Application Development

Case Studies:

Messaging Integration - 
In any business that sells something, no words wreak havoc like when the customer says, "Great, when can I have it?". From an Internet perspective, this can happen simply by the customer hitting the "Buy Now" button. While this might signal the conclusion of the sales part of the cycle, it is now the test of your ability to deliver, filled with opportunities to loose the sale.

The key is to provide automated communications with the customer, preempting any typical questions. Payment confirmation, order pick, order ship and follow emails, sent before the customer has a chance to ask the question do significantly increase the perceived value of the transaction.

One area of customer communication frequently overlooked is the integration of inbound customer emails with payment/order status tracking and purchase history. The ability to marry inbound emails with existing customer history data will significantly reduce the manpower required to respond with correct timely information. 

One such customer of ours had two full time employees, working 12 hour days, to handle customer service, phone calls, emails and shipping, with a third lending a hand if they got behind on shipping. At the time they were shipping about 20 to 30 auction items per day, selling on eBay and using PayPal as their primary payment processor. The net/net of this was that about 20 man hours per day was being spent answering pre-sale and post-sale (where is my stuff) emails and phone calls. After integrating the mail system, a customer service person could see complete customer payment history, inventory availability and order shipping status simply by opening the email. This reduced the their manpower required for responding to emails to about 1 man hour per day while their orders per day increased to over 150 items per day on average.