The
ABCs of “Click to Call”
Feb 28, 2006
10:22 AM , by John Federman
Recently e-commerce media buzz has focused around click-to-call
technology, with Internet search giants Google and Yahoo! testing
ways to enable immediate Web-to-phone connections between buyers and
sellers through their local search ads. But what exactly is
click-to-call, and what does it mean to you?
Let’s start with a quick primer on the technology. Click-to-call
services let users click a button embedded on a Website, an e-mail,
an ad banner, a search engine, or an online directory listing and
immediately speak with a customer service representative. Customers
can either place a call over the computer using voice over Internet
protocol (VoIP) technology or request an immediate call back from
the advertiser by entering their phone number. Unlike a toll-free
phone number, click-to-call services allow companies to monitor and
control who, what, when, and where online visitors can migrate from
the Web to the phone sales channel.
The reality is that self-service cannot always be achieved
online, particularly regarding complex purchasing decisions. For
high-value transactions, there’s nothing like the power of voice for
closing the deal. Jupiter Research has found that when it comes to
questions about billing and delivery, product support or service,
and general order inquiries, most consumers prefer phone contact
over any other alternative, including e-mail, self-service tools,
and text chat.
Companies are getting smarter about who are on their Websites and
are taking more aggressive steps to optimize their Websites to
increase customer loyalty and avoid site abandonment. In addition,
companies are recognizing that an ordinary telephone number on a
Website creates a blind spot that prevents them from using customer
relationship management (CRM) and business intelligence analytics to
improve the online sales experience. An increasing number of
organizations are using click-to-call services as a bridge between
online and offline channels to address this and are experiencing
such benefits as increased sales conversion rates and shortened call
handle times.
The need for better cross-channel communication practices was
first highlighted in another Jupiter Research consumer survey, which
showed that two of the most common reasons online consumers contact
customer service are pricing issues and technical support. Failing
to quickly answer these questions leads to lost sales and may create
a negative customer experience. Jupiter also found that by employing
a click-to-call feature, companies could increase online revenue by
as much as 45%.
Click-to-call technology is driving material benefits for
companies ranging from Amazon.com and Dell Financial Services to
Macys.com and Sears.com. Using click-to-call services, companies
have found on average
* a 22%-25% reduction in Website abandonment from pages with
click-to-call services
* as much as a 100% increase in transaction conversions from
click-to-call users compared with toll-free callers
* 88% of click-to-call users say they are more likely to contact
a company that offers a click-to-call service than one that does
not.
While click-to-call technology has generated great benefits for
many companies, multichannel merchants in particular need to think
about their business needs and how they can make a click-to-call
deployment effective. Not all customer contact is cost-effective.
For this reason, it’s important that you build a click-to-call
strategy that adds to the customer experience without heavily taxing
your contact center and existing CRM resources.
A click-to-call service provider should provide you with the
right customer contact tool at the right time to minimize costs and
maximize online sales opportunities. This means you should select a
click-to-call service provider that will be able to identify where
your Website loses the most high-value transactions and know how and
when to engage high value customers.
With this information, you can offer the right kind of customer
interaction and increase your online conversion rate without driving
up CRM costs. You can use less costly customer information tools
(text chat, FAQs, search, e-mail) to assist with nontransactional
customer exchanges and reserve click-to-call to help close complex
sales.
Companies that use click-to-call services are also increasing
their use of conditional link deployments. These dynamic deployments
allow a company to collect data on a Website visitor and broadcast a
click-to-call button based on his profile and behavior while
visiting the site.
Through cross-channel data passing, the context of the customer’s
Web session is preserved. Should the customer decide to contact you
via a traditional or conditional click-to-call button, the contact
center agent will have access to variable data that is collected
during the conversation so that he can meet the customer’s needs.
This alleviates the usual anxiety on the part of a customer of
having to “start all over again” when he decides to leave the Web
and make a phone call. What’s more, the data enable CSRs to identify
where the caller was having trouble on the Web and “push” pertinent
Web pages out to the customer during a click-to-call session by
simply pressing keys on their telephone touch pad. The CSR is then
able to handle customer inquiries with greater ease by providing the
customer with visual references while they talk.
Most companies find that if they were to deploy click-to-call
services on every page of their Website, 30% of the buttons would
drive 80% of the transaction-critical calls. Following the initial
launch with a click-to-call service, companies are able to scale up
or scale back the deployment of click-to-call buttons to benefit
from this rule.
Click-to-call services are improving online sales conversion
rates, reducing Website abandonment, and delivering higher customer
satisfaction for hundreds of businesses around the globe.
Click-to-call has arrived, and savvy marketers across all industries
are making it work for them to improve online sales conversions and
customer satisfaction.
John Federman is chief executive officer of eStara, a
multichannel communications solutions provider.
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