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!

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.

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.

SendThisFile.com is a large file transfer service that allows its customers to send and receive files that are too large for email in just a few simple steps. The company has over a million users with over 36 million files sent. With an email volume that often reaches 500 incoming messages per day, SendThisFile had difficulty managing the volume of inbound emails.

Using Bold Software’s Email Management tool, agents can quickly and efficiently respond to messages thanks to canned messages and automatic message threading. Says SendThisFile’s CFO, Michael Freeman, “[Automated threading] is a godsend.”

For inquiries that require more support, agents assign them accordingly and the support team at SendThisFile is able to quickly take ownership of the requests. Emails sent to SendThisFile are responded to within the same business day. “Customers tell us they’re surprised how quickly they hear back from us,” says Freeman.

SalesNexus is a web-based contact management software solution designed for sales people, sales management, and marketing professionals. The company is built on the premise that businesses win when their sales staffs implement best practices through efficient contact management.

Support inquiries at SalesNexus used to be forwarded to five different agents. Without clear ownership of each message, agents were never sure if an email had already been replied to, often translating to multiple replies or, even worse, no reply at all.

SalesNexus now relies on Bold Software’s Email Management tool to manage inbound emails to their support team. “The fact that we can track an email chain is huge for us,” says Bill Treat, SalesNexus’s Support Manager. “In the past, I would end up forwarding emails to another tech. With Bold Software, they can see the whole email chain and it’s so easy to use.”

Bold Software’s reporting capabilities have also played a key role at SalesNexus. “We report on our agents and when they’re logged into the system. We need to make sure they’re there when we tell our customers they will be. We also look at email activity – how many emails did I respond to today versus the other people in my team?”

But the biggest improvement SalesNexus has seen since implementing Bold Software is the lack of missed emails. “Now we know for a fact when something has been responded to. Our response time has gone up, but the biggest improvement is we no longer miss emails.”

Learn more about Bold Software’s Email Management product.

- 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.

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.

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:

Consolidate Communications: We know from our own proprietary research that a website visitor’s communication technology preference is dependent upon where they are in the buying process. In a given moment then, there are people on your site who want to chat with you, initiate a click to call with you, email you, be actively assisted, or have no communication with you at all. Putting each of these communication methods into its own box and under its own management is wasteful. Enterprises should consolidate all of these methods under one umbrella with the same interface and staff. We recently launched an integrated suite to accomplish just that. Learn more about BoldCCM.

Get in the Driver’s Seat: Taking control over your own live chat, click-to-call and email management solution is valuable to an enterprise for two reasons. First, it saves money in the short-run because it avoids costly fees associated with ongoing professional services engagements. Secondly, it enables companies to build intellectual capital around an increasingly important competency. We recommend, at least, that firms develop a working knowledge of live chat reporting metrics and proactive invitation logic.

One Chat Resolution: Many enterprises who utilize live chat for support should consider an active co-browsing or full remote control capability. If your product line is complicated or if you sell computer-related items, the ability to actively view and interact with a target customer’s PC could allow you to resolve their buying or support issue in one session. This not only provides a positive experience for the customer, but avoids costly escalations.

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.

There’s an even bigger upside, the article said: the fact that people who engage in chat return to shop is “a particularly important point during the recession, when customer retention is crucial.”

The article also included research that indicates some browsers prefer phone contact for certain types of customer service, especially when it comes to very complicated transactions. We agree. That’s why we created BoldCall Express specifically for these types of calls. We’ve found that real estate agents, doctors and lawyers are succeeding with click-to-call.

Want the full scoop? Read eMarketer’s live chat article here.

Download the most recent research on live chat effectiveness here.

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.

Thanks to BoldMail, a rich email management feature inside of our SMB and Enterprise product offerings, I am able to say that:

• In April, our average response time to sales inquiries was under 6 hours, and
• For the same time period, our average resolution time for support issues was ~21 hours.

Another BoldChat customer, SalesNexus, did even better. They post continuously updated results of their response times on their website. They get this data directly from the BoldChat system within seconds.

There are so many reasons why email programs like Outlook are perfect for managing individual email accounts. There are even more reasons why a solution tailored for individuals is a bad fit for sales and support teams.

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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:

1. Pay attention. Twitter is a virtual focus group that never stops. Leverage the Twitter Search feature to keep tabs on what people are saying about your brand, your industry, your competitors, your products and your services.
2. Talk to your customers. Companies like Comcast, Starbucks and Whole Foods are using Twitter as a way to reach new customers, address customer service issues and provide an additional channel of communication outside the usual phone/email/live chat paradigm.
3. Discover sales opportunities. Take what you’ve learned from tip #1 and start following people who are twittering about what is relevant to your business. Reply to them if it’s appropriate. Many users treat Twitter as their own personal search engine and if they’re asking the Twitterverse which live chat service they should evaluate for their business, you can bet I’m replying back and telling them to check out BoldChat. The response has been positive thus far.
4. Don’t spam – engage. Twitter users don’t want to follow someone who only posts links to their website every day. And it’s unlikely that you’ll get many followers if you’re not following anyone else back. Twitter is based on reciprocation. It’s about participation and conversation. So go ahead and post news and links to information that you think your followers might find interesting, but make sure you’re talking to them too.
5. Be human. Part of Twitter’s appeal is the ability follow users without requiring approval. For many, it’s a much more intimate way to connect with celebrities, enterpreneurs and brands than has ever been possible before. Don’t forget that while you are representing your business, your followers want to know more about the people behind the Twitter username. So post TwitPics of your team, talk about office outings and show your personality.
6. Follow us. Ok, so this isn’t really a tip, but we would be honored to have you follow BoldChat on Twitter. We’ll even follow back.

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.
    
2. If the customer needs something you don’t have. If your product or services simply will not fulfill the needs of the prospect, don’t sell it to them. Instead, refer them in the hopes that when a new need arises that does match what you do, they’ll come back. We often refer clients who are looking for outsourcing options. We sell the software that enables live chat, but we don’t offer a staffed chat solution.
3. If servicing the customer will not be profitable. Some companies are not set up to deal with the demands of certain customers. In BoldChat’s case, for instance, we often refer customers who only want to utilize our Visitor Monitoring capability on extremely high traffic websites which don’t facilitate live chat interactions. While our server infrastructure can handle the volume, it doesn’t fit into our normal back-end monitoring processes. As such, we would need to incur more cost to have parallel processing. In short, it’s simply better to refer the customer elsewhere.