Recently, an article titled, The Dumbest Piece of Sales Advice You’re in Danger of Following, by Jill Konrath, was sent to me. It was a good laugh and great advice too.

Embrace rejection? No, thanks. She sums it up well by making this point:  if you embrace rejection as a part of the job and quickly move on to make the next call, you’re doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over.

As the author points out, when you learn from your interaction, your approach will change and your results will change. So, let’s take a look at that underlying lesson. If you were to contact customers who canceled your service, returned your company’s product or otherwise dealt you a hearty serving of rejection, what do you think they would say to you? What would they say about your product or service?

On a regular basis, I call customers who cancel service. I ask them about their experience as a customer, how chat or click-to-call is/was used at their company. I ask them if there were any specific experiences that made them cancel service. We learn a lot about our customers from these conversations.

But, just as important, we recently surveyed our active customers. Because if customer experience is important (and it is) there are really two sides to the story: how former customers say we did and how current customers say we are doing! For a peek at the results of our annual Customer Satisfaction Survey, visit our Customer Support page.

What are you doing to learn the lesson?

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For most businesses, the holiday season means more than untangling that bundle of twinkle lights and stringing them up in a display of holiday cheer.

I listened to a webinar recently on preparing your retail business for the holidays. It featured a great case study by a big box retailer and had a lot of valuable information… on how you should have started months ago. There were some great pointers, but I wondered if it left anyone else wondering, “But what about this year? What can we do NOW?”

There should always be something you can do now. In a recent survey conducted by Bold Software, our customers indicated the following website changes in support of the upcoming holiday season:

1. Moderate Design Changes
2. Site Navigation
3. Landing Pages
4. Optimization of live chat / Site search (tie)
5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts.

It is true, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the biggest shopping days of the year and there is no doubt that it pays to plan far in advance and have a strong sales period leading into the holiday season. But we’re delighted to see live chat top of mind in preparing for the holidays, even ahead of SEO.

Looking specifically at live chat optimization, among companies that use live chat, these areas are where they focus their attention in preparing for the holidays:

1. Evaluate canned messaging
2. Implement proactive chat
3. Empower agents to offer incentives
4. Optimize proactive rules
5. Chat window customizations

And if you haven’t added live chat to your site, focus your attention there to start. A live chat implementation takes minutes to install and gives you instant access to customers who are on your site now.

Read the full report on our Holiday Readiness Survey by downloading our Holiday Readiness Handbook, 2010.

An inspiring story for any marketer is the oft-cited, and still partially utilized Avis tagline, “We’re #2 – We Try Harder,” the first incarnation of which was introduced in the 1960s. The idea was to portray the company as delivering superior service in comparison to its competitors – especially its #1 competitor, Hertz. The successful campaign worked and remains today a solid example of “positioning.”

I’m unsure if anybody ever tried the “We’re #3 – We Try Hardest” approach or even the “We’re #4 – Bordering on Desperation” angle, but it makes a nice blog headline so perhaps we’re #1 in the #3 game. In any case though, it’s also true. Internet Retailer Magazine has listed us among the top three live chat/click-to-call vendors based on the number of Top 500 Retailers we serve. This is a proud accomplishment for us for two reasons. In just one year, the number of Top 500 e-retailers that decided to place their trust in us went up by over 100%. That’s right; we more than doubled it. You don’t do that by trying hard. Or even harder. You’ve got to try hardest to do that.

The second reason we think this news is momentous is because at the same time we grew, we’ve been able to maintain a superlative level of high-touch customer care. We’ve increased our staff, made technology investments, and recently launched a new support portal on our website all aimed at delivering tailored, hands-on care to all of our customers.

The best accomplishment of all isn’t that we doubled our Internet Retailer Top 500 customers, it’s that one of them recently told us, “I love working with the people at Bold Software – it’s just a pleasure.”

It’s comments like that that make us work so hard. The hardest, actually.

In the past, when asked about a live chat solution for Mac users, the most we could offer was the possibility of using BootCamp with Windows or running a program like Parallels. With the availability of the new BoldChat Web Client, new possibilities are opening up.

With the Bold Software Web Client, the operating system is not a problem. Access to the Internet and a standard web browser like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome or Safari give live chat agents everything they need to log in to their account and begin taking chats. A PC will still be required to perform most set-up functions, but the basics of taking chats and monitoring visits are possible from any computer.

Being cross-platform is just part of the beauty of the Web Client. With a look and feel similar to our desktop client, it’s designed to reduce training costs. Agents have all the in-chat tools they’ve come to rely on like auto-spell checking and push page. To access the Web Client, existing users can simply go to the BoldChat website, click the link to Web Interface Login in the page header and then use their existing login credentials.

The web client is available immediately to all Bold Software customers using any version of the live chat product, including BoldChat Basic, Pro or Premier and all versions of BoldCCM. In just a few simple steps – even fewer for existing customers – website owners are up and running, ready to view website visitors and chat with them.

To learn more, visit the BoldChat website and engage in a live chat with a product specialist 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Managing email inquiries is a problem many companies simply don’t realize they have. An inability to manage inbound emails causes organizations to miss sales opportunities and deliver poor service to existing customers. How many inbound email messages does your company get daily and what is your response time?

One article stated that “…poor email handling often affects more than just the customer directly involved; in this era of rapid-fire electronic communication and the blog, perturbed customers have made a sport of sharing with the world their negative service experiences.” Unfortunately, the 51% of companies not responding to customer service inquiries that we noted here, is on a steady decline. A follow-up study, again by Hornstein Associates, reported that in 2009, just 45% of companies responded to customer service inquiries within 24 hours.

Bold Software customers effectively utilizing Email Management are able to simply and effectively route emails into the correct workflow. This post illustrates two typical customers who use Email Management in their daily operations.

Read the rest of this entry »

For many of us in e-commerce or internet marketing, web analytics and pay-per-click advertising have been amazing teachers. Adwords has given marketers the ability to optimize to the penny, choosing where an ad is located for every keyword. Web analytics has taught us that we can tweak and optimize content on our website as often as we want to respond to consumer or web visitor behavior. Luckily, proactive chat rules have become pretty robust, and your rules engine in your chat application has given you a similar power over chat engagements.

Like your pay-per-click ads though, if your proactive rule is left untouched for too long, it may no longer perform at the same level it did at the beginning. Such a tool is only as powerful as the person wielding it, which means if you are doing proactive chat you should also be reporting, doing regular performance analysis, a/b testing, and conducting rule optimization whenever possible.

3 things you should be doing with proactive chat on a monthly basis:

1. A/B Test your invites. You never know what people are going to respond to, so if your application allows for A/B testing your proactive message – do it. Rotate new messaging in regularly. Pop the invites in different locations on the page. Redesign the look.
2. Run Acceptance Rate Reports. These should be analyzed monthly, if not more often. Visitor behaviors change and an acceptance rate that was once 23% might have dropped to 15%. There are enough analytics tools between your chat provider and web analytics to form a decent hypothesis about why and begin to make changes.
3. Optimize Performance. If you are waiting 60 seconds to invite, would you get more chats if you bumped it to 45 seconds? Test it for a week and see. There is no reason you can’t regularly optimize the performance of proactive chat on your website.

Proactive chat can outperform any other on-site marketing method available from an engagement perspective and a conversion perspective. And like any other online marketing tool, regularly refreshing and optimizing it is key.

Our second annual study on the effectiveness of live chat software has just been released. This year’s report is based on a much larger sample size which enabled some intriguing cross tabulation analysis. Rather than wax philosophic about the intricacies of the report’s methodology and the validity of the analytic approach, it’s probably more useful to simply reveal the end-game. Here are the five conclusions supported by the research:

1. There is a relationship between certain demographics and psychographics and those who have had experience with live chat technology.
2. There is a widening gap in attitude and behavior between those who’ve had a live chat interaction and those who have not.
3. Live chat is effective in both sales and service interactions.
4. Fear of proactively inviting visitors to chat is unfounded.
5. Certain types of e-tailers may find live chat relatively more effective.

These conclusions were reached by using multiple data points throughout the 23 page report. Some of the most interesting stats from this year’s research are:

- The number of respondents who’ve had a live chat interaction with an internet retailer rose by 4 percentage points.
- 56% of the sample indicated that live chat technology positively influenced their purchase intent
- Across 6 shopping scenarios, those that have had a live chat before chose “Live Chat” as their #1 most preferred communication method.
- Of those that have chatted before, more than 75% of them agreed that their most recent live chat interaction positively influenced their attitude about the merchant.
- Those whose last live chat interaction was prior to making a purchase rose 7 percentage points vs. 2009.
- 20% of respondents who indicated they recently shopped at an online Jewelry retailer ranked their reaction to being proactively invited as “5” on a 1 to 5 scale.

The entire live chat report can be downloaded for free.

I spent the better part of last week in sunny Orlando, Florida with two of my colleagues. While we didn’t spend much time enjoying the warm weather (a welcome change from the brutal cold here in Wichita), we did spent hours upon hours inside a trade show booth.

For anyone who’s ever worked a trade show, you already know the following to be true:

1. Comfortable shoes are a necessity. We’re talking imperative. Don’t leave home without them.
2. You can never have too many business cards.
3. Mints, water, and inviting smiles must be available at all times.

But that’s just scratching the surface. With every tradeshow comes more knowledge. Here’s some of what I picked up this time around:

1. Splurging on extra padding and thick carpet from the trade show supplier is worth every penny. Not only does the booth staff experience less physical anguish, but it keeps their spirits up. A comfortable team is a more productive team. If all you can think about is collapsing onto your hotel bed and resting your aching feet, you probably won’t be as focused on engaging booth visitors. So spend a bit now and get a bigger return later when those leads turn into sales.
2. Giveaways, while sparse during today’s economy, are appreciated if they are useful and relevant. We gave away BoldChat branded stickers from Foundog.com that can be stuck on cell phones, iPods, laptops, cameras and, really, anything you don’t want to lose. If you happen to, say, leave your Blackberry in a cab and someone finds it, they can call the number on the sticker and report it. Foundog gives them instructions for shipping the phone and the finder receives a reward. The best part of all? You get your Blackberry back. Everyone who picked up our little piece of swag commented on how useful it was. Several booth visitors slapped the stickers on their cell phones right then and there (and grabbed one or two for their kids’ iPods once they got back home). Needless to say, the BoldChat logo now adorns a significant number of mobile devices.
3. Have fun and make friends. I suppose this seems obvious, but after last week, I can assure you it’s not. Of course scoring a good booth location helps with traffic, but so does enthusiasm and friendliness. After sitting in sessions all day long before making their way into the exhibition hall, plenty of the conference attendees were there just for the open bar. But once they started walking around and checking out each booth, they were way more likely to have a chat with a group that looked like they enjoyed being there versus those who looked like they’d rather be anywhere else. Several booths were staffed by people who never stood up or looked away from their laptops. These booths had very little traffic. Is it any surprise? So smile. Get to know more about the business of each visitor to your booth. Listen and when it’s your turn, teach them about your product and why it’s a good fit. Enjoy making new, meaningful connections. These are the kind that last after you return home.

What are some of your tips for a successful trade show?

Your live chat operators are often at the front lines of your business. They can provide the first (and last) interaction your customers have. Whether they are providing sales or customer support, your live chat operators should leave a lasting, positive impression. Here are five best practices for operators to ensure they’re doing just that.

1. Approach a chat like you would a phone call, not an Instant Message. While one of the huge advantages of live chat is the ability to quickly and efficiently assist multiple customers at the same time, you still want each customer to feel like they have your undivided attention, just like they would if they were talking to you on the phone. Answer promptly and greet your visitor, preferably by name. If it will take a few minutes to pull up their account or order or look up the information they are requesting, let them know instead of leaving them hanging. If you are using a canned message and part of the message doesn’t apply to the customer, edit the message before you send it. (Nothing is worse than being at the receiving end of an obviously scripted message.) And remember, while you want the chat to be friendly and helpful, it’s not the same as IMing your friends. Stay professional and avoid any typical instant messaging abbreviations (LOL, BRB, etc.).
    
2. Ask permission. If you’d like to utilize the push page feature to “push” a visitor’s browser to a specific page of your website, ask first. If you want to launch an Active Assist session, ask. Even though the visitor will be prompted to give permission to begin the session, make sure it’s something they are comfortable with before taking that step. For some customers, live chat may be an entirely new frontier. Ensure that their first experience is a positive one.
    
3. Use BoldChat to help you multi-task. Organize the BoldChat grid using the Group-by and Column Chooser options. Pop out chats into individual windows when managing more than one chat at a time using the View feature. Set up the one-click greeting option so you can automatically greet your visitors when you click the Answer button. Set up hot keys for canned messages. With so much flexibility and so many different ways to configure BoldChat to fit the way you work, helping multiple website visitors gets easier and easier. If you haven’t attended our Getting Started with BoldChat webinar series (dates and times are regularly posted on the BoldChat home tab), be sure to sign up for the next session and get more out of your BoldChat experience.
    
4. Send an image before you send a hyperlink or a push page. Whenever appropriate, insert an image into your chat, either by using the insert image button and entering the image URL or by dragging and dropping images into your chats. Keep the visitor engaged in the chat instead of pushing them somewhere else. Plus, the visitor can request an email transcript at the end of the chat and save the images for future reference.
    
5. Enable the post-chat survey. Nothing can boost operator morale like positive feedback from customers. Sure, the post-chat survey provides supervisors with a great tool for measuring operator performance, but it also lets operators see how they’re doing. Add the survey fields to the BoldChat grid using the Column Chooser and operators can review the survey results as soon as the chat ends. It’s a proactive way of improving your chat implementation, one chat at a time.

Recently McAfee, the popular anti-virus company, published a paper about the causes of shopping cart abandonment. They cite research from the Eighth Annual Merchant Survey sponsored by PayPal detailing the leading causes of abandonment. The report said high shipping charges were cited by 46% and security concerns by 21%. McAfee goes on to talk about the importance of security in the sales process. Even though McAfee doesn’t cover it, when you look at the reasons for abandonment in detail, you see live chat can be a game changer in your shopping cart.

Here are the top-cited reasons people abandon shopping carts:

1. 46% – High shipping charges
2. 37% – Comparison shopping
3. 36% – Lack money
4. 27% – Want a coupon
5. 26% – Want to shop offline
6. 24% – Couldn’t find the preferred pay option
7. 23% – Item not available at checkout
8. 22% – Couldn’t find customer support

If you read our report on Live Chat Effectiveness, you’ll discover that live chat can reduce shopping cart abandonment. By placing a live chat button and utilizing BoldChat’s proactive chat feature within your shopping cart pages, you get a chance to address #1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. (I’m not really sure what to do about #3.) We suggest you place a proactive chat invitation on your checkout page with a timer delay based on your knowledge of your abandonment metrics. You can use our A/B testing capability to try special offers like free shipping or a discount code. You can also place an invitation on any page that displays an error code offering to help the shopper resolve the error. If nothing else, at least put a prominent live chat button in the cart and on the checkout page so your visitors can find you when they need you (#8 – 22%).

Our customers routinely report a 30% decrease in shopping cart abandonment by taking these (and other) steps. Don’t wait. Your competitors won’t.

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