Web Mister, the market for ESHR's NetAgent is practically untapped, yet critical for e-merchants to flourish. See the article below. BTW, 1-800-flowers mentioned in the article is using ESHR's product, and hosted by ESHR servers. In a matter of 72 hours, eShare can set up an e-merchant with live customer support.
Regards,
Tom
No customer service looks expensive
for Net firms
By Greg Sandoval
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
November 18, 1999, 1:25 p.m. PT
E-commerce companies may want to pay more attention to satisfying existing
customers and worry less about acquiring new ones, a study shows.
Online stores that lack Internet-based customer service lost $1.6 billion last year and
could double that to $3.2 billion by the end of the year,
according to a report released today by research firm
Datamonitor.
Many e-commerce executives have said that they hope
to use this holiday shopping season as a springboard
to build long-term business by turning new customers
into loyal ones. But with many firms still fixed on
acquiring a larger market share--by spending lavishly on
advertising and marketing campaigns--not enough
resources are going into customer service, according to
the report.
Companies such as Lands' End and 1-800-Flowers.com
provide instant messaging, allowing customer service
representatives to chat with online shoppers in real
time.
But less than 1 percent of all e-commerce Web sites currently offer live assistance, the
report said. Of the sales lost when shoppers abandoned their electronic carts, about 10
percent could have been avoided if the site offered better customer service.
"Because growth in e-commerce is coming at the expense of other sales channels,
revenues lost online translate to a loss of market share offline," Datamonitor analyst
Leonard Chang said in a statement.
New York-based Datamonitor projects that by 2003, 40 percent of all online companies
will provide multimedia customer service. |
