Or, maybe we
should ask "would a bricks and mortar store ever consider NOT having
staff there to assist their shoppers who may need help filling up THEIR
real shopping cart?" Of course not, that would be absurd. Then why
don't most online e-commerce sites have a readily available person there
to help online shoppers?
Live web chat is becoming more and more popular among
companies serious about e-commerce. Good chat can be compared to the
fantastic service offered in the better retail stores... not intrusive,
but if you look confused or if you look around for help, they are there to
assist you, politely, professionally, and in a very knowledgeable manner.
Why wouldn't someone do that for their online stores?
****If XYZ Corporation could increase the percentage of
shopping cart completions by just 2 percentage points, how much more
revenue and profits would be the result? What if you increased it by 10
percentage points? If you average 10% completions, and each sale is $75,
and you typically have 500 visitors a day trying to shop, then instead of
having $3,750 in revenue per day, you would increase that to $4,500 per
day. If you are open 365 days a year, that is incremental revenue each
year of $273,750. All that from just 10 more shoppers in a small example
completing their purchases. For this type of example, our charge would
typically be less than 10% of the increased revenue, and suddenly, you are
a quarter of a million dollars richer. If you are a bigger player, fill in
your own blanks. The numbers become huge the more uncompleted shopping
carts your site is generating.**********
Not having the immediate help there on a website (NO
CHAT) can be compared to going to the hardware store, then when you need
help, the guys in the aprons are nowhere to be found. How many times do
people leave one hardware store and go to the competition where they get
their questions answered there, and then make the buying decision there?
How often do you think they go BACK to the original hardware store to make
that purchase? Not often....
*********The majority of shopping carts are abandoned
because the web page shopping process is too confusing *******
Excellent chat is proactive, brief and has anticipated
many of the questions and has provided a way for the chatters (the virtual
sales clerks) to answer the same question over and over, in the same way,
and always giving the right answer. Some chat even goes proactive and if
it detects that a shopper has been on a buying page for too long,
(appearing confused), the virtual sales clerk can invite them to chat.
By outsourcing your chat to an experienced group of
chatters like our staff at Trasent, you can significantly increase your
shopping cart completion ratios for a tiny fraction of trying to provide
that chat yourself.... Our staff is here to help a number of clients, and
since you only pay for actual minutes used in chat, as opposed to paying
someone to sit at your office, you only pay for minutes used. This
provides you with a very low financial risk, while providing a huge
positive upside.
So ask yourself, can you really afford not to help your
customers while they shop? Can you afford to let your competitors talk to
them while you sit silently? Which type of site would your customers
prefer? One that offers immediate, friendly, knowledgeable help or one
that sits silently while the customer struggles through your processes ?
Remember, the overwhelming majority of Americans are still on dialup
lines, so they can't call you without getting off the Internet. Chat
offers a real time alternative to the phone and to emails which all too
often go unanswered for hours or days, if they get answered at all. But,
the email problem is another topic for another day.
Alan Clayton
Trasent Corporation
aclayton@trasent.com
