Monthly Archives: December 2010

eBay scolded for long hold times

Posted by Shai on December 30, 2010

Time Magazine took eBay to task last week for long hold times, and other matters, complaining that eBay had disconnected some of its toll-free lines. The auction giant has recently made an effort to offload call volume to a live chat offering, seeking to lower costs. Although the company promised that wait times for a chat session would be “under five minutes”, the reporter recounted a much different experience:

[I] tried the online chat on three different occasions on three different days with delays of one to four hours to reach a rep.… I had time to cook dinner, eat it, do the dishes, vacuum my apartment and rifle through TV channels — only to find I was still number 30-something in the slow-moving online queue.

Reversing course?

On the phone front, Chad O’Meara, vice president of global customer service, admitted that “low volume buyers and sellers do not currently receive telephone support” except for a few site categories. But it looks like they’re reversing course on this thing. O’Meara then said that they plans to ramp up the call center with additional agents offer phone service to all customers by the end of 2011.

A lesson to be learned

What’s the lesson? There is no substitute for a live conversation with a real person. Yes, it is expensive. For a company built on the low-cost platform of online self-serve, I’m sure it’s painful to look at the costs of phone support. But ultimately, that’s the way to earn and keep high-value customers.

Luckily, there are other ways to cut down on the costs of call center operations.

Give people a way to connect directly to the type of agent they need and skip the phone menus. Avoid “zero-outs” and other misnavigation that makes it frustrating for callers and more expensive for the call center.
Collect what information you can before the call and pass that on to the agent. Nothing lowers costs faster than reducing the time an agent spends on a call.
Make the experience as pleasant as possible – virtual queuing and post-call surveys are a great way to do that. Happy callers lead to quick calls. Plenty of data backs that up.

The good news is that Fonolo can do this for eBay or your company, and it doesn’t take much to set up.

Read the full story here: On Hold at eBay: Customer Service Lines Go Dead

RBC releases mobile app. Now all the banks are in.

Posted by Shai on December 20, 2010

I wrote a few months ago about a study which stated that nearly three-quarters of online retailers either already have or are developing a mobile strategy. Since then, our conversations with companies have absolutely supported this finding.

For banks, mobile is a must-have

In some verticals, such as banking, mobile apps are already a must-have. With the release this week of RBC’s iPhone App, all 5 of the major Canadian banks have embraced this platform, plus ING Direct and National Bank. (See our whitepaper “Fonolo for financial industry”.)

What does this mean for the call center?

The future of the call center is a visual interface

We see the rise of the smartphone as a force driving the next generation of call center experience, and experience based around a visual interface. To understand why, consider the context of the customer when he calls in the call center. For the last decade a growing fraction of callers have been in front of a web browser when placing a call. (In talking with a large bank’s retail group recently, we heard that a third of their callers are on the website when they place the call.)

In Canada, estimates say that 30% of all wireless users will be on smartphones by the end of the 2010 and 50% by the start of 2014

- Convergence Consulting Inc. as reported in “We’re flocking to smart phones”,
Iain Marlow, January 12, 2010, The Globe and Mail

Now combine that with the growing number of callers that are on a smartphone. The sum of those two will soon be, if not already, a majority of callers. And what’s special about those two contexts? In both cases, the caller has an interactive visual interface at his disposal. That interface, if used properly, can vastly improve the calling experience while reducing the cost for the company. Fonolo makes it possible and, more importantly, easy for any company to do just that.

Recent press coverage over the virtual queuing debate

Posted by Shai on December 16, 2010

As a follow up to my last post on virtual queuing, here is some coverage on the topic from the last month…

Focus.com

One of the biggest challenges facing any contact center is minimizing the hold time for callers… Sirius Satellite Radio wants to be as customer-friendly as possible to attract new subscribers … If you visit their Contact Us page, you’ll notice a text box [saying] “Don’t wait on hold. Select an option below, enter your phone number and we’ll call you back.” … The company providing this capability is Fonolo, a Toronto-based startup…Virtual queuing really is win-win technology, as it makes contact centers more productive and effective, and it addresses a major shortcoming of the end user experience.

Read full article here.

InsideCTI

It’s a world of cloud computing, Web 2.0, and smartphones. Savvy entrepreneurs are looking at Virtual Queuing in a different light and making it sexy again. VHT, LucyPhone, and Fonolo all aim to improve the customer service experience, but there is clearly a distinction. I believe it is this: Is the solution right in front of the user? If not then I’m afraid it’s part of the problem, especially in a today’s world where user experience is being transformed.

Read full article here.

Online retail is embracing the smartphone

Posted by Jason on December 5, 2010

A smart phone app has become a must-have in the financial world. (See our whitepaper “Fonolo for the financial industry”). Other industry segments are following closely. A recently study shows that online retail is the next segment to get the bug.

An accelerating trend

The study, released June 29^th 2010 by Forrester Research and Shop.org, states that nearly three-quarters of online retailers either already have or are developing a mobile strategy. The average investment is $170,000 but large retailers are spending several times that.

We at Fonolo think this trend is going to accelerate dramatically in 2011, driven mainly by the proliferation of smartphone and tablets. (IDC predicts those two product categories will outsell traditional computers in the next 18 months.)

But something is missing from the feature list

Of those online retailers with mobile strategies, the most popular features are those that support the cross-channel experience. For example, product info, store info and coupons help support the in-store experience.

But we think the providing store info and coupons is just the beginning of making a mobile app part of the cross-channel experience. What do phones do? They make calls! So the most obvious channel hand-off to focus on is mobile app to call center!

New live demos of mobile Fonolo

By adding the Fonolo component to the mobile app, consumers can connect directly with the call center in a smart and cost-effective way. Best of all, no changes to the call center are required.

We just put up some live demos that show what Fonolo on a smart phone looks like. Check them out here.

If your company has a mobile app or is developing one, contact us to find out more!

Excitement brewing over virtual queuing

Posted by Shai on December 2, 2010

Fonolo is best known for inventing “Deep Dialing” which eliminates the frustrations of navigating phone menus. This year, we added “Hold for Me” which eliminates the frustration of waiting on hold. The two features complement each other beautifully.

With Hold for Me, hold-time is replaced with a call-back when the next agent is available. The general industry term for this concept is “virtual queuing” and it has been greatly desired by both consumers and companies for decades. Although other companies have virtual queuing solutions, Fonolo’s approach is unique and disruptive because it does not require any equipment to be added to the call center itself.

If you’d like to learn more I wrote a series of blog posts on the topic: