The approach businesses take to interaction between call centres and e-commerce needs to be aligned with evolving customer preferences. The web and call-centre channels are beginning to converge, forcing marketers to adopt innovative ways to leverage synergies of a multi-channel sales approach.

For example a customer may browse for products online, fill up the shopping cart, and then may pick up the phone to check some details before placing their order. To an e-commerce manager it might look like an abandoned session, but to the call centre, it is a brand new phone-sales opportunity.

Ideally e-commerce and call centre sales channels need to be linked to deliver a better customer experience. When the customer tells his unique e-commerce code, on a call, the call centre agent views all order details and is able to resolve his issues faster. The call agent can even harness many cross-selling / up-selling opportunities (as the customer is in the right buying mood). Creating an integrated, collaborative shopping experience is the need of the hour for boosting conversion rates and returns on marketing spends.

Consistent Experience across all Sales Channels
Whether consumers choose to do business online or on the phone they demand the same seamless shopping experience. Businesses need to ensure that they have the right pricing and promotion and shipping facilities across all sales channels. This will ensure that all the sales interaction tasks create consistency of information to boost customer confidence.

The call centre needs to become a responsive extension of e-commerce sales channel by allowing its calling agents to access promotions, pricing and customer interaction details in real-time. This allows calling agents to convert current and new customers into loyal shoppers easily.

Marketing Sherpa’s latest research shows that telephone is the preferred customer channel thanks to its enhanced personlisation features (as customers can engage with the call agent through multiple questions and be happy with answers to even complex challenges).

However e-commerce as an enabling sales channel is an important part of the customer-interaction value chain. As the e-commerce channel often offers a customised set of merchandising and marketing information, it can easily become the preferred feeder channel.

The converged Internet and call centre processes allow agents to become proactive sales innovators rather than being reactive in their approach. New internet technologies like audio-video chat sessions are arming agents with tools that boost sales intelligently.

Latest e-commerce features are providing customers with product ratings and reviews allowing them to make better informed purchase decisions. This customer experience can be further improved when the call centre agents are able to access similar product review information during a call, as the customer generally likes this multichannel-information-consistency. To boost repeat visitation and customer loyalty, e-commerce channels and contact centres need to meld together.

All the customer preferences along with the latest promotions and marketing innovations should be fed directly from the merchants website to the call centre systems. The agent then knows immediately what best options he can offer to transform this consumer into a loyal customer as he analyses the customer choices filled in an online form or even the transactional details stored in his online profile.

These pre-programmed innovations leveraging unique benefits of the web, e-commerce and call centre consistently create millions of sales conversion and promotion possibilities. Sophisticated business operators that achieve a truly integrated Web and contact centre experience are benefiting from a sustainable competitive edge as they enjoy additional revenues from enhanced conversion rates.

In today’s competitive economy — every tiny process innovation counts.