Fixing the net’s missing links
Interview of Ray Power, CEO in Business Management Middle East
Over the last few years many business tools, applications and technologies have been launched. But there is one that stands out from the crowd.
This new tool enables companies to monitor and interact in real time with visitors on their website. It is commonly known as live chat or reception tools. This is not an entirely new technology but it is still fresh enough that many companies are unaware of it’s existence and the benefits it can bring to website owners.
Traditionally, the Internet has been a marvellous place for publishing information about businesses engaging in marketing activities or direct sales. A great many methodologies, even industries, have sprung up to assist companies in enhancing the user-friendliness of their websites and replacing the often complex question/answer process that clients must go through in order to perform a transaction.
Whilst the need to have a good quality website is taken for granted nowadays, there still seem to be a lot of unanswered questions as to the actual opportunities that can be derived from the online presentation of a company.
In particular, small businesses often find that the overhead of building a website and keeping it up to date can be an insurmountable task. They will typically settle for displaying a website that offers little more than information about who they are, what they do and how to get in touch with them.
This raises a question: if that is the best way to do business, why is it that receptionists and front line staff in the real world aren’t forever repeating the same information to potential clients. Is it perhaps because this information is not what clients are looking for? If this is true, then it raises another question: “If my clients never ask for this information, why do I bother to put it on my website? “
When asked that question one of the most common answer generally goes something along the lines of; “What else would I put on there? I’m trying to present my business and encourage the visitor to contact me because my clients will need to discuss the purchase with us.”
To me, this seems like having a reception area or dealership and then placing a sign on the door that encourages people to look in the window and then leave a message if they are interested in purchasing something. I’m sure that if was how shops, dealerships and corporations conducted business then our companies would be considerably less competitive.
If we use people to greet customers in the real world, why not do the same online? After all, we know that’s the way it should be.
This essentially is what live chat is all about. Simply, it has been designed to overcome the lack of the human touch online, the net’s missing link in sales. It allows businesses to proactively sell or support their customers directly through their own websites.
When we decided to address this problem by developing ActiveReception, we were very conscious of the need to take a simple approach to the problem and create an application that replicates as much as possible a real world business and sales environment.
The ActiveReception team analysed the significant processes required in a sale or support session in which humans interact and then built the application to accommodate these patterns of communication. A very basic example being that either the visitor can initiate a conversation or a sales person can be pro-active and begin chatting to a potential client. It sounds obvious, but then most good ideas do after they have been dreamt up.
There are a few important elements to consider when selecting a live chat solution that is suitable for your business:
On-Demand software vs. packaged
By subscribing to the software you can avoid heavy up-front purchase costs and mitigate the risk of your solution becoming shelf-ware. It also means you don’t need to have your own IT team running the systems and keeping your servers optimised. Your software essentially does not become obsolete through constant updates.
A scalable solution
It is very important to choose something that can grow and shrink specifically according to your requirements. If you have busy seasons and quiet seasons you should be able to add or decrease operators accordingly therefore guaranteeing that you are only paying for what you need.
No downloads
If you have to download or install something it could limit your use, particularly if you have a situation where your operators require stand-in personnel to cover for them. With ActiveReception users can login from anywhere through a browser without installing any software. Additionally, some other solutions also require the website visitor to download some code to begin chatting. We also avoid this as it can often lead to website abandonment.
Web site abandonment statistics are available through proper monitoring of a company web site. At ActiveReception we have witnessed web site customer abandonment rates of over 40 percent on some sites. These rates translate into lost sales. ActiveReception gives operators a live opportunity to convert what would have been a lost customer into a potential sale.
The above points are not an exhaustive guide to buying but should provide a basic outline. It is vitally important to understand how significant this technology is.
It’s so useful that, like the telephone, it’s going to become a part of our lives whether we adopt it now or later. This is because the very simple reason that it meets a need in the lives of our businesses.
As for where this product may go in the future, well, you’ll have to keep an eye on us for that one. For now, I’ll just say that we’re going to be helping you deliver customised advertising content directly to your individual website visitors. The potential is obvious.
To find out more visit www.activereception.com and see the benefits of an on-demand solution that is fully scalable and requires no downloads or installation to use.
About Ray Power
Ray is the architect of ActiveReception.com, with a technical background in satellite communications and a business acumen that has proven itself through a series of successful start-ups, Ray characteristically brings about unique and practical solutions in all that he does.
Ray is also the founder and Chairman of the British Chamber of Commerce, Macedonia.
Magazine website:
www.busmanagementme.com
Product website:
www.activereception.com
