InteractEasy

Till now you could access all your client requests via an IM. But, we have been getting few requests from organizations that cannot use IM, perhaps because their company policy doesn't allow it or any other reason. We have released a new Web-Based Agent Dashboard that allows you to access calls from any web browser. 

How does it work? The Web Dashboard is located here. By logging in the Dashboard interface the agent can receive visitor requests. The dashboard is updated real-time, so;

1. The agent gets to know how many call requests are currently live. 2. He can pick the current live requests. 3. He can view visitor information, which includes the pages that the visitor has browsed, how much time has he spent on the website and where is the visitor geographically located

Also if the agent is busy and is not on the Dashboard tab, he will be notified via a sound notification about new incoming requests. Under the analytics tab, the agent can access a daily summary graph. The agent can switch between the Dashboard and IM as and when he wants to.

So, how do you set up? While adding agents in the dashboard simply check the “Access from a browser based Dashboard?” and set a password. The login details along with other details would be emailed to your agent using which he can access the dashboard.

How do I add a password for an agent that you have already added? You can use this link to set a password for an email address that you have already registered as agent. Once this is done, you can start accessing the web-dashboard for attending calls. 

Hello Guys,

We've been constantly working on improving the kind & amount of data we give you of your interactions. For those of you, who have checked your InteractEasy dashboard in last couple of days, would have noticed an improvement in the Analytics page.

You were already able to download the interactions record as a csv, while we were in beta. But now you can access all your interaction records and Analytics right from your InteractEasy Dashboard without downloading any file. What do you get? You can now access all your chat transcripts and session details, know how many visitor calls you are getting. You can use the date filter to get a day wise summary.

We would be adding few more advanced features that would help you mine the data in a better manner and the next release would send an email of the snapshot of interactions that happened on the previous day.

How does it help? The new update to bring all interaction data in one view would help you make more sense of the interaction data by;

1. Evaluating your call traffic to understand if you need to increase number of agents to reduce wait times for your visitors. 2. Going through chat transcripts will give a first hand understanding of your customer’s pain points. You could probably act on those cues to ensure a better experience for your visitor. 3. Analysing agent wise interactions will help you evaluate agent performance to maintain your customer care quality standards. Do check it out and let us know if we could add something more that could aid your business.

This might come across as a strong assertion. However, with the increasing interactions I am having with startup entrepreneurs, I feel that we live in denial. Email for sales support[1] is dead. Period.

Last week, I was on a tour & got a chance to meet some interesting entrepreneurs. As an entrepreneur I am always on the lookout for leads and evangelizing how their needs should be better taken care of. A lead to a business is more like a baby to a mom. 

       I got to hear some interesting stories. There were couple of them that instigated me to write this post. 

So, there was this company that uses a typical ‘Contact Us’ form to stay in touch with their leads. The founder was telling me how one of their leads [let’s call him Joe, for instance] had come down to their website, spent some considerable time on the website and filled the query, he had, in the contact us form. 

And, this entrepreneur wrote back to him answering his queries within the next few hours. After not getting reply back for few days, he tried to touch base with Joe again. But it went in vain. Joe never replied. And, couple of weeks later, he realized that Joe had started using a competitor’s product. 

Does the story sound familiar?

So, what went wrong?

Joe spent considerable time on the website. He needed some hand holding and hence filled the form. He wanted someone to help him, when he really needed it. 

Typically, Joe has to do 10 different things in a day. So when you take an hour to get back to him, he would have simply forgotten the context or your competitor would have helped Joe when he needed it and not when the entrepreneur[2] got time. 

This is why, we evangelize real-time engagement and thus, the analogy - Mom has to feed the baby when the baby is hungry and not when mom is free :-)

[1] Here, I’m specifically talking about supporting your leads, your to-be customers.

Hello Guys,

We had been playing around for quite sometime with the idea of having a lite version of InteractEasy.  We had earlier introduced InteractEasy lite to you. We thought of doing a pilot with few businesses to see if it was helping them & we have got some staggering results.

We ran a pilot with 5 companies. These companies were all small startups that have limited human resources. InteractEasy lite allowed them to install a lighter version of pro on their website. This add-on allowed any visitor to send SMS to the business right from their website. 

The visitors used the widget for various purposes like;

1. Checking delivery status of their shipment 2. Checking inventory status 3. Checking payment modes 4. Requesting a call-back

All the 5 companies were e-commerce companies who are just starting up. 

Over last 5 weeks, these companies generated 250 SMS's from the widget & more than 200 leads.

And they have shown us enough love. This is what Dezains.com had to say about their experience

InteractEasy has made customer support really easy for us. The response time has gone down considerably. Visitors prefer to send an instant message, rather than writing an e-mail – because they do expect a quick response. Also, the technical team of InteractEasy is always ready to help.  It is indeed a great initiative.

We capture the statistics in a small infographic.

Hello,

We at InteractEasy are working hard to get you all the features that will improve your interaction experience. We now offer the option to use canned responses while text chatting. This would mean you can now feed a set of pre-defined responses and can use these whenever you want while chatting.This would reduce the burden of typing responses that you use repeatedly and save interaction time. How does it work ? Once you have set up your account.

1.Find the Integration section in the Dashboard.

2.There, under the canned responses section, add the responses.

3.You can add ,delete responses as you like.

4.You can set  maximum of 10 responses.

Now, while text chatting if you type any word/phrase which is a part of your canned response you will be prompted by the the system to add the whole response.

How does it help? Rewriting chats that are used repeatedly can be cumbersome,Eg: greeting messages, answers to queries which are asked frequently, contact information like email id/ phone no. As this information will mostly remain static.You can save them as canned responses and directly select the whole response while chatting.

Hello,

We just released a new feature for CRM integration. Using webhooks, you will be able to export data of all the interactions happening on InteractEasy and import it into the CRM of your choice. What this means is a better mining of all your interactions. 

Would it work with any CRM?

Yes. 

How does it work?

WebHooks will give you raw data of all your interactions in JSON/XML format. You can work over this data and do any function over it.

You can put all the data in a CRM, set triggers to send you notifications if you cross a threshold of interactions on InteractEasy or anything you can imagine of. It gives you the liberty to play with your data.

How to enable it?

Go to Interactions tab in your InteractEasy dashboard. Enter a callback URL. 

A callback URL is the page (on your web server) where InteractEasy would post the interaction data. You need write a server side script which would accept this data and talk to the API's of your CRM. 

Select the format of the data after putting in the URL. This format would be the format of the raw data that would be sent to your callback URL. 

You need to decide on the format depending on what is convenient for you while dealing with your CRM's API. 

That's all about it. If your developers need any help in implementing this, you can write to us at support[at]interacteasy[dot]com

What next?

We would be writing some sample codes to integrate this data in some popular CRM's like Zoho or SalesForce. So if you use either of these CRM's you can wait for the next release that would automatically export the data for you.

Hello,

We just started giving pre-call analytics of the visitors and I thought of sharing it with you guys. 

What is Pre Call Analytics?

Pre Call Analytics gives you an overview of the visitor. So, now you know;

1. Who has referred this visitor to your website?

(was it a banner ad? or a google organc search? or some other blog? )

2. How long has he been on your website?

3. What was the last page he was spotted on?

(so if he pings you from the pricing page, you sure do not want to leave him) 

4. Which country do they belong to?

(an update to this would also reflect the city from which they are pinging you)

Where can I see Pre Call Analytics?

Pre Call Analytics can be seen along with the incoming request notification that you get on your GTalk IM

How is this useful?

Pre Call Analytics helps you make judicious decision before engaging. It gives you a certain level of information as to who this visitor is? and what is he really looking for?

Now, if the visitor was last seen on the pricing page and has been on your website for 10 minutes, he sure is interested in what you are offering, so get straight to the point, close the deal faster.

The HubSpots and Kissmetrics of the world have taught us a lot about In-Bound Marketing. At the face of it, it may seem like a tall order. But, is that really so?

The other day I was travelling in Mumbai Local Train and I realized how these principles apply to even seemingly mundane people and events. 

The Story

At one of the stations an old lady walked into the train, in tow with a huge bag. She sat down nearby, removed a ball of thread and a spool from her bag and started knitting a piece. She was knitting beautifully with amazing speed quite oblivious to the people around her.

Moral: Pitch yourself, your talent and your capabilities. Don't always sell.

(image courtesy Getty Images)

The Impact

Soon, people around her (including me) started talking among themselves about her skill while transfixed on her craft.

Moral: The slow paced story gradually picks up. Make people talk about you. They will notice your product. If they like it, it will surely create a buzz

The Reward

One lady visibly impressed asked her if she knits as a hobby or makes a living out of it. She said “I sell them. Want to have a look?” The lady nodded.

She showed few pieces around and BAM! in a matter of 5 mins she had 10 "paid"  customers!

Moral: "You" are an ultimate seller, marketer :)

This was a classic case of inbound marketing wherein the pure skill and ability of the doer speaks for the product. It's all about making your presence felt. 

Inbound marketing is really useful for Small Businesses/Startups, primarily because it saves a lot of cash.  

Disclaimer: The pundits say, do only things which work for you. So, it's not necessary that inbound marketing or "only" inbound marketing would work

We, at InteractEasy, have been trying few things towards Inbound Marketing. It surely is generating few positive results for us. I'd share few of them in the next post. 

We have released a new Pro-Active Calling feature for InteractEasy. 

What is Pro Active Calling?

Comparing it with the current behavior of InteractEasy widget. The visitor could have a conversation with you only when he clicks on the widget. We call it Reactive Calling, meaning the conversation is a reaction to the action undertaken by the visitor. 

(image courtesy Getty Images)

We did a small test. Rather than asking the visitor to click on the widget to talk to you, we nudged the visitor, in a subtle manner, and asked them to start chatting. We did a dry run for few days and realized a 2x increment in the number of visitors who wanted to talk to us.

How can it be useful?

Technically, pro-active calling is not a rocket science. All it does is automatically opens up the widget after a certain timeout.

So, let's assume the visitor is on the products page and you have chosen the timeout to be 50 seconds. Now, if the visitor is on the page for any longer than 50 seconds, it means that he's interested in something displayed on the page. And for a fact that he hasn't called you on the widget yet means that the widget has gone un-noticed. 

At this point, at the timeout, the widget opens up automatically and grabs the attention of the visitor, urging him to talk to you.

How do I enable Pro Active Calling?

Implementing ProActive Calling in your website is very easy. You need to edit the InteractEasy widget code to accommodate a new parameter. 

Paste this new line in the parameter list, in your InteractEasy widget code. 

_InteractEasy_initObj.Timeout = "10000"; //time in ms

Note: The time is in milliseconds. So, if you want to the timeout to be 10 seconds, use 10x1000 => 10000

What Next?

Last few weeks, we have been brainstorming with people who have been using InteractEasy and also with ones who are not and together we have realized how important real-time engagement can be.

As an on going commitment to evangelize importance of real-time engagement with your visitors/customers, we have launched a small utility, called InteractEasy Lite.

InteractEasy Lite gives you real-time alerts of your incoming leads via SMS and E-Mail

Using the lite plugin, the visitor can send you an SMS right from your website, with their phone numbers so that you can call them back.

We all have played the role of a customer and are lovers of prompt delivery and fast response times. So how much does speed and agility matter for an online business?

I met a friend of mine the other day. He runs a portal for consulting people on making investments in the stock market. I just got talking to him about how he manages his sales cycle.

He said whenever a customer drops to my website and has a doubt; he can fill a form where I ask him his contact number. I sit down whenever I have the time to call everyone who had dropped their number throughout the day.

I asked, does it work?

Oh yea, it is pretty convenient for me.

No no, (Sure its convenient for you) I mean are your leads happy?

Yea, few people do engage in a talk, but few people – you know who randomly browse all the websites on earth – don’t even remember dropping their number on my website.

They don’t remember now because they have lost the context and the relevance!

Hello there,

This is a short tutorial that describes how you can use InteractEasy in your Magento store. It won't take more than 2 minutes. So, let's get started. 

So, you hunted for the best live-chat system around. Subscribed for one and deployed it. But, the story never ends there.  

For the customer what usually counts is the experience. Be it the experience of buying from you, using your product or interacting with you. So when your customer talks to you via live chat, a lot rides on your customer support agents.

Let's try analyzing 4 important scenarios when a bad customer interaction could hurt your business.

1. Large response times 

If your agent has initiated a chat with a customer, he must respond immediately. Making a customer wait to accommodate multiple customers at a time can get frustrating for a customer waiting for a response.

You have to make your customers feel wanted. They need some pampering.

Tip: Cut down on the response times. Favorably stick to one conversation at a time for faster query resolution. Analyze the audience and traffic flow. Deploy your agents accordingly for easing the load at peak times. Use effective and fast means of communication. Voice based conversations generally tend to be faster than text-chat alternatives.

2. Rude Behavior

Understandably, the pressures of dealing with a lot of live queries & complaints can get to your agent. But your customer doesn’t know or understand that. He too is pressed for time. 

Tip: Hand pick your agents. Personality of your agent counts, he should be sympathetic and patient by nature. If all fails ask him to take a deep breath :)

3. Lying to you customer

So, you dont have the resources to deploy an agent and you go for that live chat tool having a robot generated response system. 

We all know how even the best of them can’t match up to the experience of chatting with a human.

Tip : If you can’t have a human speak to your customer you are cheating him. So, don’t bother a robot chatting him up. Your customer will find out sooner or later and that can be embarrassing.

4. Foot in the mouth

Your agent has incomplete knowledge of your business. His responses to visitor queries seem incomprehensible or absurd to your customer.

Tip: Never ask your customer to Google the query! Ensure that the agent has enough understanding of your business. A fumbling and lost agent never reflects well. So, build up on a repository of FAQs and constantly update them. Decide on a pleasant tone and greeting message. Let it be consistent to maintain familiarity & to display professionalism. 

Taking care of the above factors could help your online business leverage the true potential of live chat via your agent.

Bottom-Line: Pamper your customers!

One of the most common question that confronts me is: 

Olark also gives a similar widget - is InteractEasy similar to this? I can have a text chat using LiveZilla - is this similar? etc.

So, is InteractEasy really similar to these existing tools? A short answer is NO. 

So, what is InteractEasy?

InteractEasy tries to scale beyond the features offered by the existing Live Chat tools. These tools are a must have utility for a businesses. It helps them engage with their online visitors. However, they fall short of the target during a mission critical step.

I have tried to explain my definition of mission critical step in the image. So, when a visitor comes to your website, he has many missions to accomplish. Login, browse for updates, read stuff, buy stuff, make payment etc. Out of all the missions, the likes of making payment, making decision about buying product are very critical. These determine whether that visitor could be your customer or no & typically this is the stage where most of the customers drop-off. 

Imagine your visitor being left stranded, clueless and confused when they make a payment to purchase a product on a website and the transaction fails. At this point, he doesn't really want to talk to someone behind a wall - whom they don't know, who might seem like a motion-less robot?

Yes, this is a mission critical step, when you actually want to talk to someone and resolve your problem.You want a personified experience and not talk to a robot / or someone like it. 

This is where InteractEasy tries to help you. It let's your visitors have a voice conversation with you without leaving the context of the website!

So, apart from the personified experience that voice adds, why do I really want to do a Voice Chat? Well, imagine if we had a voice chat instead of this post. 

It would have meant; 

- closing this conversation twice as fast! - convincing you twice as much! - you would have really known that I'm not just a piece of software or a masked identity ;)

InteractEasy tries to help you and your businesses close leads faster, helps your visitors by providing a simple yet integrated toolset that lets you not just have voice but text, video (coming soon) as well as share files. 

Hello there,

Thanks for dropping by. It has been some busy days at InteractEasy HQ. We have just released the beta 2 of InteractEasy.

The users of the first trial were kind enough to give us good feedback and help us evolve to beta 2. For the records, we did 130 calls in the last beta, this helped us gain a good insight.

For those of you who have not yet signed up, I'll recommend you to skip this section and read here.

Well, let's now talk a bit more about the upgraded features;

The entire client interaction now happens within the widget, so the visitor never loses focus from your website while talking to you. Unlike in the previous widget when all the interactions happened from a new popup. 

Improved voice quality.

The widget UI just got better. Now you can customize the texts & colors on the widget to suit the context of your business website. Use the new Dashboard Interface to play around with the customization.

Your business agent can now receive notifications of incoming visitors right in his GTalk window. He doesn't need to log in to InteractEasy dashboard always.

To get started, talk to us over the widget or just drop a mail to [email protected] You should be good to go in 2 minutes.

Thank You for reading so far. 

Happy Interacting! :)

Are you new to InteractEasy?

Welcome to InteractEasy. If you are a business & want visitors on your website to talk to you at Critical Customer Drop-Off points? we have made InteractEasy for you.