Congratulations go out to Bold Software Customer Jim Allen, founder and CEO of The Appliance Zone. The online retailer of major household appliance parts was named to the prestigious Inc. 500 list as the 39th fastest growing company overall in the U.S with a whopping 5,535% growth rate over the past three years. For more than 30 years, Inc.’s list has served as evidence of the significant accomplishments of business enterprises.

We profiled Appliance Zone in this case study about how they managed their rapid growth using BoldCCM. We congratulate Jim and his hard-working team on this accomplishment and wish them much success as they move forward!

An inspiring story for any marketer is the oft-cited, and still partially utilized Avis tagline, “We’re #2 – We Try Harder,” the first incarnation of which was introduced in the 1960s. The idea was to portray the company as delivering superior service in comparison to its competitors – especially its #1 competitor, Hertz. The successful campaign worked and remains today a solid example of “positioning.”

I’m unsure if anybody ever tried the “We’re #3 – We Try Hardest” approach or even the “We’re #4 – Bordering on Desperation” angle, but it makes a nice blog headline so perhaps we’re #1 in the #3 game. In any case though, it’s also true. Internet Retailer Magazine has listed us among the top three live chat/click-to-call vendors based on the number of Top 500 Retailers we serve. This is a proud accomplishment for us for two reasons. In just one year, the number of Top 500 e-retailers that decided to place their trust in us went up by over 100%. That’s right; we more than doubled it. You don’t do that by trying hard. Or even harder. You’ve got to try hardest to do that.

The second reason we think this news is momentous is because at the same time we grew, we’ve been able to maintain a superlative level of high-touch customer care. We’ve increased our staff, made technology investments, and recently launched a new support portal on our website all aimed at delivering tailored, hands-on care to all of our customers.

The best accomplishment of all isn’t that we doubled our Internet Retailer Top 500 customers, it’s that one of them recently told us, “I love working with the people at Bold Software – it’s just a pleasure.”

It’s comments like that that make us work so hard. The hardest, actually.

Customer service should be a strategy that positively impacts and feeds into your overall strategic plan. Learn to take it to the next level at the International Customer Service Association Conference, September 19-22, 2010 at the Omni Hotel at the CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia. You have until July 31 to take advantage of early bird pricing and find out about “The Power of Service.”

While you’re at ICSA, be sure to catch Rick Trefzger, COO of IS3/STOPzilla and Steve Castro-Miller, CEO of Bold Software as they present “CHATzilla: Live Chat’s Power over the Support Beast – A Success Story from iS3″ on September 20, at 10:30 a.m.

During this presentation you’ll understand how iS3, makers of STOPzilla, differentiated themselves in the fast-paced battle to stay ahead of malicious spyware programmers while their front line support personnel faced intense, day-to-day demands. Within this hyper-competitive market, iS3 had to differentiate themselves by providing a superior customer experience. Live chat has powered-up the company’s care organization while simultaneously reducing costs. In just 45 days the company was delighting thousands of customers a week by responding in real time to support issues via the live chat channel. After this case study, bolstered by leading industry research, you’ll be ready to determine if live chat is a good solution for your company and what steps are required to provide it and start delivering great service.

In the past, when asked about a live chat solution for Mac users, the most we could offer was the possibility of using BootCamp with Windows or running a program like Parallels. With the availability of the new BoldChat Web Client, new possibilities are opening up.

With the Bold Software Web Client, the operating system is not a problem. Access to the Internet and a standard web browser like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome or Safari give live chat agents everything they need to log in to their account and begin taking chats. A PC will still be required to perform most set-up functions, but the basics of taking chats and monitoring visits are possible from any computer.

Being cross-platform is just part of the beauty of the Web Client. With a look and feel similar to our desktop client, it’s designed to reduce training costs. Agents have all the in-chat tools they’ve come to rely on like auto-spell checking and push page. To access the Web Client, existing users can simply go to the BoldChat website, click the link to Web Interface Login in the page header and then use their existing login credentials.

The web client is available immediately to all Bold Software customers using any version of the live chat product, including BoldChat Basic, Pro or Premier and all versions of BoldCCM. In just a few simple steps – even fewer for existing customers – website owners are up and running, ready to view website visitors and chat with them.

To learn more, visit the BoldChat website and engage in a live chat with a product specialist 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

From June 8th to the 10th, Bold Software exhibited at the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition in Chicago, IL. To all of our customers that stopped by, thanks! It was great seeing you and we look forward to working together for another great and successful year. Next year we’re planning on a much more significant customer-centric event and user group meeting. Be on the look-out for that as IRCE 2011 in San Diego approaches. If you have any suggestions about that event, please contact Carreen Simon directly – csimon (at) boldsoft (dot com).

We all work very hard to prepare for the largest etailing show in the world, and we extend a thank you to the folks at Internet Retailer who exert tremendous effort to ensure a quality show for attendees and exhibitors alike.

We would also like to extend our sincerest thanks to Jon Abt and everyone at Abt Electronics for their tireless assistance in preparing for this show. On June 9th, Jon, alongside Bold Software’s Director of Marketing, spoke during a session entitled “Is Live Chat Right for You?” The turnout was excellent and Jon’s talk about live chat’s impact was compelling.

For those who took advantage of the cell phone charging station we sponsored, you can now say that you’re “BoldPowered.”

In case you missed any of the news we released during the show, here are the other announcements we made:

Bold Software Now Featured in Palo Alto Software’s ‘Start, Run, & Grow’

Bold Software Introduces Beta Version of Web Client

Bold Software Shares Live Chat Insights from 7 Internet Retailer Top 500

While we always like to generate new prospects at IRCE, it’s not the only reason we attend the show. We also like being part of this industry and attending an event that brings a huge cross section of that industry together. We live and work in an Internet world so it’s nice to shake the hands and look in the eyes of business partners, vendors, and customers alike.

Managing email inquiries is a problem many companies simply don’t realize they have. An inability to manage inbound emails causes organizations to miss sales opportunities and deliver poor service to existing customers. How many inbound email messages does your company get daily and what is your response time?

One article stated that “…poor email handling often affects more than just the customer directly involved; in this era of rapid-fire electronic communication and the blog, perturbed customers have made a sport of sharing with the world their negative service experiences.” Unfortunately, the 51% of companies not responding to customer service inquiries that we noted here, is on a steady decline. A follow-up study, again by Hornstein Associates, reported that in 2009, just 45% of companies responded to customer service inquiries within 24 hours.

Bold Software customers effectively utilizing Email Management are able to simply and effectively route emails into the correct workflow. This post illustrates two typical customers who use Email Management in their daily operations.

Read the rest of this entry »

For many of us in e-commerce or internet marketing, web analytics and pay-per-click advertising have been amazing teachers. Adwords has given marketers the ability to optimize to the penny, choosing where an ad is located for every keyword. Web analytics has taught us that we can tweak and optimize content on our website as often as we want to respond to consumer or web visitor behavior. Luckily, proactive chat rules have become pretty robust, and your rules engine in your chat application has given you a similar power over chat engagements.

Like your pay-per-click ads though, if your proactive rule is left untouched for too long, it may no longer perform at the same level it did at the beginning. Such a tool is only as powerful as the person wielding it, which means if you are doing proactive chat you should also be reporting, doing regular performance analysis, a/b testing, and conducting rule optimization whenever possible.

3 things you should be doing with proactive chat on a monthly basis:

1. A/B Test your invites. You never know what people are going to respond to, so if your application allows for A/B testing your proactive message – do it. Rotate new messaging in regularly. Pop the invites in different locations on the page. Redesign the look.
2. Run Acceptance Rate Reports. These should be analyzed monthly, if not more often. Visitor behaviors change and an acceptance rate that was once 23% might have dropped to 15%. There are enough analytics tools between your chat provider and web analytics to form a decent hypothesis about why and begin to make changes.
3. Optimize Performance. If you are waiting 60 seconds to invite, would you get more chats if you bumped it to 45 seconds? Test it for a week and see. There is no reason you can’t regularly optimize the performance of proactive chat on your website.

Proactive chat can outperform any other on-site marketing method available from an engagement perspective and a conversion perspective. And like any other online marketing tool, regularly refreshing and optimizing it is key.

Our second annual study on the effectiveness of live chat software has just been released. This year’s report is based on a much larger sample size which enabled some intriguing cross tabulation analysis. Rather than wax philosophic about the intricacies of the report’s methodology and the validity of the analytic approach, it’s probably more useful to simply reveal the end-game. Here are the five conclusions supported by the research:

1. There is a relationship between certain demographics and psychographics and those who have had experience with live chat technology.
2. There is a widening gap in attitude and behavior between those who’ve had a live chat interaction and those who have not.
3. Live chat is effective in both sales and service interactions.
4. Fear of proactively inviting visitors to chat is unfounded.
5. Certain types of e-tailers may find live chat relatively more effective.

These conclusions were reached by using multiple data points throughout the 23 page report. Some of the most interesting stats from this year’s research are:

- The number of respondents who’ve had a live chat interaction with an internet retailer rose by 4 percentage points.
- 56% of the sample indicated that live chat technology positively influenced their purchase intent
- Across 6 shopping scenarios, those that have had a live chat before chose “Live Chat” as their #1 most preferred communication method.
- Of those that have chatted before, more than 75% of them agreed that their most recent live chat interaction positively influenced their attitude about the merchant.
- Those whose last live chat interaction was prior to making a purchase rose 7 percentage points vs. 2009.
- 20% of respondents who indicated they recently shopped at an online Jewelry retailer ranked their reaction to being proactively invited as “5” on a 1 to 5 scale.

The entire live chat report can be downloaded for free.

I spent the better part of last week in sunny Orlando, Florida with two of my colleagues. While we didn’t spend much time enjoying the warm weather (a welcome change from the brutal cold here in Wichita), we did spent hours upon hours inside a trade show booth.

For anyone who’s ever worked a trade show, you already know the following to be true:

1. Comfortable shoes are a necessity. We’re talking imperative. Don’t leave home without them.
2. You can never have too many business cards.
3. Mints, water, and inviting smiles must be available at all times.

But that’s just scratching the surface. With every tradeshow comes more knowledge. Here’s some of what I picked up this time around:

1. Splurging on extra padding and thick carpet from the trade show supplier is worth every penny. Not only does the booth staff experience less physical anguish, but it keeps their spirits up. A comfortable team is a more productive team. If all you can think about is collapsing onto your hotel bed and resting your aching feet, you probably won’t be as focused on engaging booth visitors. So spend a bit now and get a bigger return later when those leads turn into sales.
2. Giveaways, while sparse during today’s economy, are appreciated if they are useful and relevant. We gave away BoldChat branded stickers from Foundog.com that can be stuck on cell phones, iPods, laptops, cameras and, really, anything you don’t want to lose. If you happen to, say, leave your Blackberry in a cab and someone finds it, they can call the number on the sticker and report it. Foundog gives them instructions for shipping the phone and the finder receives a reward. The best part of all? You get your Blackberry back. Everyone who picked up our little piece of swag commented on how useful it was. Several booth visitors slapped the stickers on their cell phones right then and there (and grabbed one or two for their kids’ iPods once they got back home). Needless to say, the BoldChat logo now adorns a significant number of mobile devices.
3. Have fun and make friends. I suppose this seems obvious, but after last week, I can assure you it’s not. Of course scoring a good booth location helps with traffic, but so does enthusiasm and friendliness. After sitting in sessions all day long before making their way into the exhibition hall, plenty of the conference attendees were there just for the open bar. But once they started walking around and checking out each booth, they were way more likely to have a chat with a group that looked like they enjoyed being there versus those who looked like they’d rather be anywhere else. Several booths were staffed by people who never stood up or looked away from their laptops. These booths had very little traffic. Is it any surprise? So smile. Get to know more about the business of each visitor to your booth. Listen and when it’s your turn, teach them about your product and why it’s a good fit. Enjoy making new, meaningful connections. These are the kind that last after you return home.

What are some of your tips for a successful trade show?

Our live chat white paper library has grown considerably in the last 18 months and this post will pick the three “best” ones. “Best”, for this purpose, is defined as follows:

- Ability for the content to impact a live chat implementation in a measurable way.

- Absence of fluff. [We’ve all downloaded white papers that don’t contain anything specific - just grandiose statements of superiority.]

- Real data. [The antithesis of the previous criterion.]

- Cross vertical applicability. [Live chat is in use across industries so our aim here is to provide widely relevant information.]

With these criteria in mind, our Three Best Live Chat White Papers are…

Live Chat Performance Benchmark Report
This report is based on the summative data across our entire customer base. It provides a definitive guide allowing customers to measure their performance against customer medians.

Live Chat Effectiveness Primary Research Report
Fielded a year ago, this report looks at chat from the shopper’s perspective. What it shows is that live chat’s role in the sales cycle cannot be denied. A new version of this report – an even more robust version – is currently underway. Familiarizing oneself with the inaugural report is a pre-requisite to the next version.

Abt Case Study
There are dozens of other choices we considered for this last slot but we ultimately decided that Abt’s real and impressive results were worthy of it. This electronics retailer uses live chat to increase sales, boosts up-sells, and improve customer service. Access to this case study is provided automatically when you download white paper #2 above.