There’s an interesting “couponing” opportunity here: “mention code XYZ and get $5 off on your meal,” etc. Otherwise, in terms of engagement, this product sits between text and video.
Can you imagine retail stores where nine out of 10 customers left without buying and no one ever asked them what they were looking for? Well that's the state of affairs in the online customer service world. Engaging customers proactively is the equivalent of a sales representative walking up to a customer in a retail store and kindly saying, "May I help you with something?"
Before the form-to-phone feature from eStara Inc. was available on Autobytel, “our dealers were only contacting about 20% of their Autobytel prospects within the first few hours of when shoppers filled out a form,” says Casey McCaffrey, Autobytel’s director strategic initiatives. “Thanks in large part to eStara Form to Phone, we’re able to connect dealers with hot prospects immediately, often times while the prospect is still at his or her computer and still engaged with that dealer’s offerings.”
The top online retailer Amazon.com, says live chat was not well received by customers in a test a few years ago. Click to call is a different story. Amazon has replaced the toll-free number on its site with a click-to-call service from eStara, a unit of e-commerce platform provider Art Technology Group Inc.
The reason? The agent who calls back already has the customer’s account information on screen—the customer has to sign in to get assistance—and knows what page the customer was viewing, information the agent would not have if the customer called a toll-free number, says an Amazon spokeswoman.
Click-to-call technology provider eStara announced today that it will integrate a lead generation feature to its Click Suite for Local Search Platform, known as Form to Phone.
This will be primarily geared towards auto dealers and third party auto websites and will allow them to respond quickly to online lead forms that online shoppers fill out. Dealers are prompted by phone and email to contact these leads, which is hoped to shorten response times and ultimately increase conversions.
This is particularly conducive to autos, where there is a demand for hot leads, when buyers are near the end of the purchase funnel and at the point of looking for specific inventory, and specific dealers locally (real estate possesses some of the same characteristics and could be next). Here, competition is tight and time is of the essence.
With our business and industry growing quickly, we knew it was important to find ways to efficiently capture online browsers during the buying process. eStara Click to Call allows Joann.com to do that,” said Juan Gonzalez, IT director, IdeaForest. “As we head into our busy holiday season, we are confident that we will handle transactions more effectively and increase our conversion rates by making it easy for customers to speak with us. ATG’s Commerce suite has already enabled us to provide the rich online customer experience that is driving the rapid and substantial growth of our e-commerce business. The pairing of the ATG solution with eStara makes perfect sense for Joann.com as we look to fortify the customer service experience.
eStara, a vendor of conversion products for enhancing online sales and support initiatives, has announced that IdeaForest, which owns and operates Joann.com, has selected eStara Click to Call to round out its online customer service offerings.
eStara's CEO makes a case for incorporating click-to-call technology into your automotive web experience to increase conversions and take greater advantage of high value leads.
To close the loop on this qualified traffic and to better track conversions in the offline world, the company also provides a click-to-call engine, powered by eStara, to deliver these leads to retailers.
“We’re talking about an engaged subset of users because 10 percent of them have used click-to-call in our listings,” says Toledano. This is powerful to be able to go to advertisers and say, ‘There is a real hunger for product availability among consumers at the end of the buying cycle.’”
These click to call links are provided deep into the product listing pages for individual products, which further boosts the qualified nature of the traffic. Also telling of these users’ intent to transact is the call times with retailers, which average 3 minutes according to Toledano.
If you don’t feel like typing, you can do what the Chrysler Group is doing on their site and that is to incorporate an instant call me button, or Click to Call as it is named by eStara the provider of the service.
More than 30% of ecommerce sites still wait at least one full business day to respond to Web and email inquiries. One can only guess how long some marketers with a big offline focus take to respond to an online contact, turning off consumers and creating negative viral along the way. That’s why you have to see how an online car broker uses the Internet to connect consumers and local dealers by phone within four hours. Timing is everything: revenue is up triple digits, and the number of qualified leads being contacted has increased 52%.
Using a click to call service, consumers can initiate a web-based conversation from key pages within the site with a Red Lion guest service agent, either via telephone or an Internet connected PC. Calls are automatically directed to the appropriate person or department based on the page in which the inquiry is made including reservation agents, national sales, and GuestAwards loyalty program service agents.
A major hurdle impacting all local e-commerce is that no one has successfully kept tabs on local inventory. That’s basically where eStara’s click-to-call comes in handy. Prominently featured on Krillion, eStara is getting more than 10 percent of existing visitors to use the feature to see whether items are in stock locally. Average calls last over 2 1/2 minutes.
Daimler Chrysler was looking for a solution to improve how it finds, engages and funnels prospective Chrysler buyers to local dealerships. It already has a B-to-C website to optimize the process of finding prospects, initiating dialogue, engaging the prospect and funneling them to the dealer to purchase a vehicle. But, like all OEM brands, The Chrysler Group is challenged to increase the conversion of website visitors into actual buyers. To do this, it needed a solution that would help it identify "high value" leads from its sites, respond quickly and effectively, and refer them to their local dealerships when appropriate.
Some companies already have begun to offer Web-based chat as a way to access customer service. This is a step in the right direction, but doesn’t close the gap completely; chat often can’t offer the privacy and responsiveness that customers demand. To truly leverage this new channel, companies need to tie together voice conversation with e-commerce.
This new recipe is called click-to-call. It involves technology that lets customers initiate phone calls by clicking a button on a Web page. This either launches a call to a sales or service rep using PC-based phone, or places a request for callback on a traditional phone line. This functionality adds a whole new layer of flexibility and timeliness to customer service.
Click to call, call tracking and save and send features have all earned their place in the local search market because they effectively drive traffic, while transparently displaying their performance. In addition to making it easy for buyers to connect with sellers, it’s important for publishers to track performance for local advertisers.
Visitors to Radiator.com used to convert to buyers at a rate of 1-2%, close to the average rate for online retailing, but among those that use a new call-back feature, the conversion rate climbs to 35-40%, director of sales and marketing John Thys tells InternetRetailer.com.The call feature, which is based on “click-to-call” technology from eStara Inc., presents the call center rep with an instant online view of the shopper’s live chat session as well as any browsing activity prior to the live chat session. Although the live chat feature was developed in-house by Radiator.com, it integrates well with the eStara click-to-call feature, Thys says. (The eStara “click-to-call” feature can be deployed with a separate icon that lets shoppers click into a window for entering their phone number and request a call-back, but Radiator.com instead uses its live chat tool to invite shoppers to engage a call.)
While having a fluid Web-to-phone strategy may seem daunting at first, many companies are using a technique known as cross-channel data passing to maintain a smooth dialogue with their customers. Without requiring a massive overhaul of existing CRM or telephony infrastructure, cross-channel data passing transfers information about the customer and the context of his online session--shopping cart contents, pages viewed, and error messages--directly to the call center at the time of call initiation.
With online sales growth outpacing offline sales this holiday season, there is no doubt that the era of e- commerce has arrived.
But this does not mean that companies no longer have to worry about multichannel strategies to keep and retain customers. Analysts have shown that while online commerce is becoming an increasingly popular option, most consumers still prefer to research products online, and make purchases offline — either via a call center, or a bricks-and-mortar store.
Although e-commerce is growing, most consumers still prefer to use the Internet for product research while making their final purchases either via a call center or or in person at a store, analysts say. One answer for companies seeking to minimize the overuse of call centers is click-to-call, which allows retailers to control when and where Web customers move from the Internet to the phone, writes John Federman.
Prior to investing in either a Click to Call or Click to Chat solution, it’s important to ask a few questions: Is the goal to increase overall sales? Reduce shopping cart abandonment? Increase customer service for premium customers? Handle routine customer service inquiries? Considering these questions, you can see that a company might want to deploy either technology at various points throughout the transaction process.
Red Lion Hotels Corporation announces that since implementation of eStara’s Click to Call service on its website, customer satisfaction rates have increased.
With customers occasionally reaching a point in the online booking with questions which could prevent them from completing their reservation, Red Lion Hotels sought to implement a solution to assist the customer. With eStara Click to Call, Red Lion now offers customers the opportunity to directly connect with a customer service representative when they require personal assistance. An additional benefit is that Red Lion Hotels can monitor the point in the process when the customer used the Click to Call feature and improve the process.
Committing to losing weight is a difficult decision, which makes timing even more critical in the sales process. Previously, visitors to the Jenny Craig website were required to fill out a form and wait several hours for a local Jenny Craig center to respond. With that long a delay, many people became unreachable, went to a competitor, or even abandoned the idea of making a lifestyle change in order to lose weight. To help address this issue, the company turned to Click to Call.
Behind the tool, eStara, the click-to-call provider. The company isn’t at its first try and has been bundling Yellow Pages Singapore since March 2007. Click-to-call is usually considered as a low-cost tool to generate qualified leads that completes direct prospection through call centers.
PalmBeachPost.com’s also works with eStara to direct-connect buyers to sellers by letting online buyers click on an icon in Shopping or Classifieds, or call a phone number, to call the advertiser. Calls can be pre-scheduled and are announced as “another lead from The Palm Beach Post.” The Talk-to-a-seller service is working well, with almost 3,000 users a month. It had 40 percent growth between 2006 and 2007.
The ability to save and share search results has historically shown success in building the consumer experiences of online retailers and businesses such as Amazon.com and Netflix. Internet product functionality that allows users to save and share local information across platforms, devices and media has the ability to close the consumer loop that local search sites often overlook. The Kelsey Group believes this will change rapidly as new product implementations and positive metrics push save and share functionality into the mainstream. Click-to-call technology provider eStara also has a save and share feature (branded as “Save & Send”) as part of its Click Suite for Local Search platform. This similarly allows users to save and share listings on both their PCs and mobile devices. This is meant to galvanize important listings for users by storing them across devices, which in turn drives repeat business. Tracking numbers are also included for more effective ROI assessment for publishers.
Most of Red Lion's decision to implement chat was born of its multimillion-dollar investment in completely overhauling the design of its Web site (the company launched its redesigned site about 21 months ago). Like most commerce-driven outfits, the company's online presence is particularly important as it provides customers with another method for booking reservations. So Red Lion sought a way to pinpoint any barriers thwarting site visitors from booking hotels online and ultimately to help transition a potential case of site abandonment into a completed reservation. "We wanted to make sure that we were touching those customers and retaining those customers that we otherwise might lose due to an error or frustration," says Julie Silbar, Red Lion's director of call center operations.
The hospitality company tapped eStara's flagship product, Click to Call, and implemented the solution across its reservation and hotel directory Web pages (and across its meeting-planning pages). Site users can connect immediately to live representatives over the telephone for assistance during the online-booking process. "If I've got a more complex product or I've got a shopper who's got a nice full basket that I want to make sure converts and has a little extra help, then I can selectively offer click to call or click to chat," says Kelly O'Neill, commerce product marketing director at ATG. That agent can "be fully informed as to where that shopper is in that process."
In Brief...
Kelsey Group Local Media Journal, April 26, 2007
Click-to-call technology provider eStara last week announced a new platform for interactive ad agencies to manage click-to-call ad campaigns. Known as Click Suite for Interactive Marketers, it provides a dashboard to integrate click-to-call buttons across banner ads, Web sites, e-mails and search engine marketing campaigns. This will include reporting features, as well as a dynamic number replacement for more effective ROI assessment through tracking numbers that are unique to individual keywords or Web sites. The tool has already been used by online marketers including McDonald’s, ESPN and Comedy Central.
Based around eStara’s industry leading Click to Call technology for the voice enablement of online campaigns, Click Suite for Interactive Marketers couples innovative technology with advanced tracking and reporting features to help interactive agencies build distinct and engaging campaigns, while measuring across channels.
It also seems that ATG's $48.3 million acquisition of eStara is paying off. eStara contributed a strong customer list and new capabilities such as click-to-call, click-to-chat, and call tracking. Based on its projections, management thinks the unit will achieve 2007 revenues of $25 million or more; in Q1, eStara generated $5.2 million in revenue.
Consumers rely on the web for an increasing array of activities from shopping and applying for credit cards, to booking hotel rooms and buying cars. As product and service purchases become more complex, and transaction sizes increase, customers are demanding personal and customized online experiences.
Stephanie Hobbs, vice president of marketing communications, Yellow Pages Association, noted the significance of attracting eStara as a sponsor, since it's not a member of the Association: "They're part of the search space"--which, she said, points to the efficiency of Yellow Pages services.
"It's a $24 billion slice of revenue. The single most critical thing we offer is the whole measurement piece," Hobbs said. "eStara is helping to measure search. It's not enough that people [merely] came to your site.
"Local advertisers are looking for ROI [return on investment] and they're far more sophisticated than they used to be," Hobbs added.
Superpages.com and eStara, a provider of call-tracking and conversion solutions, have signed on as sponsors of the Local Search Guide...The new sponsors are a sign that online yellow pages are making a mark in the estimated $4 billion global interactive directory market - which consists of Internet Yellow Pages and local search.
The Kelsey Group forecasts the global interactive directory market to grow at a 22.3 percent compound annual growth rate, from $4.1 billion in 2006 to $11.1 billion in 2011.
You have put together an excellent Web site that’s sleek, functional, answers customer queries and allows online customers to easily complete transactions. You’ve solved the e-commerce problem, right? Well…maybe not. You may have overlooked a key area of the sales process…cross-selling and up-selling.
With nearly four out of 10 travel bookers researching online but booking offline, you’re probably happy to get the sales you do get online without worrying about how you can up-sell and cross-sell wary customers.
With nearly four out of 10 travel bookers researching online but booking offline, you’re probably happy to get the sales you do get online without worrying about how you can up-sell and cross-sell wary customers.
While concerns about the security of using credit cards online to pay for their purchases still plague many consumers, a recent Forrester Research report found that hotel and travel companies can potentially expedite the online sales process, and boost the total order by up-selling and cross-selling relevant products, simply by implementing tools such as online chat and click to call.
According to a recent Forrester Research study, 76 percent of marketers had no way to determine ROI from their lead agencies, with 69 percent saying ROI was too difficult to measure. For this reason, there’s a growing trend of agencies partnering with technology providers to help add that extra element to campaigns.
As more and more e-mails and banner ads flood our computer screens, response rates drop, and marketers are forced to think beyond the click. Companies are realizing that by integrating campaigns across channels, they can create truly unique branding experiences for consumers and still track results for performance-minded clients.
“As the leading directory in Singapore, it is important for us to offer the latest features and strategies to continue to be the guide of choice for users seeking precision searches and advertisers targeting to connect with our pool of ready buyers,” said Yellow Pages Singapore’s Vice President of Digital Media and Customer Management Chris Rogers. “eStara’s Click to Call technology bolsters our already strong advertiser tool box and provides us with a differentiator that will help drive our ROI for customers’ business listings.”
eStara announced this week that it will power the new click-to-call functionality of Yellow Pages Singapore’s online directory, Yellowpages.com.sg.
YPS is the largest directory publisher in Singapore and its online directory is the most trafficked online business directory there, according to Hitwise. eStara’s platform will allow YPS’ online advertisers to receive phone leads from their listings and detailed reporting on their associated return on investment.
It is no secret that consumers are increasingly relying on Internet based search to find local products and service businesses, moving mind-share away from traditional print yellow pages and other classified advertising. But I’m not convinced it’s the ultimate experience it could be.
Just think of your own experiences as a consumer – maybe you’ve searched the web for that product or service, and you are now ready to make your buying decision. But what method do most of us prefer to use to make that purchase? And do most consumers take that buying action immediately? You might be surprised to find that the preferred method for contacting local advertiser is still…The telephone.
Since Marketing Communications Manager Dan Obregon at eStara was good enough to put a "click to call" link right in his e-mail to me about the event, I decided to call him and ask a bit more about this product, and why it's a good idea.
I was familiar with click-to-chat, but not click-to-call. When you click, a web page asks you to input YOUR phone number, and completes the call to your phone, either immediately, or later. Dan tells me that this approach means that the person you connect with on the phone (call centre agent, most likely) would then have access to your shopping cart, browsing history, or similar types of data. Hopefully meaning they can be more helpful to you.
Click-to-call offers the power of voice, which can help explain complex issues and close sales faster. Many consumers still value this type of interaction and are much less likely to buy certain products without discussing it with a human. Chat enables customer service agents to handle multiple Web visitors at once and allows consumers to interact with an agent to answer a few questions.
However, in those instances where customer contact is desired or required, click to call not only helps offer quality service, but enhances the customer experience and increase sales conversion as well.
But not all click to call deployments are equal. Before deciding which solution is right for your business, it’s important to understand the deployment options for click to call functionality.
Click to Call allowed customers to connect with a Spanair agent directly from its website, plus eStara’s real-time reporting helped Spanair identify sections of its site that would lead to abandonment.
“Nothing frustrates customers more than having to ‘start all over again’ with a customer service representative when they transition from the Web to the phone,” said John Federman, CEO of conversions solution company eStara in a press release today.
I couldn’t agree more. Last week I was booking a flight through a travel company I’ll leave un-named, and at the end of my booking process, an error appeared. I didn’t want to click “buy” until I understood the problem, so I grudgingly picked up the phone and dialed the call center, bracing myself for the fact that I’d have to start from scratch -- or even worse, lose the great low airfare I found after painstaking research. Long story short, I was on hold for 15 minutes and eventually prompted to leave a message, so I hung up the phone and booked on another site for a higher price.
European airline Spanair is using eStara’s Click to Call on its website as part of its initiative to identify key points of abandonment during booking process and reduce customer attrition.
ATG, which acquired eStara (a provider of VoIP-enabled click to call, click to chat, and call tracking offerings) in 2006, is known primarily for its strengths in e-commerce and e-service. "Because many B2B sites have shifted to enabling consumer shopping capabilities, ATG's core e-commerce functions have positioned ATG to support B2C and B2B sites," writes Gene Alvarez, Gartner research vice president and report author. "ATG's scenario server is appealing in B2B and B2C models because it enables the ability to navigate customers through the buying process."
A recent analyst report published by Forrester Research cites that cross-channel tools like click to call “give travel technology pessimists the confidence and comfort to engage with you online, providing a virtual safety net for the customer should a problem occur.” (Understanding Travel’s Technology Pessimists, Forrester Research, January 18, 2007). In Spanair’s case, the airline found that users overlooked error messages generated when required fields were not completed during the reservation process. Oftentimes, these users would not understand why they could not proceed, so they would abandon the site completely. Spanair needed a way to rescue these customers, so it turned to eStara’s Click to Call.
With online sales growth outpacing offline sales this holiday season, there is no doubt that the era of e-commerce has arrived. But this does not mean that companies no longer have to worry about multichannel strategies to keep and retain customers. Analysts have shown that while online commerce is becoming an increasingly popular option, most consumers still prefer
to research products online, and make purchases
offline — either via a call center, or a bricks-and-mortar store.
While the site doesn't guarantee the product information displayed is real-time inventory it offers "click to call" from eStara so that consumers can call local stores and ask whether items are in fact in stock.
For the appliance service, Krillion is crawling national retailer feeds for appliance availability, store location and sales info. Retailers include Home Depot, Lowe’s, Best Buy, Ikea, Sears (and in the Bay Area, Orchard Supply Hardware). In addition to providing very good product and price information, Krillion provides a click-to-call capability via eStara, allowing consumers to check on inventory in a local store (since there is no inventory function, per se).
With the addition of Save & Send, eStara rounds out its suite of tools for tracking and measuring local ad effectiveness. Save & Send capabilities, which are integrated into eStara’s Click Suite for Local Search, allow consumers to save or share the advertisement in whichever electronic format they desire – on their desktop, on the Web or on their mobile device – predisposing them to make repeat purchases from their preferred merchants, and giving publishers the ability to measure ROI more accurately for advertisers.
Another early example of this kind of multimodal marketing was on display last year in a campaign by European car maker Opel, a subsidiary of General Motors. Opel, looking to herald the launch of a new convertible, emailed 80,000 addresses in its database, asking recipients to supply their phone numbers. In exchange, Opel promised to enter them into a sweepstakes, and not to share the phone numbers with anyone.
Interest was surprisingly high: 16,000 people sent in their phone numbers, and were greeted with a second email providing a link to a Web site. Once there, consumers viewed a comedic three-minute movie, personalized with their names in one scene. Moments later, when a character in the film is seen dialing a phone, the consumer’s own phone rang, with a 30- second message from the character inviting the consumer to test drive the new car. The innovative combination of media snowballed into a viral mania, with recipients providing email addresses and phone numbers for their friends so they, too, could get “called” by the Web movie.
In just a few weeks, the campaign generated 450,000 calls. This, says Elisabeth Jane Bertrand, a Belgian interactive marketing consultant who worked on the project for eStara, a division of e-commerce solutions provider ATG, “is a typical example of how cross-media integration works. This was a bilateral approach, using two media channels.” Because of the personalized component, she says, “you see a much higher level of consumer engagement with the brand.”
This information provides the foundation from which financial services companies can provide the right kind of customer interaction, and increase online conversion rates without driving up CRM costs. Financial services companies can use existing, less costly customer information tools (Click to Chat, FAQs, search, email) to assist with non-transactional customer exchanges, and utilize services like Click to Call to help close complex transactions such as loan applications or new account inquiries.
Click-to-call and call tracking are growing in popularity as ways to monitor the gap between online marketing and offline sales. Onlne directories and Internet Yellow pages sites offer the features to the businesses they list not only as a convenience to shoppers but as an important metric to let those advertisers source their call traffic. That helps the directories and IYPs by crediting them with generating phone sales leads.
But if consumers simply note down business-listing numbers for later use or call a second time using a click-to-call number, that credit can evaporate. Advertisers lose visibility into that call data, and the directories lose some of the shine from the return on investment they can show their clients.
Call-based conversion enhancer eStara announced today that it has launched a new Save & Send feature that will let users send online directory and classified listings or search results via text message, Skype IP voice, e-mail or fax.
eStara, a division of e-commerce provider ATG since its acquisition last September, is rolling out the Save & Send feature as part of its Click Suite for Local Search. Other capabilities in the product suite include click to call services, call tracking, and call recording.
Online sales company eStara today launched a new program that will allow Web participants to send online classified listings, search results or online directories by using Skype, SMS, email, or fax. By adding the new features that will let buyers share information and prolong local searches, eStara adds to its existing business model of providing conversion options for online sales boosts and support.
Businesses have big expectations for the little button. They look to it to drive new sales by leveraging inbound customer queries and serving as a lifeline to customers engaged in online transactions. Continental Airlines installed click-to-call and notched a 35 percent sales conversion rate, approximately double the traditional sales conversion rate in the airline's reservation group. Even better, abandonment of its Web site by prospective passengers dropped 25 percent. In most cases, click-to-call integration is a matter of remotely adding a modest amount of JavaScript code to the Web site, some applications integration and training of the call center staff. Calls are routed to the existing telephony infrastructure. Some click-to-talk vendors, like eStara, operate on the ASP model as a hosted service. Many vendors provide reporting and tracking features.
In the past, whenever a customer had a question online, companies were quick to offer them FAQs, and perhaps an email address. While these self-help strategies are fine for handling routine questions, they are ineffective at turning undecided prospects into customers. The days of using the Web as an interactive brochure are long gone. Hotels need to do much more to assure they turn online lookers into bookers. In addition, now that the competition is just a click away, customers will not hesitate to leave your site (and your brand) if they do not get quick resolution to their problems...
Recently I added the new ‘Discuss by Phone’ widget below the posts on the blogs to refect the flexible usability of eStara’s Click to Call feature on any kind of website
If your company’s policy is offline-only in terms of direct sales, how would you effectively use the Web site to drive prospects to the call center and retail outlets? Just in time for all those New Year’s resolutions, see how one dieting program marketer is using a Web-to-phone system to not only dramatically improve conversions but also better track customers and prospects ... not to mention synching up national marketing with stores to give the campaign a truly local feel.
Company