Ifbyphone Blog

Only a handful of e-marketers include customer satisfaction in their Web marketing metrics, according to Antone Gonsalves at Intelligent Enterprise. This data, from a recent eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit survey, shows just how far Web marketing can detour around the reality-based world.

It doesn’t take a rocket to understand that customer satisfaction drives that all-important metric, conversion rate – or that without it, conversion rates nose-dive.

While online surveys are useful for gauging customer satisfaction, they force answers into predetermined boxes – they’re black and white. Adding voice to the online marketing mix adds the Technicolor of inflection, phrasing and context to build a full color picture of customer satisfaction.

For example, “I’m working on my car and I need to remove a bolt from the carburetor. I had to look all over for the right wrench and then when I finally found the automotive wrenches, there was hardly any information,” supplies insight about how customers expect to navigate your store or site — and why they might abandon before buying. Plus, it delivers context information for keyword optimization and ad buys.

The familiar click-to-call supplies the mechanism for smoothly incorporating voice into the online mix. Here’s how:

Ask customers to participate in a brief survey by simply clicking on a phone icon on the page or in an email. This connects them directly to a voice-directed survey that includes multiple choice as well as open-ended questions. While you have them on the phone, you can even immediately route unhappy customers to a service representative, pre-briefed from the survey results.

You can also reuse the results to add customer comments to your website for a more compelling testimonial. Let’s face it, hearing and talking is our natural communication medium, not reading and writing.

The mantra of mobility is in everyone’s mouth these days, regardless of whether they’re talking about advertising, business applications or shopping. Oracle is gearing up a new line of applications designed from the ground up for mobility while SugarCRM has announced plans to support the iPhone and the BlackBerry.

The focus is all about bringing the Web experience to the mobile device – which, let’s face it, is the phone. But some funny things can happen on the way to the mobile mecca — like forgetting what phones do well that computers don’t.

This was brought to my attention forcibly by a recent blog post from social media marketing goddess Lasandra Brill, which described using Amazon’s TextBuyIt. It’s a textbook example of just how far clever people can go in traveling the long way round the barn.

Here’s how TextBuyIt is supposed to work from your mobile browser. If you want to buy something you send a text message with the product number or name and Amazon calls you back to confirm the order. Here’s Brill’s report:

“I sent the ISDN number for the book I wanted and Amazon was able to find the title and I received a text back with the pricing info. I then sent back the code to complete the purchase followed by a message with my email address and zip code related to my Amazon account. I then received a message back from Amazon that said ‘We were unable to find an item matching your keywords. Place your order online at www.amazon.com.’  But they had just sent me the item info that I wanted.”

Aside from the fact that the application has some obvious bugs, this is what happens when businesses start drinking their own Kool-Aid. Amazon is so focused on the computer-centric way of doing things they pioneered, that they’ve lost sight of the device this application is being used on.

In the process, they’ve created a complicated Web-centric process to do what phones aren’t good at – typing – instead of a simple one based on what phones do well – making phone calls.

A simple click-to-call in the browser application would transform this into an elegant one-step process that wouldn’t tell customers to place their orders online. Maybe I should phone them and let them know. 

Just like your mother used to tell you: You only have one chance to make a first impression and first impressions count. On the Web, that first impression is your landing page.

Yet more often than not, businesses neglect that all-important first impression even as they spend ever-increasing amounts of time and money on PPC advertising, keyword bidding and Web analytics. And that neglect is costing companies big time, according to Web marketing guru Tim Ash who’s written several recent columns on the subject at SearchEngineWatch.com.

Here’s what he has to say in Your Baby’s Ugly - Why You Need Landing Page Optimization Now 

“…landing pages typically range from barely acceptable to horrible. They are often at direct cross-purposes with the desired conversion action and stated goals of the business.”

I’ll leave it to Ash to give you the nitty-gritty about optimizing your landing page – not surprisingly, he’s written a book about it.

In the meantime, you might want to check out  Optimize and Prophesize blogger Jonathan Mendez’  basic rules for making the right first impression with your landing page. These include a clear and direct statement of your value proposition, a persuasive call to action, and – the one that caught my attention – a Large Red Button 

“Tell your brand team to go to hell and throw your styleguide out the window. Red buttons can by themselves raise your conversion rate…most times in our testing if color matters it is red that wins. Also, don’t skimp on button size. Make users notice where the button is…”

This is a perfect fit for click-to-call. But don’t neglect the text that goes with it. Mendez suggests a “soft” call to action like ‘Get a free quote’ — instead of  ‘Schedule an appointment’ - because it feels easier and less like a commitment. Even if that visitor doesn’t buy today, by making a connection you can start building a relationship.

What a Difference a Click-to-Call Makes

Click-to-call on retail checkout pages can help you keep down cart abandon rates. But in online retailing, click-to-call isn’t just for websites. I recently had an experience illustrating the difference a click-to-call can make in an email. In this case, the absence of one meant a lost sale.

I had placed an online order using a PayPal “pseudo” credit card, but neglected to move the money into my PayPal account. The transaction didn’t go through and the retailer emailed, asking me to call.

First I mis-read the number and dialed wrong. Then the phone rang. Pretty soon I had to leave for a meeting and the message went into my “sometime” folder. Now it’s three weeks later and I probably won’t bother.

Now, if that email had a click-to-call, it would have been easy to connect right then and there, while I was still interested. And that retailer’s sales would have been $67 higher.

IfByPhone smart click-to-call could have done a lot more for that retailer, too, using information about where the call was initiated.

For example, the call could have been routed directly to an IVR application to revise the payment information. A customer service agent could be pre-briefed with my name, phone number and information about the problem. Or the business could route the call based on order value or purchasing history.

And after the fact, the retailer would be able to see exactly how much business was saved by click-to-calls coming from those customer emails.

Even where you can’t use a click-to-call – in a letter, for example – the same intelligent call routing and IVR features can be used with IfByPhone toll-free numbers to deliver efficient, personal service. It’s the kind of difference that keeps customers coming back time and time again. 

How many times have you picked up the phone today? And how many times did you click on “get more information” or “buy now” today? The answer to the first question is probably 10, 15, or 20 times the answer to the first.

Yet the online marketing universe is so busy studying abstruse statistics about clicks and creating the perfect algorithm for keyword distribution, we’ve overlooked the “old media” paradigm: the telephone.

You could say that click-to-call is the purloined letter of online marketing, hidden right in front of our noses as we search for ever more arcane silver bullets to turn traffic into sales.

Here’s how bad it is: On his Online Business blog, Thomson Chemmanor recently published a list of the top 20 website calls to action for increasing conversions. Click-to-call didn’t make the list. But it’s a big mistake to overlook one of the most familiar connections to customers – and the communications method they’re most likely to use.

Instead, businesses can make themselves more accessible and get better performance from their websites simply by adding well placed click-to-calls. It doesn’t require additional staff, a website redesign or a high-priced SEO agency. 

All it takes is a little thought. 

Imagine you went to a hair salon that was running a glitzy advertising campaign and the owner handed you a pair of scissors to cut your own hair. Ridiculous?

But that’s just the case with many business websites. They spare no cost or effort in creating trendy graphics and keyword advertising to attract visitors. But once customers find their way to the site they’re on their own.

It’s the familiar human tendency to strain out gnats and swallow camels.

A few days ago the UK-based Retail Bulletin took a look at luxury retail sites and found many lacking in exactly the personal attention that is one of high-end retailers’ central value propositions.

It’s not just high end retailers who miss the importance of the interaction with customers in their website designs. Few of the millions of business websites out there give it much more than a standard “contact us” link. 

But when site visitors get to the point of clicking on that link, they probably want an answer now – I know I do. And instead of sending an email or navigating a voicemail menu, they’ll probably just drop it or click over to the competition – like I do.

Click-to-call keeps those visitors connected and engaged by bringing back the personal touch. Connecting the phone call is just the first step. A click-to-call can also provide a lot of information for delivering calls efficiently – instead of to voice menu purgatory.

For example, IfByPhone click-to-calls and 800 numbers can be routed based on the webpage and even the keyword customers are calling from. And before the call is connected, IfByPhone can ‘whisper’ information about it to the service representative, like: “You have a call about the Mothers Day promotion offer.”

Someone once said, “Systems work best when they roll down hill.” That goes for online business as well. When you make it effortless for customers to connect personally with you and get the help they need, conversions and return visits will snowball as well — instead of your search advertising budget.

The world needs another three-letter acronym about as much as it needs $200-a-barrel oil. However, CRM magazine is right on the money with its new CRM Service Awards category: Web Interaction Management (WIM). 

In a post last week, InfoToday Editorial Director David Myron explains why the magazine replaced the Web-Support Services category with two new ones, Web Self-Service and Web Interaction Management:

“… to make a clearer distinction between applications that provide automated self-service and those that handle live support across multiple Web channels (i.e., email, instant messaging, click-to-call, and click-to-chat). As time goes on, innovation may soon yield new Web interaction management tools.”

It’s one more sign that in the tech business focus is moving from “how” to “what.” And that’s all good news. First because it means that we’ve got “how” – the technology — down. Second, because focusing on “what” – the product – is where industries grow and money is made 

For example, public key cryptography by itself isn’t likely to catapult a company into the Fortune 500. But a widget for shopping safely online anywhere, is. In 2007 PayPal generated $1.8 billion in revenue for eBay.

Likewise in the VoIP space, we haven’t yet seen anybody skyrocket into the financial stratosphere by selling Internet phone service – while at the same time the market for mobile phone service continues to explode. The reason is simple.

Many people – about three billion worldwide — see value in not being tied to a wired phone line. On the other hand, a very small number  – about 90 million – see value in making a phone call via the Internet.

So what does this have to do with WIM? This: For years VoIP companies have been wandering in the wilderness looking for the promised Killer App. But it isn’t one killer app or even a killer app they need. It’s an app – period. Something people want that the technology makes possible. 

For example, suppose you need a plumber. A standalone IP phone just lets you call the plumber over the Internet – something you can already do with your landline. 

By contrast, use a click-to-call and you can turn that transaction into a Web service that finds out what your problem is and schedules a technician who’s already in your neighborhood. And if it’s urgent, the service can automatically escalate the call to the plumber’s 24-hour emergency operation.

Oh, and it dials the phone call for you, too.  

At EComm 2008 our CEO, Irv Shapiro announced our new initiative aimed at allowing developers easy access to our technology (see mentions at Information Week, MacWorld, Thomas Howe, VOIP Weblog, and VOIP News). We are offering free accounts to developers so they can look at our technology, and see how easy it is to use our services. To signup for your free account, head over to PhoneMashup.com and click on the Free Mashup Account link to sign up.

Feel free to call me if you have any questions.

We talk a lot about the concept of mashups around here. What that really means to me is that people are starting to integrate voice into every day applications.

There simply is no better way to keep in better touch with your clients and prospects than by talking to them. The most successful companies will be the ones who consider voice as an integral part of their overall communication strategy. Certainly there are places where Email or websties or RSS or other means are a great way to keep in touch. But with the technology available today, you have the ability to use all methods in any given situation.

For example. Let’s say you have an overloaded HR department, and you’re going through a hiring push. You want to pre-screen applicants to see which meet some basic requirements. In the past, you could have people directed to a website where they could answer the questions. Today, you can choose any number of ways to get that information. By creating a simple Survo (our powerful and simple IVR like functionality) you now have any number of ways to gather that information.

You can automate outbound calls to the applicants. You can send an Email with a link to the web site and a link that would allow them to answer via the phone. You can tell them to call an 800# if you’d like. The point is you have much greater flexibility. YOU can choose how you want to be in touch.

Click here to call me.

Interactive is the name of the new marketing game. And click-to-call is a powerful tool for being a player — especially as mobile Internet rapidly gains traction.

Mobile Entertainment today highlighted Magnolia Pictures’ mobile phone click-to-call banner ad for the horror flick The Signal. Visitors click ‘Listen to the Signal’ and a call comes through, playing the sound that turns the movie’s characters into murderers. Ringleader Digital — the ad agency that created the campaign — reports that the banner got a 16 percent click-through.

Think about how this could be applied to local businesses. For example, when people search for local restaurants, instead of running a plain banner ad smart restaurants will put click-to-call icon in the banner — making it easy for people to choose that restaurant. And if you think about it, people click-through for two reasons: they want to find that restaurant or they’re looking for ideas. So help them out.

In the final analysis, that’s what click-to-call is all about: Making it easy for interested customers to do business with you — not pushing advertising to people who aren’t interested. 

We recently released a new feature that I wanted to mention here.  Now you can publish the results of your IfByPhone Survo calls on the web.  The entire process takes about 3 minutes to set up.   This feature will allow you to give a URL to your clients so they can log in and see how their campaign is working in real time.

Let’s say you are in the LeadGen business.  You can now use our Survo to capture leads in any number of ways.  If you are using a direct mail campaign, include an 800# that points to your custom Survo.  Email campaign? Capturing lead information off the a web site? Link to the Survo - have the user enter their phone number and initiate that conversation right now.   Do you have a list of people that are interested in your services?  Use our outbound broadcast to call these people.

We already know that using a Survo as a way to capture any kind of information has some major advantages over other methods.  First, it happens in real time, and you don’t have to be as concerned with the accuracy and completeness of the data (you can check that as part of the Survo).   Also, you can give qualified leads (or all leads if you want) the option to talk to someone right away.

No more losing leads to bad phone numbers or people that are difficult to reach.  If the prospect is ready to give you the information you want, it is in your best interest to get that from them right now.  If you wait, you might lose the prospect.

With our new Publish feature, not only are you going to gather the information right now, but as a LeadGen firm, you can give your customers access to it…right now.

Click here to call me.