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.

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.

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.

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.

Your live chat operators are often at the front lines of your business. They can provide the first (and last) interaction your customers have. Whether they are providing sales or customer support, your live chat operators should leave a lasting, positive impression. Here are five best practices for operators to ensure they’re doing just that.

1. Approach a chat like you would a phone call, not an Instant Message. While one of the huge advantages of live chat is the ability to quickly and efficiently assist multiple customers at the same time, you still want each customer to feel like they have your undivided attention, just like they would if they were talking to you on the phone. Answer promptly and greet your visitor, preferably by name. If it will take a few minutes to pull up their account or order or look up the information they are requesting, let them know instead of leaving them hanging. If you are using a canned message and part of the message doesn’t apply to the customer, edit the message before you send it. (Nothing is worse than being at the receiving end of an obviously scripted message.) And remember, while you want the chat to be friendly and helpful, it’s not the same as IMing your friends. Stay professional and avoid any typical instant messaging abbreviations (LOL, BRB, etc.).
    
2. Ask permission. If you’d like to utilize the push page feature to “push” a visitor’s browser to a specific page of your website, ask first. If you want to launch an Active Assist session, ask. Even though the visitor will be prompted to give permission to begin the session, make sure it’s something they are comfortable with before taking that step. For some customers, live chat may be an entirely new frontier. Ensure that their first experience is a positive one.
    
3. Use BoldChat to help you multi-task. Organize the BoldChat grid using the Group-by and Column Chooser options. Pop out chats into individual windows when managing more than one chat at a time using the View feature. Set up the one-click greeting option so you can automatically greet your visitors when you click the Answer button. Set up hot keys for canned messages. With so much flexibility and so many different ways to configure BoldChat to fit the way you work, helping multiple website visitors gets easier and easier. If you haven’t attended our Getting Started with BoldChat webinar series (dates and times are regularly posted on the BoldChat home tab), be sure to sign up for the next session and get more out of your BoldChat experience.
    
4. Send an image before you send a hyperlink or a push page. Whenever appropriate, insert an image into your chat, either by using the insert image button and entering the image URL or by dragging and dropping images into your chats. Keep the visitor engaged in the chat instead of pushing them somewhere else. Plus, the visitor can request an email transcript at the end of the chat and save the images for future reference.
    
5. Enable the post-chat survey. Nothing can boost operator morale like positive feedback from customers. Sure, the post-chat survey provides supervisors with a great tool for measuring operator performance, but it also lets operators see how they’re doing. Add the survey fields to the BoldChat grid using the Column Chooser and operators can review the survey results as soon as the chat ends. It’s a proactive way of improving your chat implementation, one chat at a time.

Recently McAfee, the popular anti-virus company, published a paper about the causes of shopping cart abandonment. They cite research from the Eighth Annual Merchant Survey sponsored by PayPal detailing the leading causes of abandonment. The report said high shipping charges were cited by 46% and security concerns by 21%. McAfee goes on to talk about the importance of security in the sales process. Even though McAfee doesn’t cover it, when you look at the reasons for abandonment in detail, you see live chat can be a game changer in your shopping cart.

Here are the top-cited reasons people abandon shopping carts:

1. 46% – High shipping charges
2. 37% – Comparison shopping
3. 36% – Lack money
4. 27% – Want a coupon
5. 26% – Want to shop offline
6. 24% – Couldn’t find the preferred pay option
7. 23% – Item not available at checkout
8. 22% – Couldn’t find customer support

If you read our report on Live Chat Effectiveness, you’ll discover that live chat can reduce shopping cart abandonment. By placing a live chat button and utilizing BoldChat’s proactive chat feature within your shopping cart pages, you get a chance to address #1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. (I’m not really sure what to do about #3.) We suggest you place a proactive chat invitation on your checkout page with a timer delay based on your knowledge of your abandonment metrics. You can use our A/B testing capability to try special offers like free shipping or a discount code. You can also place an invitation on any page that displays an error code offering to help the shopper resolve the error. If nothing else, at least put a prominent live chat button in the cart and on the checkout page so your visitors can find you when they need you (#8 – 22%).

Our customers routinely report a 30% decrease in shopping cart abandonment by taking these (and other) steps. Don’t wait. Your competitors won’t.

image source

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.