile apps for customer service. When leading low cost airline AirAsia introduced its own mobile customer service app, it quickly generated 2 million downloads, making it the No 1 selling app in the iPhone App store for Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. As the app shares the same Eptica knowledgebase as the rest of AirAsia’s channels, customers benefit from immediate, consistent answers, in the palm of their hand.

3          Let customers help themselves
Customers researching their holiday online have potentially limitless choice and want as much information as possible to help make their decision. Rather than forcing them to break the customer journey by calling or emailing to find out more, provide web self-service systems that allow customers to find answers online to common questions. This reduces the strain on your contact centre, allowing agents to focus their efforts on more complex enquiries.

4          Join up your channels
Customers hate having to repeat themselves, so ensure that you share customer information across channels. Practically this could be as simple as letting hotel front desk staff know about a customer issue raised on social media about their property, meaning they can solve the problem face to face without it needing escalation.

5          Incentivise good service
Service is at the heart of a good travel experience. Incentivise and congratulate staff who receive good online reviews. While it seems obvious, TripAdvisor found that only 38% of UK properties rewarded staff for positive reviews.

The coming era of ‘on demand’ marketing

How will consumers interact with brands in the near future? What channels will they use and what sort of experience are they looking for? A new report, ‘The coming era of on-demand marketing’, from consultants McKinsey aims to shed light on these questions and to help companies prepare themselves for this changing world.

Essentially McKinsey believes that emerging technologies will mean that consumers demand a radically different, personalised experience from companies. Sensors in devices, the Internet of Things, the rise of Big Data and the ubiquity of smartphones will accelerate the current shift in the balance between consumers and brands, adding a physical dimension to previously virtual transactions.

And customers will want this experience in real time and almost everywhere. In this on-demand world, consumers will judge brands by their ability to deliver heightened experiences, which McKinsey define as interactions that offer high levels of value and are radically customised and easy to access, across the entire customer decision journey.

Driven by ubiquitous search, social media and mobile devices consumer demand will rise in four key areas:

• Now: people want to interact anywhere at any time
• Can I: they want to do truly new things based on the information companies hold on them
• For me: they expect data to be used to deliver a personalised experience, based on their needs
• Simply: They will expect all interactions to be easy

So what can companies do to prepare for this future? Based in a combination of the McKinsey report and Eptica’s own experience there are five key areas to focus on:

1          Work together
Bring together teams across disciplines and departments to meet customer needs. The rise of social media has shown that the customer journey is not the responsibility of a single department – everyone will need to work together to meet customer needs moving forward.

2          Embrace the physical world
Cheaper, smaller sensors and advances such as QR codes mean that consumers can now interact with the world around them as part of the experience. For example, smartphones can be used to tap and pay for coffee or travel. Look at how you can make the experience better using these emerging technologies.

3          Use data to personalise the experience
Consumers are leaving ever deepening digital footprints, leading to potential concerns on privacy. However McKinsey’s research found that customers are willing to provide more data as long as it is used to improve the experience by personalising it.

4          Make it simple
Smartphones and tablets have radically changed how we interact with technology with touch and speech-based inputs increasingly replacing keyboard and mouse. While you cannot replace every interaction with touch, ensure you make it simple to navigate along the customer journey, removing roadblocks from the path.

5          Be omnichannel
As McKinsey pointed out, companies have embraced multiple channels but not necessarily linked them together. This leads to an uneven experience that infuriates customers who want to contact you on their channel of choice, rather than being forced to change their behaviour to fit your structure. At a basic level link your customer service and CRM systems so that you can identify consumers and their preferences however they contact you.

The customer experience is crucial to business competitiveness now and in the future. Companies therefore need to put it at the centre of their plans in order to succeed going forward.

Insurers look to embrace social media

Insurers have traditionally been slower than other industries when it comes to establishing themselves on social media. Worries about breaking regulations mean that they have been wary about launching onto Twitter and Facebook. Backing this up, own 2012 Eptica Multichannel Customer Experience Study found that just one insurer out of the UK’s top 10 had clear links displayed to Twitter and Facebook pages.

However according to research from North America, things are about to change, with social media moving rapidly up the agenda. The survey, from Celent, found that 98% of insurers plan to increase their use of social media in 2013, with customer service the number one priority cited by the 114 respondents.

Explaining why they’d not embraced social before, insurers saw the biggest barriers to entry as legal, regulatory and compliance uncertainties. A third of companies had not created a social media strategy, adding to these risks. Other challenges, ranked in order, were lack of top management support; shortage of skills/know-how; and lack of link with company strategy.

Despite this 80% of North American insurers were using social media (well ahead of the UK). Nearly half (45%) of the remainder planned to implement it within the next year. Of those that have already deployed social media, 98% planned to increase its use either ‘somewhat’ or ‘significantly’.

There are issues flagged by the research. Customer service was seen as the primary opportunity to use social media, but few insurers were helping their agents to use the tools. Indeed, none of the companies rated their social media management tools as excellent, with the majority feeling it was too early to provide an opinion on their usefulness.

At Eptica we’re seeing a similar move to embrace social media by UK and European insurers. In our experience there are five areas for insurers to focus on:

1. Create a strategy – research the market and ask yourself a series of questions. Which social media networks are your customers using? How are you going to communicate with them? Which department will be responsible? Create a strategy and then gain buy-in from the complete business.
2. Enforce a social media acceptable use policy. Whatever you decide to do with social media, make sure that everyone in your company understands what they can and can’t do on these channels – and the consequences of breaking the rules.
3. Set aside the right resources. There is a tendency to think of social media as free, as it costs nothing to join Twitter and Facebook. But you need to invest in training staff, buying the right management tools and ensuring that your presence matches your corporate branding and guidelines.
4. Integrate social media. Don’t create a separate social media team, as this simply builds an expensive, unscalable silo around the channel. Integrate it within your overall operations, for example with your existing customer service software so that you can ensure consistent, efficient operations.
5. Publicise your efforts. Make sure your customers and prospects know that you are on social media – include Facebook pages and Twitter handles on your website and in customer communication so it is easy for them to find you.

There are risks involved in social media – but the opportunities for insurers to engage with customers, solve issues quickly and drive new sales mean it should be on everyone’s agenda in 2013.

Chat overtakes text – what it means for customer service

Figures released this week show that for the first time more messages were sent through instant messaging chat apps (such as WhatsApp) than SMS text. The research, from analysts Informa, found that 19 billion messages were sent per day in 2012 on chat apps, compared to 17.6 billion texts. And this gap will widen substantially. Informa believe that chat apps will generate 50 billion daily messages by 2014, compared with just over 21 billion traditional texts.

As in many parts of the mobile ecosystem, this growth is being driven by the smartphone boom as users embrace the extra functions and speed of instant messaging compared to text. With SMS traditionally a large revenue earner for mobile carriers, this increases the pressure for them to find alternative sources of income moving forward.

The growth of instant chat also has a potentially large impact on customer service teams. More and more people are now accustomed to the immediacy of real-time conversations with friends and expect the same speed of response when seeking information or answers from businesses. Instant messaging has spread beyond just the young or early adopters, with Skype prevalent in business and Apple’s iMessage built into all iPads and iPhones. The mindset of today’s consumers is focused on speed, personal responses and great service.

So, how can businesses ensure they offer their customers live, online conversations in a way that is simple and straightforward for consumers to use? The good news is that web chat has been in existence for a while and the combination of productivity improvements and wider acceptance of chat makes it the perfect solution for increasing customer engagement.

Web chat has been a central part of Eptica’s Multichannel Customer Interaction Suite for some time and has recently been enhanced to enable organisations to both improve the customer experience and drive increased revenues. The proactive web chat solution is now integrated with the Eptica knowledgebase to improve the efficiency of every chat agent and increase conversion rates by up to 10x. Completely customisable rules of engagement allow chat sessions to be triggered by customer events (such as pausing on key pages, shopping baskets and forms), improving sales without pushing up costs. Enhanced co-browsing enables agents to remove road blocks on the customer journey, increasing successful online form submission by up to 25%.

Customers today demand instant responses to their questions and expect businesses to use the latest technology channels to communicate with them. Proactive web chat is therefore the perfect solution to meet their needs, increase satisfaction and drive increased sales.