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, boots up-sells, and improve customer service. Access to this case study is provided automatically when you download white paper #2 above.

As the methods by which website owners communicate with their visitors have grown, we became increasingly aware that our flagship product name, “BoldChat” was only partially descriptive of the technologies we sell and our customers use.  But that’s only one reason we chose to launch BoldCCM as a better way to communicate our suite offerings which integrate live chat, click-to-call, email management, and remote control capabilities.

The second reason came from macro-market forces which continue to redefine how businesses interact with their customers.  The dialogue generally revolves around convergence, integration, and single contact resolution (for both sales and support).  We thought, therefore, that a new name – one that embraced this holistic view of customer interaction – was needed.  BoldCCM was born.

CCM stands for:

Customer
Communication
Management

Two product offerings bear this name which means they both offer users the ability to interact with website visitors in multiple ways.  You can learn more about these products and the benefits of integrated website communication management by following the link.

For months now, the economy has challenged businesses of all sizes to pull out every cliché they can muster. It seems every marketing department is chasing “low-hanging fruit” while business development professionals are busy with “synergistic win-win relationships.” Meanwhile, IT departments are looking for “best practices” that will “increase efficiency” while executive teams are encouraging “paradigm shifting organizational changes.”

Though it may be counterintuitive, we think that enterprise-sized e-tailers can save money by thinking inside the box. Here’s what we mean:

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Live chat helps convert browsers into repeat online buyers, according to an article published today in eMarketer, a leading technology research website.

Using proprietary research from Bold Software, eMarketer found live chat “very helpful” for e-commerce sites. In fact, live chat was the preferred customer service option for questions about order status, promotions, shipping or cheaper services, the article said.

Live chat is valuable for “inducing shoppers to make a purchase and getting those purchasers to return to the site,” eMarketer noted.

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How quickly do you respond to sales inquiries that arrive via email? How about support issues? Stop for a minute and really think about your answer to these questions. Can you quantify them? If phrases like, “pretty fast” and “we’re not so bad” are the best you can do, then you’re like most companies.

In fact, you might be better than most. A study of small and medium-sized North American companies revealed that 51% of businesses never responded to emails with high-value purchase intent. A more recent study by Hornstein Associates shows a steady decline in customer service response rates since 2002. In 2007, only 33% of companies responded to emails sent to customer service within 24 hours, down almost half from a high of 63% in 2002.

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Are you on Twitter?

Oprah is. President Barack Obama is. Martha Stewart is. Same with Shaquille O’Neal and John Mayer. Zappos.com CEO, Tony Hseih, entrepreneur Mark Cuban and AOL co-founder, Steve Case are all tweeting away too… and that’s barely scratching the surface of the popular microblogging service’s users.

But Twitter isn’t just for the rich, famous and successful. There are 6 million users currently signed up with the service and, according to predictions by eMarketer, that number could double by the end of 2009.

Twitter is also not just for individuals. More and more businesses are tweeting, to varying degrees of success. Should your business jump on the Twitter bandwagon? Signing up for an account may seem simple enough (it’s easy and free), but the question I often hear is “then what?”

Here are a few tips for navigating the Twitter landscape as a business:

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Under tight economic conditions, why would any company give up business to their competitors? There are several perfectly rational (and economically sound) reasons. Here are a few:

1. If your product can be used a particular way, but really shouldn’t be. Our BoldMail solution is extremely powerful and our customers use it with tangible benefits to their business. However, it is a tool intended for the management of inbound emails. We turn away prospects who want to use it as an outbound email marketing solution. It can be used this way, but because it wasn’t designed to be, it would ultimately fail to satisfy them. To see how BoldMail works, check out this short video.
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If you have yet to check out the April 2009 issue of Internet Retailer, be sure to take a look. This month’s cover story, Survivor: e-Retailer, features BoldChat customer, Appliance Zone, as one of several smart retailers that are finding opportunities to reach price-conscious consumers just when brick-and-mortar stores are scaling back on staff and inventory or closing their doors all together.

Don Davis, Internet Retailer’s Editor-in-Chief, spoke to Appliance Zone about how the rapidly growing e-retailer keeps customers happy by consistently delivering rock-bottom prices. One of the reasons they’re able to keep prices so low is by encouraging their customers to use live chat software at the website.

In addition to Appliance Zone, the article also covers online retail strategies from Staples, Blue Nile, Title Nine, Drugstore.com and Newegg.com. The story wraps with a list of “5 recession-beating tips for e-retailers.” We especially like #5: Promote the Use of Live Chat to Reduce Call Center Costs.

Congratulations to the team at Appliance Zone for their part in a great story!

Thanks to products like the iPhone, Blackberry, and Google’s G1 Android-based phone, SMS communications and mobile email continue to be primary functions of a mobile device, rather than secondary functions. I’ve had an iPhone, Blackberry, and Palm Treo and, while call quality was a factor in my purchases, the main value these phones offered was easy access to other forms of communication. So it may seem like a natural progression for business-oriented live chat software to be compatible with mobile phones.

I disagree. I don’t think conducting live chat on a mobile device will help businesses with sales and customer support. In fact, I think it can harm them. Here’s why:

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We’ve just completed the most recent and comprehensive primary research study on the effectiveness of live chat ever conducted. Why did we do it? Well, we already know that live chat can drive sales and reduce support costs – many of our customers have shared data with us showing the impact our technology has had on their businesses. But many internet retailers we speak with who don’t have live chat are skeptical about it.

We thought we would take a two pronged approach to delivering the highest quality information about the fact that live chat really works.

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