In the face of an economic slowdown, the heat is being turned up on e-commerce directors to ensure they hold on to precious customers. In this grim online climate, suppliers of the latest customer relationship management software are hoping they can lift the gloom by offering anything from talking virtual sales assistants to speedier email reply systems.
Chris Ezekiel, the managing director of Kiwilogic, which specialises in the creation of virtual web assistants, believes cyber staff can slash the costs of traditional call centres and stop web shoppers logging off in frustration because they cannot get the information they need. The likes of Olympus and Cadbury-Schweppes have signed up virtual assistants and Ezekiel belives the ability of avatars to work 24/7 and communicate with thousands of customers at once, either through text messages or by talking, makes them indispensable during tough times.
"Companies go on about how call centre reps give answers in different ways. Virtual assistants always give the same information. They are never sick. They don't take holidays!"
CRM vendors are scathing about the standards of customer service on the web, partly, of course, to drum up demand. Sean Kearns, vice-president of Talisma, which works with Virgin and Bupa, believes online standards should always match offline ones. Talisma provides live online chat services so you can exchange text messages with a sales rep. The company also provides email management systems so specific emails are routed to the correct departments.
But don't people simply prefer human contact? Kearns agrees to a point but feels that basic services such as fast email replies can make a big difference to the fortunes of an e-tailer. "When you send an email and don't get a response, people get turned off." Amazon has more than 4m customers on its UK database.
Being able to access information on an individual's buying habits and being able to monitor responses to emails is a big advantage. The company centralises marketing communications to ensure customers are not bombarded with irrelevant messages. Amazon UK's managing director, Robin Terrell, says a lot of work has gone into cre ating a site that is easy to navigate but his long-term aim is to make the web store more personal.
"The more we can tailor the shopping experience to individual customers the better." Amazon aims to present customers with a home page, carrying their own name, with content that reflects their interests. The content of Amazon's new personal stores will be weighted to reflect previous purchases. It is this versatility that gives the web an advantage over traditional shops.
If you enjoy buying crime novels for example, it would be impossible for your local bookshop to stack their window with PD James books as soon as they saw you approaching. In a recent report, PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting argued that the challenge of CRM is to ensure that customers get the same standards of experience on the web, on the phone, or interacting through the television.
"It's about making sure you take an integrated approach to how you interact with customers," explains Chris Colley, a consultant for PwC Consulting's CRM division. E-commerce sites must, he says, always have a single view of a customer. If a user gets stuck on a page and rings the call centre, then, he argues, the reps should already know what is going on.
"Customers are getting more demanding in what they are expecting from who they do business with. Brand loyalty is getting less relevant now customers have so much choice. The name of the game in CRM is using information you have about a customer to make that experience as good as possible."
There is no question that CRM solutions, despite their promises to eventually turn your customers into evangelists for your e-business, can be a nightmare to implement. Axiom, a customer service fulfillment company, has the unenviable task of working with BT Openworld to speed up the delivery of its much lampooned ADSL services and is looking to automate the process.
"It sounds quite mammoth. But this is something BT Openworld is committed to. Customers don't realise how big a deal it is," says Paul Johns, Axiom's vice president of marketing. Inevitably in the current climate, CRM companies are going to talk up their offerings. But there are some innovations. The CRM firm Adeptra is launching a two-way alerting service. You can register on a site for a reminder to buy a service or product at a specific time. The alerts can be sent to you via email, fax, SMS or by voice to your phone and they come with instructions on how to carry out the transaction.
"Consumers are overloaded with offers and inappropriate inquiries. We aim to deliver specific alerts tailored to your requests. It's so relevant that you would not think of it as advertising," says Adeptra's founder, Eric Van der Kleij, who sees the service as a way of bringing repeat business to e-commerce sites. There are and will be CRM solutions that flop spectacularly. But one of the positive aspects of a recession could be that e-commerce sites start to make the experience of their customers more of a priority. This could put them in a much stronger position when the cold online trading conditions eventually start to thaw.
Web sites:
www.kiwilogic.com
