Selling any product on the Web requires focus. It means finding your audience, knowing what they want and delivering it to them elegantly: that is, in a way that they will find comfortable. Beyond getting the clickthroughs and conversions, there needs to be a customer experience which works for each audience and each person. It is true, for example, that each generation (as in age) generally profiles differently in its adoption and tolerance for different types of technology.
In many ways the challenge we are dealing with is understanding our clients better.
Increasingly there is an interesting, if somewhat obvious (in retrospect) realisation, that often clients need to and want to talk to a real person. This is enhanced by the idea of communities and that by creating human contact it is possible to create more of a community-oriented atmosphere.
This brings together two powerful forces: the call centre and the ability to ask questions and discuss options and the convenience of the Web and the content it provides.
It helps a lot to make the shopping experience more real, more fun and easier. In a study by Yankelovich Partners, a retail market research firm in the US, 63% of Web users said they would be more inclined to buy with human interaction. There is increasingly better software available to enable realtime text communication between customer service agents in the contact centre and Web shoppers, even allowing the agents to push Web pages as needed.
It is then possible to place links to a live help environment, allowing customers to ask questions and ask for help or advice in completing their transaction with the organisation.
This realisation in terms of re-introducing human contact into an increasingly digital world strongly supports the move towards a more holistic, integrated approach, resulting more in a customer contact centre than simply a call centre. Technology is a powerful enabler; however we need to constantly focus back on the real business objectives.
Better understanding
In many ways the challenge we are dealing with is understanding our clients better and understanding our markets better. What clients buy, how they like to buy, why they buy and what keeps them returning. As importantly, we are learning why they do not return.
We are moving strongly from a mindset of talking out to our clients to having a dialogue, allowing our clients to talk back to the organisation. Increasingly we view it as a learning relationship. Much of the future value to the client is the continuous refinement of the knowledge and the organisation`s ability to apply that knowledge to him/her, as an individual.
We are rapidly moving beyond the early interpretation of the call centre as a black hole into which the caller would throw complaints and recognising its potential as an active contact centre where the organisation can communicate with its communities of individual clients. A place where the organisation can demonstrate its knowledge about its clients and their individual preferences. Where the organisation can, through a convergence of clever technologies and real care about the client, provide a positive experience.
It is the place in which the company can showcase its products and offerings and where it can reach out to its clients, using the many technologies at its disposal.
Although the dynamics of Web marketing are different, there are some principles which remain constant, not the least of these being the retention of clients. Just as there are some very quantifiable costs associated with acquiring a new client in the physical world, this is true of the Web.
It is therefore equally important that the focus goes into retaining clients on the Web, making their experience easy, and appropriate to their own style or requirements and allowing them to work through their medium of choice whether that is the Web, the telephone or a combination of these.
This goes beyond either the call centre or the Web: at last the organisation is meeting the customer, up close and personal.
Aletha writes for ITWeb in her personal capacity.
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