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Build More Customer Interaction Into Your E-Business, The Marketing Partner Sponsored Event Marketing to Generation X business owners Generation X are consumers 20-40 years old
May 16 6:00 - 8:00pm
Seminar and round table discussion.
Build More Customer Interaction Into Your E-Business, There is a growing trend to build more customer interaction into the e-commerce component of business web sites and to make the customer's experience a lot more user friendly. It makes perfect sense. People shopping on the Internet-whether it is a B2B transaction or consumer-oriented-want to find and purchase what they're looking for quickly. If they come to your web site and don't get the information they need when they want it, or the transaction takes longer or is more difficult than they are willing to endure, you've lost them and they're off to a competitor's site. That's where customer interaction, or customer relationship management (CRM), comes into play. CRM is an effort to make shopping or conducting business across the Internet easier, much more responsive and much more personal. It has sprouted a whole industry, and it can increase your sales potential. Customer Interaction Can Be Very Sophisticated CRM not only assists customers with their transactions, it can guide customers to related items, enabling you to up-sell or cross-sell on your web site. Such comprehensive customer interaction generally requires a call center integrated with your web site, as well as plenty of support facilities and software depending upon the needs of your business and your customers. This could include a fulfillment and order processing center if your business deals with high volume inventories, e-mail response capabilities, software to track customers' activities on your web site every time they visit, and live Web chat capabilities. Or It Can Be Less Involved For your business, the interaction may not need to be as sophisticated or involved, but it is no less important. For instance, your customers may only be concerned about ordering problems, or they may want to relay special shipping instructions or just talk to a person live. In situations like these, a quick, but not instantaneous response, could be appropriate, so some form of CRM is required. After all, you don't want your customers to get lost in a maze of voice mail or to find themselves put on hold indefinitely. Customer interaction for this type of circumstance will still require integration between your web site and your call center. Your web site should have a contact button on it that lets your customers know a representative of your company will call back within a specified time. It should also include an area where customers can type in instructions or information. When activated, this information should go to your call center where a representative will call your customer back. Make sure the call is prompt or within the time frame indicated on your web site. The nice part is that when the call is made, your representative will have your customer's order on his or her computer screen. That way, your representative will be able to respond any order changes your customer makes right then and there. Outsourcing May Be Your Answer If your business requires an instantaneous response, 24-7 service capabilities, customer tracking and live Web chats, you may find that the cost of deploying your own in-house CRM solution could be prohibitive. A better alternative might be outsourcing that service to a reputable company that specializes in customer interaction for e-commerce. Make sure the company you contract with will be able to provide representatives that understand your business, products and services. There are companies out there. Just be sure they meet your requirements.
The Marketing Partner comments and submissions to info@mpus.com. Previous issues are on our website at http://mpus.com/tmp/. Marketing Partners Incorporated 410.309.0596 Copyright ©2002-2011 Marketing Partners Incorporated, All Rights Reserved http://mpus.com/
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