Companies often seem afraid of the word free, it seems that a paid for product and someone accountable is the popular choice, but the Internet has brought about companies that have re-invented their business model and found new ways to make their businesses profitable, which provides us with a solution that far exceeds that of a conventional business. Software is a prime example and should be used to best effect. At about the time companies banned MSN on the work computer there was a bigger lesson to be learnt from this. Employees were spending more time chatting to the friends because it was easy and a relatively private affair to do so. More importantly one of the largest companies in the world were researching how the user interacted with the platform, which led to the ability to include status updates, so others new that you were out to lunch or busy.
I recently attended a training course for an ecommerce software platform and the company had embraced free applications. Every employee on a 3 story building had Skype installed on their PC and they all had a Skype account using their work email address, resulting in that anyone could sign in from any computer (improving the ability to hotdesk for starters) but here is the scenario that got me thinking. During the session (from the training room on the bottom floor) I posed a question that the tutor could not answer, he looked at his Skype and said “frank” is away from his desk at the moment but I’ll ask home and we’ll come back to it. So, what were the real world solutions in that situation – blag an answer? A popular choice! Pick up the phone only to realize that “Frank” is not at his desk? Or physically go to the first or second floor leaving the trainee alone in the room only to find that “Frank” is currently tied up on a conference call and cannot be disturbed. In the new scenario we were able to maintain the flow of the session and when “frank” had finished having a cigy he was able to report back, the tutor was able to read the information and relay it back at a convenient time.
Sure these things have security implications but we shouldn’t be put off by the fact that the software, because of this companies have far outgrown the competition that charge for a similar service. During times of travelling budgets being cut and volumes of money being spent on video conferencing systems, there are relatively few issues to overcome to integrate into your business and how cool would it be if in later releases you could call direct to say a Polycom unit, with the simple addition of a webcam this could in theory be possible and would encourage breaking down the fear of using the high tech solutions in the workplace.
Yes, there will be bandwidth issues and a peripheral cost but I’m guessing for small companies this would not cause too many problems with modern day broadband speeds and depending on the communications set up a of larger companies you may need to increase the allocation or re-balance the bandwidth allocated to data, that’s not my area of expertise, but I have spoken to the people in the know. Admittedly, I have not calculated the ROI, but the improvement to efficiencies and potential large scale cost saving make this concept a very interesting proposition for consideration.
In particular in the context it is important to make clear your intentions of quick and easy contact with your customers. Even today there are websites out there who believe it would be more efficient to bury their contact details and even then only make an email address or contact form. Although many security fears have been broken down with shoppers and shopping online, this is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. Shoppers browsing a new store online will want to know if they can return an item and and exercise their consumer rights if something goes wrong. If you have a high bounce rate on your product landing pages and do not freely present your contact details, this is often the problem. At the same time it is important not to bombard your customer, provide them with the popular and most accesible means of communication and allow them the choice. If you have a chat assistant installed, watch your customers as they browse your site and identify those who need help before you initiate a chat. Undoubtidly for the less tech saavy, you are more likely to scare them off than encourage them to buy if they were not looking for assistants.
Just a thought!
