The Care and Keeping of Online Customers New technologies let online retailers quickly answer customers' questions and make sales. Oh, and eventually an e-mail response from the first company shows up, the delay proving to the consumer that he made the right choice by shopping elsewhere. Today's Web retailers are increasingly wise to the fickleness of online shoppers. Retailers are also paying to integrate previously disparate e-mail, phone and chat systems.
Integration means shorter response times, which can lead to greater sales.
In the cruise industry, quick responses to potential cruise buyers mean everything. That's why Uniglobe tries to respond to every customer e-mail within 20 minutes and to have phone representatives standing by to answer calls. So now, if an agent doesn't have any phone calls in his queue, the software assigns him a text chat or an e-mail. By October 1999, Uniglobe had a new call center from Avaya. Dauberman says Avaya had the phone system for 110 seats up and running in five days, and no maintenance was needed for the first 12 months.