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Are Robots Up to the Task? by Odin Wortman Can a well designed interactive Web site sell products and replace the functions
of sales and customer service reps? In an effort to stay ahead of the information
revolution and reduce payroll costs, many a company is trying to sell in a new way. Will
they succeed? Almost without exception, new technologies both help and hurt us. I am reminded of a trip taken not quite twenty years ago to a strange little community located on an island on the Chesapeake Bay. Surprisingly isolated, Tangier Island had a distinct culture whose only industry was fishing. Its people carried a unique accent--almost cockney mixed with eastern shore southern. My wife and I had made reservations to spend the night at the island's only bed and breakfast. Our reservations were lost and the only way off the island was by ferry. It didn't run again until the next morning so we had to stay in someone's home. A polite but no nonsense woman who sometimes took in mainlanders agreed to have us. To our good fortune we got a rare glimpse into their world. After dinner at the inn, we settled into her parlor for tea. Almost immediately, visitors arrived. An elderly couple served themselves tea and sat with the three of us. Both had one butter cookie, talked for twenty minutes, told their hostess that they were moving on to visit another neighbor, and quickly left. Other guests arrived, chatted, and left in precisely the same manner. This continued at a seemingly relaxed pace but she saw a surprising number of quests that evening. During a lull in the activity we became aware of a television droning on in another room. "We now have cable," she said proudly. Aha! Now we saw. TV reception was very poor before cable arrived. Without TV these people maintained a highly structured means of socialization. TV would destroy this, I thought. I now realize that there was something lost and something gained. The island was boring. There were no bars, and only one small combination deli/general store. The people enjoyed the entertainment TV brought and would be better connected to the rest of the world. But they would lose a tradition of social interaction and eventually become isolated from their own neighbors and community. Our use of TV demonstrates a human preference for non interactive behavior. For a company, a path leading away from interaction could be the road to ruin. In the same way that TV era adults are less skilled socially and less connected to their neighbors, new communication technology may lead a company to be unskilled in communicating with customers and satisfying their wants. Employees who have customer responsibilities are the eyes and ears of an organization. Without them a weakened customer relationship is likely. Such a company risks missing emerging trends in the market and being left in a poor strategic position. Isolation results in not knowing and not caring. Not caring leads to a lack of purpose which in turn results in poorer products and services. Let me say at this point, I am not about to sputter wistful longings for covered bridges and butter churns. Rather, I hope to point out how a depersonalized environment may affect our ability to compete and sell products. Note that the social skills and rituals of the islanders parallel that of a good sales rep. Although in some ways salespeople are getting better connected to the world via new technology, they are also at risk of becoming isolated from their customers in new ways. On the bright side, the Web, if used appropriately, is an excellent resource for reaching more customers. Sales and promotional functions are best handled based not on what can be done with the Web but what works best. Ed Bennet, a representative of Planet Communications, a company specializing in both Web development and Internet hardware, suggests that companies benefit most from integrating routine information with existing computer systems and sharing key information with customers. This can include general information such as delivery schedules, invoices, and customer account balances. "In this way companies can free up resources to provide better customer service where personal interaction is most needed." Consider some of the first stages of promoting and selling such as exposure and attention through advertising, creating interest, and providing information. All are required to ever have an opportunity to sell. The Web is an economical and effective communication tool for the early stages but good customer information is required to make it work. Next consider some of the later stages of selling such as handling objections, closing the sale, and maintaining post purchase relations. These later stages are difficult to support without a backbone of customer oriented staff. Such functions may work well on the Web for routine and high volume purchases but most Web-based purchases are not so routine. During the last stages of sales, automated systems can be less effective. On-line surveys will sometimes miss subtle customer needs and complaints. Robots don't act as customer activists and relationships cannot be built without personal contact. Companies must be willing to devote appropriate levels of resources to Web oriented customers. According to Bonnie Raindrop of DoubleClick'd, a Web design firm specializing in Internet Marking, "Established companies often don't have the commitment needed to make the Web work. The same level of customer service is needed regardless of the source." L.L. Bean, widely used as a benchmark for customer service, knows that the Web site is an adjunct to their sales force, not a replacement. A representative at L.L.Bean acknowledged that their Web site is useful but cannot give the level of service their salespeople provide on the phone. A sales force carries an employee knowledge base. A happy and well-established sales force has the energy and opportunity to care about their customers. They become customer advocates and push development of products and services in the right direction. Customers in turn develop relationships or at least a comfort level that would not be achieved otherwise. One important advantage of person to person communication is the filtering process. People can filter well both while listening and presenting. While a company's pool of information presented on the Web can be comprehensive and its search engines helpful, clients are often lead down a number of erroneous paths. The result: clutter, distraction, information overload. Customer satisfaction can suffer if inappropriate products are purchased. At DELL, a popular mail order computer source, Internet sales are growing but overall customer satisfaction may be suffering. According to a seasoned sales associate, this may be due to the salesperson's ability to better tailor PCs to customers' needs and interests. They can recommend less expensive ways to achieve the same performance. He notes, "When dealing with a person one-on-one, you can't help but care about them and that makes it a priority to work in their best interest." Professional copywriters are more likely to put a puffed up spin on a product's benefits. In fact, research shows that acknowledgment of product flaws and limitations can actually improve customer perception of a product. This is in part a credibility issue. Skilled and ethical salespeople steer customers away from inappropriate products and disclose product limitations, improving post purchase satisfaction. More familiar presentation and discussion formats may better meet customers' informational and emotional needs. Case in point, while working at a university specializing in worldwide on-line education, I was very satisfied when site traffic nearly quadrupled. Unfortunately the percentage of hits that converted into student admissions remained very small. When I added a friendlier inquiry screen and began automatically inviting all on-line inquiries to live telephone conferences, the results were dramatic: conversion rates increased to 50% of attendees. This telephonic "open house" allowed students to air concerns, hear the thoughts of other students, and ultimately feel a higher level of trust and comfort. Another benefit from this activity was the ability to learn the opinions and needs of new students. A process such as this can provide an organization with a level of knowledge that could only be achieved from the continuous use of focus groups. Most importantly this approach allows more resources to be focused on the best qualified customers. Someday, perhaps not long from now, reliable real time audio and video conferencing will be ubiquitous. When this happens maybe then we will find it easier to use communication technology more appropriately. I expect there will be new problems and distractions that will make knowing the customer just as challenging. And knowing the customer is really the answer to successful selling. Armed with the right information, a company can end up exactly in the right place. As they say on Tangier Island, "In order to catch the fish you gotta know where they swim." |
"Key to a Web based sales strategy is carefully choosing what to automate and how to use a backbone of sales/customer service staff to greatest advantage."
"When I added a friendlier inquiry screen and began automatically inviting all on-line inquiries to live telephone conferences, the results were dramatic: conversion rates increased to 50% of attendees." |
