August 2000   

Evan Kirchheimer, author of the Datamonitor study, says the main reasons for abandonment include the following:

• Links to out-of-stock products
• Unexpected addition of shipping costs
• Site speed

Rob Schmults of Fort Point Partners is the author of the article, "Two Deadly Sins Of E-Selling: Omission And Gluttony Can Sink E-Sales." Schmults says that the "sins" of businesses include their inability to remove barriers that impede a buyer. Sins of omission include:

• Not considering the whole relationship with the customer
• Creating a site that addresses the product line rather than the customers' needs
• Sites that reflect internal organizational structures rather than the needs of buyers

The sin of gluttony prevails in those sites that boast all the newest software and flaming headlines -- and absolutely no direction for their customers. Blinded by the glitter, customers can't figure out where to go to place an order and they abandon their carts, half full.

The worst of these sites don't even have online ordering. Nevertheless, they send customers clicking through a flashy introduction and several dancing, singing, or otherwise annoying promotional pages to discover as much.

The Current State of E-Tailing: Re-Group for 2002?

The late 1990s saw countless companies set up shiny new dot-com enterprises or Web sites that were counterparts to their brick-and-mortar businesses, but many of these online entities lacked substance. Schmults explains it this way, "True selling -- qualifying, serving, and closing -- goes beyond the novelty factor, which until recently has been the savior of the online world."

Customers would log into sites and see little more than impressive graphics. Sometimes they found products they wanted to purchase, but if they had questions about the product, concerns about shipping, or just a simple desire for additional information, their only recourse was to send an email and then wait days or weeks for a response. Some sites offered 800-numbers, but others refused to put any phone numbers on their site. The result: frustrated customers.

With revenues for the e-commerce industry forecast at $37 billion for the year 2000, that could be a lot of unhappy surfers.

Where Do We Go from Here?

"Many of those lost transactions," says Kirchheimer, "are considered 'unsalvageable,' in the sense that better Internet-based customer service as we define it could not have rescued them; however, we calculated that 7.8 percent of these transactions would have been salvageable if the company offered good Internet-based customer service." Kirchheimer describes the components of such customer service as follows:

• E-mail management systems, to handle large numbers of inbound emails quickly and accurately
• Web-based self-service systems, which allow customers to answer their own questions on the Web via case-based reasoning or links to FAQs.
• Web collaboration, where agents can actually guide customers through the Web site to answer questions.
• Text chat, which is essentially instant messaging on a Web site between a Customer Service Representative and a customer.
• VoIP, the initiating of a Web-based voice conversation between the CSR and the customer.

Two current leaders in the eService business are Kana and eGain. Kana, a customer-contact management company has recently partnered with Andersen Consulting to form what they call a "suite of customer-facing applications." These applications support interaction via the Internet, phone, email, mobile devices, faxes, and even the old 20th-century way … in person. But their Internet innovations are what're creating a buzz.

Kyle Flaherty, Public Relations Manager with Kana, says, "We see e-service as an important part of the e-business process. In our eyes e-service can be broken down into four service modes."

Kana's service modes fit into the same categories as Kirchheimer's requirements, as follows:

1. Pro-Active Service -- Supplying customers with information they need, before they know they need it.
2. Self-service -- Empowering customers to find the information they need.
3. Assisted Service -- Creating venues that enable a customer to interact with service representatives via Web chat, VoIP, Phone, or I-Mail.
4. Virtual Assisted Service -- Using software to clone the company's best sales force, and create virtual assistants.

One of Kana's virtual assistants, "Emily," can be found on Proflowers.com. Emily will walk you through a variety of floral opportunities. It's more pleasant than filling out static forms on a Web site, and the system seems to come up with a variety of choices. Emily lacks a certain intuitiveness, though, and she seems to be frozen in the same pose, pushing the same basket of flowers.

eGain.com offers essentially the same interface options as Kana. But eGain's services can all be tested on the company's home page. Their virtual assistant, Eve, can tell you just about anything you want to know about the company and even answers questions like "What's your favorite food?" and "What's your favorite ice cream?" Photographs of Eve change according to the question you ask. She answers the food question cheerfully, but says she likes different ice creams and then frowns, stating she needs to get back to work.

While these cute and "conversational" features may not directly increase sales, they do give the impression of talking to a real person. And real people can make a difference.

Click on eGain's Live Chat and you are immediately chatting with a friendly representative, Cynthia Davis, a Sales Representative with eGain. During our chat, we not only bantered back and forth, but in another frame on the screen, she was able to take control of my browser and "push" relevant pages of information to me. This feature is called Live Web Collaboration. Cynthia called it "escorting" me to certain pages.

With a process called synchronization, a customer-service representative can also assist a customer in filling out a form during a chat session.

It's the Customer, Stupid!

This kind of virtual handholding is exactly what the Datamonitor study says is needed to improve customer relations and recover lost sales. The services also redress Schmults' sin of omission. But are they just more bells and whistles -– gluttony -- that slow sites down?

Jennifer Leclerc is Manager of Customer Care & Artists Services with iTheo.com, an online marketplace for artists. Although they don't use any of the live features, they currently use eGain's email management software.

Leclerc says, "Our site is unique in that we have two sets of customers: artists and buyers. In both cases we have a 24-hour response time." That turnaround time has helped to increase the company's sales.

E-mail management services like those used by iTheo are so essential to good eService that industry giant, Yahoo!, recently spent $428 million to acquire email communication services from eGroups.

The AMR Research firm claims that the "call centers" of the past are out. Successful companies have replaced them with "contact centers" that incorporate all the new telecommunication features. And Andersen Consulting firm says their research shows that a typical $1 billion company could increase profitability by as much as $150 million annually by developing a high-performing CRM (customer-relationship management) system.

In other words, if they don't want customers abandoning carts in the aisles, e-commerce companies need salespeople and customer-service representatives on the floor talking to their customers -- one way or another.