Casey Cheshire

There are puppy robots who sit on command, human shaped robots who can climb stairs, and even robots that paint new art based on random mathematics.  Despite all of the advancements in computer behavior programming, and the fact that my Sims 2 character can be frighteningly realistic at times, 2010 is not the year for automated web chat.

I have had numerous sales emails and even calls from nice people trying to sell me automated sales chat on my company’s website.  The idea is to connect with visitors that are leaving your site without purchasing.  You find out their friction or pain points, identify an ideal offer, and lubricate their way back into your sales funnel with a hefty discount.

One email I received today highlights a 10%-30% increase in sales- and all without requiring you to do, well, anything except pay for the service.

Before you go sign some agreement and insert that little Javascript code on your site, let’s talk about this new experience you’re creating for your customers.

Human Chating is Caring

When taking a few chats for my company’s live chat implementation, one of the more frequent first questions is: “Are you a robot?”  Not surprisingly, no one is ever disappointed to hear that I am, in fact, a real live humanoid.  Skeptical, I’ve had one chatter then ask me what “infinity times infinity” was- just to make sure I breathed oxygen instead of positively charged ions.  My answer was “Why it’s 4, of course.”  And then a successful human-human chat followed.  There is a BIG plus to the customer experience when they realize that you care enough to be available.

Let’s take it a step further, why do they ask chat representatives if they’re human?  The chat window has my name on it, and I say hello.  They ask because of these automated experiences they’ve had in the past- and frankly, because not too many websites put their money & time where their mouth’s are about caring what the customers are thinking.

Wool is for Sheep & Sweaters

This brings us to the first big fatal flaw of most automated chat solutions.  They like androids of old, are on a quest to be human and they are presented as if they were.

In eCommerce chat, the goal of the chat is answering the tipping point questions that may be preventing a customer from completing their purchase.  They can be a simple question, or if your site is lacking- say, a comparison chart, they can be trying to figure out which product is right for them.

For some reason, I get the feeling that automated chat solution companies think their goal is to make their system as human-like as possible.  Trying to fool them with chat sets up the question: “If they misrepresent their chat, what else are they saying that isn’t true?”

A great point was made by @Rich_Kolb on Twitter:

“Does it mean they don’t care? I’m not sure, but if they admitted they were fake I’d be ok with it”

Pretending to offer someone a chat with a real person only sets them up for disappointment when they realize that the cute face wearing a headset in the photo is really just a collection of impersonal sub-routines.

The Turing Test Dooms Automated Chat

The Turing Test was another topic Rich hit on in his replies to my original Tweet ranting about automated chat.  For those of you who haven’t heard of the Turing Test, it’s a staple of survey level Computer Science courses in school these days.  The basic idea is that it’s a test of a computer’s ability to “think.”  What’s the easiest way to see if someone can “think on their toes?”  Why to talk with them of course!

The Turing Test puts a human in front of a computer with a chat window.  He or she begins chatting with TWO people (often 1 at a time) via the chat window- like Aim or Skype.  One of those people on the other end is a computer and the test- or game really, is to fool the human into thinking he’s chatting with another human.  Ever since it was proposed in a 1950 paper by Alan Turing (yeah, I’d name it after myself too!) the programmers of the world have been trying to pass this test.

While some programs have come closer to this goal than others, the reality is that it’s an *extremely* difficult test.  Many a Phd thesis and late night theory have been spent trying to map out practical theories and implementations.  In the end, your automated chat has a very HIGH chance for failing at some point in the conversation.

Boldly Go, Where No Program Has Gone Before

Get yourself a live chat solution, I’m a big fan of Bold Chat. For under $30 / month, you can get 2 operator seats and start interfacing with your customers.  Think of it as manning the phone, except that people are typing instead of calling.  Depending on the size of your company (and how confusing your website is  or isn’t) you won’t necessarily get inundated with chats.  It’s very manageable and there’s more value to it than just answering questions.

The customer experience insight gained through live chat is significant.  You’ll find out what your website isn’t communicating properly, how you stack up with the competition, and even new product ideas.

It’s really not so much about the dollar cost as it is the time investment. Sound familiar?  Social Media, buzzword for our decade, is also free.  Your cost is the time spent doing it.  While Social Media ROI tracking is still teething, live chat conversion results are build into most systems.  Additionally Chat can be turned on and off during the day based on availability of an operator.  It’s often a great idea to have the Chat button disappear when no one is available.

Allocate the time and get in front of your customers. You’ll be amazed by what you learn!

Once you’re aware of the thought process that goes into every element of Online Marketing, you begin take notice of other company’s implementations.  Everything from SPAM to the checkout process within an e-commerce store, there is logic (or should be) behind what you see.

I noticed a brilliant error today on a signup form for a webinar, that is ironically for E-commerce Trends & Strategies.  I’ve included a screen shot of the form below:

The challenge has been issued! Do you see it yet?  If it doesn’t hit you right away, you may want to attempt to sign up for the webinar. (Assuming it hasn’t been fixed yet.)

Post your answer as a comment below!

U p d a t e – Guesses have come in via just about every method other than as comments- haha.  Thanks Rob, you followed directions.

The answer to Quiz Question #1 is that there are no asterisks * or symbols identifying a Required Field.  If you filled it out like a QA tester, or a thorough fellow, you would not have caught this one.  But let’s say you’re a busy manager and have filled out one too many webinar registrations.  Naturally you want to register with as few fields filled out as possible.  You’d never know from this form, but the following fields are *actually* required: first name, last name, email, phone, and vertical.

I originally entered my name and email address.  It was not until after I hit the Submit button that I was told which additional elements were required. Now I won’t go off on a tirade about why they had so many required fields- vertical? Are you kidding me?  This form required me to hit submit twice- which demonstrates the friction you want to avoid in Online Marketing and E-commerce.  Shopping Cart Checkouts and Lead Gen forms need to be so slick you’d think you sat on a waterslide.  Every excuse you give someone to get frustrated and leave results in leakage from your sales funnel.

The insurmountable irony to the whole thing? It’s an e-commerce strategy & trends webinar!  But let’s end on a positive note:

Let’s give props to BoldChat for using GotoWebinar. They want your name and email- and they tell you that. Easy, smooth registration.  I’m a fan of BoldChat for it’s live web chat solution and GotoMeeting is my favorite web meeting solution.  Both solutions impress the hell out of me.

This weekend the Cheshire Family, minus puppy Charlie, was in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada.  We were happily surprised to find out that our weekend get-away was the same weekend as Quebec City’s Winter Carnival.  It’s like Carnival in Brazil, just with snow pants, ice sculptures, and a dancing snow man named Bonhomme.

It’s during this festival on a windy, snowy, cold afternoon that my wife and I entered a footwear store.  We were looking for hiking boots for her.

A quick (customer) background on this boot search: We’ve searched “everywhere” for Tina’s hiking boots.  She’s tried on practically every boot at both Eastern Mountain Sports & LL Bean- none have fit properly.  Hiking boots are one of those kinds of footwear that you need to spend a little time (and money) on getting it right.  Five miles into a trek, you don’t want your foot to fall off from killer blisters and sprains.

In summary, if we actually (and finally) found the right boot, we’d pay almost any price.  My Asolo boots were $199 and are the best boots I’ve ever had.  After all this frustration in searching for boots, we were ready to buy!

Tina had yet to try on a North Face boot, and gave one in this store a shot.  Unlike all of the other boots, she had no immediate pressure or pain points on her foot.  Soon both boots were on and she was walking around the store fighting a smile. The boots were $139 and had a 20% discount.

With the sale basically in the bag there was only one step left.  Naturally, you want to try the boots on wearing the thicker hiking socks you’ll likely be wearing.  We went over to the socks rack.  Would you believe it? They were out of Smart Wool size small hiking socks.  I’m a big fan of Smart Wool, but they were also out of the rest of the size small socks.

“Do you have kids sizes?”

Sorry no.  The mediums would be way too big, and there was nothing smaller available in the store.  With a purchase price of over $100, there was simply no way we’d just guess-timate how the boots would feel.

The sale went from “Go to No” in the 2 minutes it took looking for socks. The lack of a $20 product blocked the sale of a $140 product. Amazing!

It’s a beautiful example of friction points in the sales process.  Every product and service has it’s own unique elements of difficulty.  Physical retail stores would do well to examine how long lines, dressing rooms, and yes- supporting products generate friction and potentially prevent sales.

Found this project through AnalyticsPros blog Analytics Prose and it pointed me to this blog post on Yoast.

It’s a quick little Google Analytics project that shows you what page your site was on when someone clicked to your site from the natural search results.

Image via CrunchBase

So someone searching for “Casey Cheshire” would find CaseyCheshire.com on the first page and in the first position.  Google Analytics won’t be able to tell you position, but with this filter setup, it’ll show you what page you were on.  Testing on your own will give you different results because Google has personalized search.

Step 1: Create a new profile. (Always do this so you don’t screw up your main profile. Once data is filtered, it cannot be reversed.)

Step 2: Create a filter that Includes only Organic traffic. (Instructions here.)

Step 3: Create a filter that Includes only Google traffic. (There are fixes to include Yahoo and MSN, but you’ll need to already be properly tagging this traffic with custom utm data.  It get’s more complicated, but is doable. ) (Instructions here.)

Step 4: Create a filter that does the Magic (…grabs the page result from the url).

Click here for a photo of what the filter should look like.

An important fact about what you’ll see in the results.  If you don’t see a result it means it was on the first page, 20 means it was on the third page.  Below is the page number & what result will show up in results.

1. no result
2. 10
3. 20
4. 30
5. 40
6. 50

Not perfect or Apple iPhone user friendly, but provides a glimpse into the SEO effect on your organic search.

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In a previous post, I introduced my two Twitter lists which identified the superstars and blooper-stars of Corporate Social Media.  These follow on posts detail how a company has earned it’s place on either lists.

A recent Domino’s Pizza television commercial really impressed me.  The staff of the mega-chain acknowledged the complaints about their pizza.  After coming clean, they introduced a little wow-factor into their new pies.  Extra love on the crust, legit fresh ingredients, and more.

Great job on the campaign and great job with social media.

We ordered pizza the other night and wanted to give Domino’s a shot at it since their “makeover.” It turned out great!  Today, I sent them a message about their great job:

@CaseyChesh: @Dominos Good job with the Pizza Upgrades!

Six minutes later I received a response:

@dominos: @CaseyChesh Thanks so much!

Excellent use of Social Media and it’s more than a quick response to a compliment.    It shows that they’re actually listening.  I feel confident that if I had issues they would have easily been cleared up.  Literally, Social Media, done right, is as simple as this.

In the highly competitive pizza world, Papa John’s started making waves with taste and freshness.  It became trendy to order that over the “old expensive standard.”  Domino’s is quickly regaining the trend points with excellent use of technology (Pizza Tracker) and now, a Social Media win.

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