InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
September 27, 1999
E-Service At Hub Of Online Push
By Lenny Liebmann
Why mess with success? Like those who buy his bikes, Regan wanted to push harder. Even with things going well, a Web self-service application became strategically important to Specialized Bicycle. "Web-based customer interaction is the killer app for branding," Regan says. "It's how we're going to drive nails into our competition's coffins while we have the momentum."
According to Regan, the deployment of multifaceted online customer-service facilities is helping the Morgan Hill, Calif., company--which sold more than $300 million worth of high-end mountain bikes and accessories last year--make its brand name better known. And branding is necessary for what he describes as a lifestyle product. "No one `needs' a $3,000 bike," he says. "So you're not only competing against other manufacturers of premium bikes, but also against other things that the consumer can spend their money on."
Like many companies, Specialized Bicycle "used to look at phone calls as a bother, because we thought of customers as the dealers' problem, not ours," Regan says. "So we had someone fielding about 500 calls a day. With that kind of call volume, they really weren't in a position to do much of anything for the customer." Similarly, Specialized Bicycle fell short when it came to handling the E-mail generated by the Contact Us link on its Web site.
Last year, Regan realized that more than 80% of customer-service callers had Web access. In fact, most of them actually got the company's phone number from the site. "The fact that they ended up having to call us made it clear that they weren't able to find what they were looking for on the site," he says. "That meant that we were frustrating the people we should be bonding with." And with more than 12,000 unique visitors to the site every day, that meant a lot of damage.
As a result, Regan looked for a solution that would let Specialized Bicycle interact more effectively with customers online. He needed a system to create an easy-to-navigate list of frequently asked questions based on customer needs. He also wanted a better system for handling E-mail queries. And, since he didn't have significant IT resources to spare, he needed a system that would be easily installed and maintained.
Right Now Web, a Linux application from Right Now Technologies Inc., lets Specialized Bicycle dynamically create and refine the content of its frequently asked questions. It automatically puts up front the topics that visitors search for most often, and it also lets Specialized Bicycle track E-mail queries using a trouble-ticket system and online content to answer questions quickly.
The new system--which provides HTML content generation, knowledge-based management, and help-desk ticket tracking--has completely changed how customers and potential customers interact with Specialized Bicycle online. The system for creating pages on frequently asked questions means that customers browsing the site for answers find them more often--reducing call volume and improving visitors' perception of the site and the company. And site-generated E-mail no longer disappears into the ether. "No one gets an anonymous E-mail reply from us anymore," Regan says. "There's a name of a Specialized Bicycle employee attached to it, so the customer has a clear sense that they're dealing with an individual who cares about their needs."
The new wave of Web-focused developers such as Right Now are changing the rules of customer service, says Steve Robins, senior analyst at the Yankee Group. "Established vendors of client-server customer-service applications are trying to leverage their existing products to provide Web-based service solutions," he says. "But Right Now is making E-service much easier to get started with."
The Right Now application is providing a core set of functions around which Regan can transform Specialized's site into a powerful customer bonding and branding engine. "If we don't build a strong sense of affinity with our company, a Specialized customer can easily walk into a dealer and get steered to another company's product by a store salesperson," says Regan. "But if we use branding strategies to draw them into a community of loyal Specialized customers, that's a lot less likely to happen."
Affinity Marketing
Right Now president Greg Gianforte says marketing managers are just beginning to understand how to apply the Web's scalability and immediacy to customer service and support. "If customers know they can go to your site and get answers fast, they will return over and over again," he says. "Once you have that kind of traffic, you can test new marketing messages and do all kinds of cross-selling--without any of the time and expense associated with more conventional techniques."
Gianforte has plenty of advice for companies contemplating the development of online customer- service content. One of his main dictums is not to wait until you've built the world's most comprehensive information base before you get running; it's a work in progress. "Eighty percent of the people coming to your site are searching for 20% of your content," he declares. "If you can get that content up now, you'll see a significant reduction in E-mails and help-desk calls right away."
To demonstrate the speed with which effective E-service content can be developed, Gianforte's company is creating free pilot sites for prospective customers within 48 hours of their queries about Right Now. If you are interested in the product, salespeople go to your site and gather information they believe visitors might want to find out about quickly. That way, you get to see what your E-service content would look like right away, compared with a conventional client-server E-service system that takes weeks to get up and running. "People are blown away when they see how quickly they can enhance their site with E-service content," he says.
That kind of rapid deployment can mean a lot to a company like Specialized Bicycle that wants to win on the Web but can't throw legions of Web developers into the battle. "Branding is going to become more important on the Net, as everyone becomes able to put anything anywhere any time," Regan says. "And E-service is going to be indispensable in building a strong online brand."
Lenny Liebmann is a Highlands, N.J., writer and consultant specializing in technology-management issues. He can be reached at ll@exit109.com.
ike Regan, senior global E-marketing manager for Specialized Bicycle Components Inc., seems to be in a good place. The 24-year-old company is growing by about 26% annually. It has a global distribution channel and strong brand awareness. And It sells a premium product that affords healthier margins than most competitors get.
To keep biking aficionados as customers, Regan says, it's critical to develop a very strong affinity with them. That's not always easy when you sell your products through 1,100 independent dealers in the United States and others worldwide, as Specialized Bicycle does. And it's definitely not easy to achieve with a brochureware Web site and conventional telephone support.
Of course Specialized Bicycle isn't the only company using dynamic frequently asked questions and personalized E-mail to practice "affinity marketing" online. Ice-cream company Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc. is implementing similar practices. "Some companies have customers--Ben & Jerry's has fans," says Lucas Jenson, the Burlington, Vt., company's marketing strategy and research manager. "Right Now gives us one more way to increase our interaction with customers." Jenson also says the amount of E-mail that has to be manually routed from the site has dropped by more than two-thirds, eliminating the backlog of customer communications that resulted from the site's sudden and unexpected popularity.
InformationWeek Executive Report
Back to This Week's Issue
Featured Microsite
