This week I read about “a report”:http://www.caast.com/release/default.asp?aID=145 conducted by “Forrester Research”:http://www.forrester.com for “CAAST”:http://www.caast.com (Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft). If you are selling online in Canada this is a scary report. It indicates that Canadians are wary of shopping online. *A full 40% of Canadians surveyed said they will not shop online this holiday season.*
Why will these Canadians not shop online?
Category: E-commerce
We all know that anything to do with search is hot these days.
And now the smart companies are starting to take a closer look at the search engines on their own sites.
Whether you call this “site search” or “internal search” or ‘who-knows-what’ search, I predict this area is going to see a lot of excitement and evolution in the next few years.
I recently completed a fascinating site search consulting project for a large media company. Since they publish a number of magazines, they have a vast content archive and a vested interest in making it as easy as possible for Website visitors to be able to get to their content as efficiently as possible.
My company was hired to help the media company understand how to improve their site search. During the course of the project, my colleagues and I developed an unofficial list of what we started to refer to as “Site Search Best Practices.” These best practices are independent of any one particular site search system (i.e., the technology solution) and will be of benefit to any company, large or small, that is implementing site search.
So, without much further ado, here are some of our Site Search Best Practices:
_Sharon Oatway has been at the forefront of the development and introduction of numerous direct marketing channels and customer relationship management initiatives for over 20 years. In 2002, after spending 2 years as the President of Y&R’s North American Relationship Management Center, Sharon started “VereQuest”:http://www.verequest.com/ and launched their state-of-the-art call centre technology and proprietary techniques for validating product messaging. Then in 2003, at the request of Expedia Canada, VereQuest built a virtual organization and site to manage outsourced call and email quality monitoring. Today VereQuest monitors the quality of customer calls and email for some of North America’s leading organizations._
*One Degree: VereQuest provides an inbound e-mail quality assurance service. How does this work?*
As more and more companies are turning to the web as a primary communications channel, email volume has grown exponentially and (unfortunately) the quality of that communication has declined. Given that this communication may be one of only a few interactions companies may have with their clients, the way in which this channel is managed is growing in importance.
VereQuest works with clients to establish quantitative measures of quality which cover areas such as Business Language, Product Knowledge, Selling, Advice, etc. Each standard is weighted and specific shortfalls identified. This ensures consistent and detailed feedback can be captured and reported. Our trained Quality Assurance specialists, working remotely, dip into the email queue of these companies and randomly select emails for QA. They are scored and results are made available in real-time. Importantly, the entire process is totally transparent so all interested parties can see results, gaps, trends and opportunities for improvement. VereQuest also provides consultative support to help close gaps and raise the bar.
*One Degree: What is the most common mistake companies make when dealing with e-mail from customers?*