InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
July 12, 1999
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Big-Ticket Needs
Geico Corp. is using such a solution on its Web site, which makes sense for the insurance company because policies are complicated and relatively expensive products. However, companies can't afford to offer this technology to customers asking about clothing, flowers, or other relatively inexpensive items. Another drawback is that customers need to have separate phone and Internet connections; otherwise, they have to disconnect from the Internet to receive the call.
Fidelity Investments, the mutual fund company in Boston, is considering deploying a click-to-talk feature using an IP-telephony system from WebLine Communications Corp. Bruce Ferland, executive VP of electronic commerce at Fidelity, says the company will test the technology with 1,000 high-end customers who are not only worth the extra attention, but also have the technical acumen to configure their browsers for such a service.
Ferland says that click-to-talk is a crucial competitive weapon. Charles Schwab & Co., for example, recently launched a pilot of click-to-talk in Canada. Valuable customers would certainly appreciate the convenience of the feature, and it could influence their choice of online brokerage companies, Ferland says. But he says he worries that a click-to-talk feature could result in call centers being overwhelmed, so Fidelity will likely use the feature on pages available only to high-end customers.
While click-to-talk still poses a few substantial technical and logistical challenges, new Web chat technologies that integrate with call centers provide the same immediacy as click-to-talk for answering customer questions but don't require the consumer to have any special technology or equipment.
Web chat has been around almost as long as the Web, but a new wave of off-the-shelf products is helping retailers seamlessly integrate such technology with their customer-service operations. Fry says 1-800-Flowers is successfully using such technology to answer questions from customers on its Web site. For example, customers use the feature to double-check that their flower orders will arrive on time or to make special requests.
Chat Staff
This solution doesn't require consumers to install and configure client software. That's a big improvement over many previous click-to-talk approaches, which focused on IP-telephony and voice communication via the computer, says David Fry, president of Fry Multimedia Inc., an Ann Arbor, Mich., company that has designed Web sites for some of the country's leading Internet retailers, including Eddie Bauer, Godiva Chocolatier, and 1-800-Flowers.
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IP-telephony click-to-talk applications require the customer to install and configure client software, and have a microphone and a dependable Internet connection. However, the phone companies' callback solution isn't without its limits. Fry says the services are only cost-effective for big-ticket purchases, since each call runs $8 to $10.
The key to this technology, Fry says, is having Internet-experienced customer-service personnel working the chat rooms. The extra benefit over telephone call centers is that representatives can answer more than one call at the same time without the customer being aware of it.
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