Maybe this is the kind of site they have in mind:
March 1999
IP Telephony Enters the Realm of Retail
Joe Fleischer
Will IP telephony win over the masses in 1999 as on-line shopping did at the end of 1998? Here's how long-distance carrier IDT plans to make IP telephony and Web callback mainstream by introducing a Web site where surfers can reach live agents at some of the world's best-known retailers.
A new Web site, www.easysurf.com, lets Web surfers make IP telephony calls or Web callback requests to call centers at companies that include 800-FLOWERS, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Godiva, IBM Internet Connection Services, Lands' End and MicroWarehouse.
The site debuted in February under the auspices of IDT (Hackensack, NJ; 888-872-1230; www. idt.net), a long-distance phone company. IDT offers IP telephony software and services through its Net2Phone subsidiary.
IDT introduced its first consumer IP telephony service, also called Net2Phone, in summer 1996. The Net2Phone service lets Web surfers make IP telephony calls from PCs to regular phones. The first time surfers make calls through Net2Phone, they download software from www.net2phone.com, Net2Phone's Web site. IDT deducts the cost of each IP telephony call from the surfer's Net2Phone account.
Surfers who fund their Net2Phone accounts with credit cards can complete on-line forms from a secure portion of Net2Phone's Web site; print, fill out and fax forms to IDT; or provide credit card info to IDT agents over the phone. If they prefer not to use credit cards, they can pay by check or money wire.
Last April, IDT introduced Click2Talk, a corporate version of the Net2Phone service that lets companies place Click2Talk icons throughout their Web sites. Surfers click on the icons to use the Net2Phone service to reach call centers from their PCs. Agents answer these calls from regular phones. Lands' End and 800-FLOWERS are among the high-profile firms that began using Click2Talk from their Web sites late last year.
The Click2Talk service offers additional options to businesses besides IP telephony. One of them is letting surfers conduct live chat sessions with agents, including secure sessions where surfers identify themselves by typing in passwords. Another option is enabling agents to push Web pages, files or electronic documents to surfers. A third is allowing an on-line retailer to incorporate data from a surfer's Net2Phone account into its own order entry system. This eliminates the need for on-line shoppers to repeat the same information to every firm they transact with from www.easysurf.com.
Click2Talk is one of three services on-line merchants can use to let surfers reach their call centers from www.easysurf.com. The other two are Click2CallMe, a Web callback service, and Click2Mail, which lets surfers send an e-mail message to a call center's primary e-mail address (e.g., salescompany.com).
Click2CallMe lets visitors to a company's Web site fill out an on-line form to schedule a regular phone call or request an immediate call to a specific number. When Click2CallMe places a call to a customer in response to his request, it doesn't route him directly to an agent. Instead, it dials the toll-free number of the company whose Web site he visited.
Let's say a customer uses Click2CallMe to schedule a call from 800-FLOWERS to his home number. When the customer receives the call, Click2CallMe gives him a choice before it connects him with 800-FLOWERS. An IVR menu from IDT asks him if he wishes to accept the call, reject the call or not receive any more calls through Click2CallMe. If he accepts the call, Click2CallMe directs him to 800-FLOWERS' ubiquitous toll-free number.
Although surfers with one phone line don't have to disconnect from the Internet when using Click2Talk, they do have to disconnect to receive calls through Click2CallMe.
Companies that choose not to use IDT's Web callback or IP telephony services can e-mail a request to IDT to be listed on www.easysurf.com, which has a search engine for locating on-line retailers. Each listing has a link to a company's home page and indicates its mailing address and main phone number. Other information companies can provide in their listings includes whether they:
offer ways to reach their call centers directly from www.easysurf.com;
are currently announcing any special deals;
have multilingual sites;
let customers use payment methods other than credit cards;
ship internationally or only within the US; and
offer on-line tracking of orders.
Besides offering PC-to-phone IP telephony services, IDT also provides a service called Net2Phone Direct that lets people make domestic and international phone-to-phone calls from the US over an IP network. Since these calls don't originate from Web surfers, the service is not offered from www.easysurf.com, but information about it is available from Net2Phone's Web site.
Jordan Katz, director of Net2Phone Interactive, a division of Net2Phone, believes that firms with a wide variety of products available on-line (e.g., catalog companies, manufacturers of built-to-order PCs), are best suited to use Click2Talk, because their goal is to get shoppers to call them.
Real estate and financial services companies, which are more likely to have affluent customers with multiple phone lines, may be better off with Click2CallMe, Katz says. But he points out that since Click2CallMe ultimately connects customers to toll-free numbers, which aren't necessarily reachable outside the US, Click2Talk is the preferable choice for companies looking to attract international business.
Katz says that IDT may eventually allow surfers to use money from their Net2Phone accounts to buy on-line from www.easysurf.com. Since IDT's customers can already purchase Net2Phone service through a variety of payment methods, they wouldn't be limited to using credit cards to shop on the Web.
“We have a significant customer that wires us and sends us checks,” says Katz of IDT's Net2Phone customers.
IDT plans to include an on-line currency converter for international customers who make purchases from American firms' Web sites.
Katz says that the creation of www.easysurf.com has involved some challenges, such as finding contact information for participating retailers.
“It's very hard to locate phone numbers and even e-mail addresses from Web sites,” Katz says. “Many companies are disjointed from their on-line ventures.”
The difficulty of gathering e-mail addresses is one reason that IDT lets surfers use Click2Mail, in addition to IP telephony and Web callback, to reach retailers from www.easysurf.com.
“We think we can be a bridge to e-commerce Web sites,” Katz says.
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Copyright © 1999 Miller Freeman, Inc.
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