Click Here for Service

If you’re not clicking with customers — or they aren’t clicking with you — you might want to consider the cricket. Bamboo Cricket offers Managed Full Solution, a platform that enables online retailers to answer shopper queries through live online chat and management of inbound e-mails.

Delivering strong online customer service is likely to become even more important given the fragile state of the economy. “You’ve got to make sure you can bring customers back,” says Barbara Westhorpe, president of Titusville, Fla.-based Bamboo Cricket. “Most companies doing business today know how hard that can be.”

Toward this end, some of Managed Full Solution’s features include:

• Customer chat history logged and tracked by visit so customer service reps have access to past communications

• Ticket management that enables searches by type of contact and customer name

• Missed call logs to provide details on customer requests that were not handled

• Knowledge base updates that allow CSRs to handle common requests quickly.

Bamboo Cricket was founded “to provide a full-service solution for a magazine publisher,” Westhorpe says. “But when we built out the scope of our offering, it became clear that companies were spending a lot of money for their online presence. But there was still a tremendous need for these companies to complete the circle of this customer experience.”

A 2007 industry report found that 47 percent of companies with an online presence don’t respond to e-mail inquiries. “That blows my mind,” she says.

Databases are extremely expensive to maintain, and the cost of acquiring new customers is huge. “Loyalty is different than in the past,” Westhorpe says. “If online consumers don’t get support and response they will go elsewhere because there are 100 other guys that want their business.” One industry survey indicates that 83 percent of online shoppers would make purchases if sites offered increased interactive elements.

Live chat capability
Managed Full Solution also includes the ability to offer live chat, giving online customers the chance to ask questions of customer service representatives in real time. “The chat solution helps to immediately resolve an issue which could cause a consumer to ultimately abandon their transaction,” Westhorpe says.

Bamboo Cricket does business with an online retailer in the U.K. that sells licensed merchandise for soccer clubs like Manchester United. “We provide the initial level of customer service for all the transactions that take place on their site whether it’s a back order issue, service or shipping,” Westhorpe says. “These customers are very passionate about their teams and I can tell you that some of the comments we got from customers were very colorful.”

But Westhorpe is quick to emphasize that Managed Full Solution is not designed as an alternative to customer service staffing. “It is simply enabling companies to be more efficient with what they have,” she says. “For instance, if you’ve got 20 telemarketers sitting around waiting to answer the phone, there’s nothing stopping them from being prepared to respond via chat.”