Forrester Blogs » Category: chat

Oracle Purchases RightNow Technologies

Posted by Diane Clarkson on the eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals Blog on October 25, 2011

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Diane Clarkson

Less than a week after purchasing Endeca, Oracle extended its acquisition run with the announcement that it was purchasing Montana-based RightNow Technologies for $1.5 billion.

This deal is particularly interesting because, as the Wall St Journal notes, it marks the first time Oracle has bought a company  that sells application programs accessed primarily over the Internet as software as a service. This is being widely interpreted as a shot across Salesforce’s bow.

RightNow has a lot to offer Oracle. We rate RightNow as a leader in our WAVE for CRM customer service suites.  Along with salesforce.com, we called out RightNow as a SaaS solution that was faster to deploy and easier to change than traditional on-premise offerings. RightNow is well positioned to give Oracle a customer service offering for the mid market.

Like all M&A, there will be growing pains.  The companies have different strengths, sizes, and cultures.

Success will very much rely upon how effectively Oracle can differentiate between their many customer service products to ensure their portfolio targeting is optimized. With this acquisition and previous ones - such as ATG and InQuira -  there is overlapping customer service technology. It will be critical to differentiate between products such as knowledge management and chat. This will not be an easy task in this complex and ever-changing customer service technology landscape.

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Understanding How To Deploy Chat Internationally Offers Insight About Multi-Language Considerations At Home

Posted by Diane Clarkson on the eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals Blog on May 24, 2011

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Diane Clarkson

Many eBusiness professionals -- inspired by the business results they have seen at home with chat including call deflection, increased conversion, and enhanced customer satisfaction -- are expanding chat into their international Web sites.

While the elements of a successful chat transcend borders, the components to a successful international deployment can be complex. eBusiness professionals must consider their international markets, their international readiness, and what localization will be required to be successful. To assist in meeting these challenges, we published a document today called, "Taking Chat International: Paving The Way To Success Through Effective Localization."

One of the more complex challenges is managing translation. Some of the key questions include:

  • Should you hire native speakers or translate during chat sessions? Hiring native speakers is ideal, but not always practical. Alternatives include training chat reps to identify variations in spelling, grammar or vocabulary between different audiences or using translation technology.
  • What will be needed from technology to support multi-language agents? Key considerations include what it will mean to business processes when an agent supports chat sessions coming in from different languages, the impact if agents will need to search for answers in one language and push answers to consumers in another, and the impact of multiple languages on your maintaining an accurate knowledge base.
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Reinforcing Your Brand Through Chat

Posted by Diane Clarkson on the eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals Blog on May 10, 2011

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Diane Clarkson

I recently had a chat interaction with a financial services company that ended with the rep signing off with a smiley face emoticon. For a split second, I wondered if the person helping me sort through my financial accounts  dotted her "i"s with a happy face and had a favorite Jonas brother.

The chat session was helpful and I’m sure the happy face emoticon was a well-intentioned sign-off, but the interaction reminded me that an obvious brand inconsistency may not be obvious to everyone who represents your brand.

Communicating via chat is very different from the telephone. There is no customer voice tone to gauge mood. It’s more difficult to inject humor or small talk. The channel lends itself to informality that may not be appropriate.

The right brand voice is not always self-evident. Best-in-class companies train their chat agents to connect with customers with the right tone for the brand. I spoke recently with a financial services client who described that a key part of chat rep training is to help reps detect and match the level of formality in their customers’ tones. Similarly, Virgin Media provides training to its reps on the how to inject elements of the casual fun that are part of Virgin Media’s cheeky brand voice.

Reinforcing your brand through chat doesn’t just happen. But it can happen when finding your brand voice is a part of chat agent training.

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Reinventing Contact Center Culture To Improve The Chat Experience

Posted by Diane Clarkson on the eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals Blog on March 17, 2011

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Diane Clarkson

I once was told by a chat representative that “I've spent years having people yelling at me — chat is a nice change."

I’m often amazed at how elegantly contact center representatives can diffuse frustrated or angry customers, and I am not surprised that many of these employees reach a tipping point. But chat should not be the resting place for telephone-weary service representatives.

A contact center that provides an excellent customer experience is not created by accident. Kerry Bodine has recently published a document that discusses how call center culture can create an amazing customer experience, including abandoning metrics that encourage bad behavior by ditching those that don’t have a material influence on customer experience such as relieving agents from handle-time targets that focus on efficiency at the expense of customer experience.

This research is highly applicable to eBusiness professionals who offer live help via chat and manage contact centers directly or indirectly. It is tempting to get distracted by the online experience of chat and overlook the efforts that will improve the experience between an agent and a customer. Chat has the potential to be a meaningful customer experience. For insight into how this can be achieved, I encourage you to read “Elevate Chat From OK To Outstanding By Reinventing The Contact Center Culture.”

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Will Proactive Chat Invitations Annoy Your Customers?

Posted by Diane Clarkson on the eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals Blog on August 12, 2010

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Diane Clarkson

I’ve been asked several times recently if consumers find proactive chat to be intrusive or annoying. It’s true that most consumers prefer to initiate contact with customer service. However, 27% of online consumers agree with the statement, "I like having an instant messaging/online chat box appear and ask if I need help with my online research or purchase." (North American Technographics Customer Experience Online Survey, Q4 2009 [US])

And what about the other 73% of consumers? I don’t believe it is the prospect of chatting that annoys people. It is the interruption. So what can you do to annoy-proof a proactive chat invitation?

First, make sure the invitation design clearly communicates that this is a chat invite and not a pop-up ad. Also make it easy to decline. The layout and design should make declining just as easy as accepting. For me, it is that split second of looking for the “no thanks” that propels a proactive invitation from innocuous to irritating. Respect declines. In a recent transaction on Virgin America’s Web site, I was interrupted several times in as many minutes by a proactive chat invitation. That was annoying. Once a customer has declined, either don’t offer again or set explicit rules in place that incorporate the previous decline.

If you’d like more information on how to implement proactive chat, I’ve recently published “Making Proactive Chat Work," which I hope will be helpful.

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When Proactive Chat Goes Wrong

Posted by Diane Clarkson on the eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals Blog on June 7, 2010

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Diane Clarkson

Well-implemented proactive chat can offer compelling business benefits: increasing sales, reducing call center costs, improving customer satisfaction. Proactive chat availability is growing. But many companies continue to stumble in their implementation, compromising their ability to achieve these benefits.

I’ve recently had two unsatisfying chat experiences that are not unusual:

In the first instance, I was having trouble logging into my account when a proactive chat box appeared asking if I needed help. The offer of assistance began to ease my rising blood pressure. After requiring me to complete queuing questions including my zip code and the product I was inquiring about, I was told that chat couldn’t help me and directed to the 1-800 line.  Clearly the rules to trigger a chat invitation following repeatedly unsuccessful attempts to log in were misplaced. My blood pressure returned to its upwards trajectory.

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