This month's cover story in Stores Magazine, a publication of the National Retail Federation, poses the question, "Is Click-to-Call the right call for e-commerce?"  The answer is a resounding "Yes!"

 According to the article, "Amazon.com, J.Crew, Sears and Macys.com are among the early adopters and, though they’re not offering any hints just yet about return on investment, their intentions are clear: improve conversion rates, reduce shopping cart abandonment and maintain a firm grasp on high-value customers."

“Online retailers are using click-to-call technology to create immediacy and to raise the level of comfort,” says John Federman, CEO of Reston, Va.-based eStara, which specializes in click-to-call and call-tracking solutions. “The reality is that self-service cannot always be achieved online, particularly when making complex purchasing decisions; having click-to-call as an option reduces the friction between the consumer and the retailer. More retailers are finding that for high-value transactions, there’s nothing like the power of voice for closing the deal.”

Federman, whose company counts DaimlerChrysler, Amazon.com and Continental Airlines among its clients, says that companies using click-to-call services have averaged abandon-rate reductions of 22 to 25 percent from pages with a click-to-call text-box. In addition, eStara customers report a significant increase in transaction conversions from click-to-call users versus toll-free callers.

Amazon.com has witnessed some strong revenue growth according to their latest press release. One of the contributing factors to this success?  eStara, which powers Amazon's click to call offering!

According to the release, "[Amazon.com] introduced "click to call," a new feature for our U.S., U.K., German and French websites that allows customers to be connected quickly with a customer service representative who often already has the customer's account information in front of them, saving the customer time and increasing satisfaction. "

From our partner BCE Elix: Do you want to improve the customer experience, increase efficiency and productivity, and offer a superior level of customer service? Rendez-Vous CC 2006, a stimulating one-day event, tackles key questions and offers workshops aimed at optimizing your customer contact center operations. This conference offers informative and interactive sessions. You will hear experts in technology and operations talk about best practices in high-performance customer contact centers, Come and meet our experts and our strategic partners (like eStara) who will share their knowledge of customer contact centers. You can also visit the information booths where you can find answers to all your questions.

This unique event is the ideal occasion to:

• UNDERSTAND how IP technology can increase the efficiency of your customer contact center
• DISCOVER how to develop an effective self-service strategy
• SEE how to manage your multiskilled workforce in real time
• LEARN how CRM (customer relationship management) can be an effective tool in your customer contact center

Cities
Québec - April 20th
Toronto - May 9th
Ottawa - May 11th
Montréal - May 18th

Schedule
8:00 a.m. - Registration
8:30 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. - Conferences
12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. - Lunch

Alright, we said we'd let this one be, but there's still a lot of talk about the AP story on Verizon's Print Pay per Call ads, so we wanted to share what the Kelsey Group's saying about it.

According to Mike Boland at KG, "Though there is growing demand in the market for pay for performance advertising and the discernable ROI it offers, print books have largely been slow to offer it because it could potentially threaten current models. This is a significant move for Verizon, likely driven by the demand in the marketplace for PFP advertising and the shift in the marketplace to online advertising and paid search...An interesting development by Verizon. We’ll see where it goes, and who else follows suit."

Naga Krothapalli of iProspect has an interesting article this week on iMedia Connection that speaks to the importance of marketers being able to track the influence of their online channels in offline purchasing decisions.  Among the technologies he places a premium on are call tracking, live chat and lead generation forms. 

As with all things involving the web, the key is being able to provide immediacy and continuity of experience for the consumer to make sure you capture them before they leave your site.  If you go the call tracking route through either unique phone numbers or click to call, you need to make sure there's someone there to answer the phone...so be sure that if one phone doesn't pick up, the call is routed to the next available agent. Or take it one step further, and make sure you integrate a solution with cross-channel data passing capabilities that will allow the consumer to bypass IVR systems.  

If it's live chat, you want to engage the right customer at the right time.  Live chat may be a great tool in certain scenarios, but it's not a panacea.  You need to measure the effectiveness of text solution with a phone solution and offer customers the right choice depending on their needs (complexity and value of the transaction, etc.).

Lead generation forms, as Krothapalli states, are another fine means of tracking online leads offline.  But what happens if that form winds up sitting in an inbox for days?  Then the immediacy is lost, as is the customer's continuity of experience.