Microsoft
AT A GLANCE
Industry: Industry: IT & Professional services
Location: America
Customer Since: July 2012
Use Case: Sales & Customer service support and internal help desk solution
Why Live800?
Security, ease and suitable functionalities
Accessibility by multiple technicians through a web browser
Online interface that can streamline sales and customer support
Ability to centralize support and report information
Microsoft introduction
Microsoft Corporation, leading developer of personal-computer softwaresystems and applications. The company also publishes books and multimedia titles, offers e-mail services, and sells electronic game systems, computer peripherals (input/output devices), and portable media players. It has sales offices throughout the world. In addition to its main research and development centre at its corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington, U.S., Microsoft has opened research labs in Cambridge, England (1997); Beijing, China (1998); Mountain View, California (2001); Aachen, Germany (2003); Sadashivnagar, Bangalore, India (2005); Cairo, Egypt (2006); and Cambridge, Massachusetts (2008).
With Live800,Microsoft Finds the best way of getting closer to clients
The Microsoft Corp. is a publicly traded company known for producing and selling the Windows operating system, as well as software programs such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Internet Explorer. In 2010, Fortune 500 ranked the company as 36th on its annual rankings of America's companies.
Paul, customer service director, knows that the key to get closer to clients is to keep customers happy along the way of experiencing Microsoft products. With the help of Live800, Microsoft's customers have never been happier.
Microsoft needs to convert more and more potential clients into real clients
As Microsoft recently planned to convert most of its visitors into clients, managers realized it needed a more reliable and effective way of chatting with each visitor. However, Microsoft had tried using as many live chat products as possible, but was frustrated by the results.
"We needed a cloud-based web chat system that can be fast to enable great sales and customer service and tech support, and it must help us deliver exceptional customer service through increased security, customization and workflows that support greater efficiency for all kinds of distributed teams. What's more, it should enable web visitors to start the real-time chat with our staff by a simply clicking an icon on the webpage without any further download or installation." Paul and his fellow people had discussed it again and again before they chose Live800.
Fully trust and excellent experience with Live800
"Live800 responds to our support requests within minutes, it really does the work as they have promised to us during the bidding session. We are proud of Live800 stall, they are genius. We completely trust them." Paul told us "Its serving concept totally matches our needs."
Nike
AT A GLANCE
Industry: Sports products
Location: Oregon / America
Customer Since: June 2009
Use Case: Customer service support and online sales solution
Why Live800?
Ease and speed of setup
Accessibility by multiple technicians through a web browser
Online interface that can streamline customer support and sales
Ability to centralize support and sales information
Nike introduction
Nike is an American multinational corporation that is engaged in the design, development and worldwide marketing and selling of footwear, apparel, equipment, accessories and services. The company is headquartered near Beaverton, Oregon, in the Portland metropolitan area. It is the world's leading supplier of athletic shoes andapparel and a major manufacturer of sports equipment, with revenue in excess of US$24.1 billion in its fiscal year 2012. As of 2012, it employed more than 44,000 people worldwide. The brand alone is valued at $10.7 Billion making it the most valuable brand among sports businesses. Nike and Precision Castparts are the only Fortune 500 companies headquartered in the state of Oregon, according to The Oregonian.
With Live800, Nike Finds the Ticket to Success
Nike is growing fast and Jefferson, customer service director, knows that the key to successful growth is to keep customers happy along the way. Today, with the help of Live800, his customers have never been happier.
Major new contract creates the need for a serious help desk system
As Nike recently prepared to convert 50,000 visitors to customers, the company realized it needed a more reliable and effective way of chatting with each visitor. The fast-growing company had tried using as many phones as possible, but was frustrated by the results.
"We needed a web-based system that did not require a MS Exchange server or software that had to be installed on every computer— a serious complaint that would allow our distributed team to collaborate when delivering customer support," explains Jefferson. Sometimes, staffs can't answer customers' questions on time or the answers are too complicated to explain, which directly leads to complaints. Adding to the urgency, Nike had agreed to provide 24/7 support to handle thousands of calls from end users.
Online help desk system sets up in 20 minutes, enables unprecedented service When Jefferson started Live800's free 7-day trial, it took less than 20minutes to set up a new online support system. Within 7 days, Nike had completely migrated its help desk operations to Live800. In April 2009, Nike added a second Live800 account dedicated solely to its China end user call center operation.
"We were in a hurry to get our help desk ramped up for the China account, and Live800 delivered what we needed," Jefferson recalled. "In terms of getting started and adding users, we don't think any other system can compare to Live800. Our operations from China to America are giving the online help desk system high praise."
"Our customers are saying they've never seen service like this," says Jefferson. "People get an email confirmation of their enquiries within two minutes, and everything is tracked through to resolution. We can often resolve issues within an hour—but even when we can't, we can always keep customers informed of their case status."
A partner to emulate
"Not only does Live800 respond to our support requests within minutes, but they're completely transparent with their customers," Jefferson explains. "That's an excellent concept to many businesses—but it's an approach we're adopting at Nike. If we can pattern our service goals after Live800's and achieve them, we'll know we're on the right track."
Ebay
AT A GLANCE
Industry: Professional services
Location: California / America
Customer Since: June 2008
Use Case: Customer service support, sales support and internal help desk solution
Why Live800?
Ease and speed of setup
Accessibility by multiple technicians through a web browser
Online interface that can streamline customer support
Ability to centralize support information
Ebay introduction
eBay Inc. is an American multinational internetconsumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide. Founded in 1995, eBay is one of the notable success stories of the dot-com bubble; it is now a multi-billion dollar business with operations localized in over thirty countries. eBay expanded from its original "set-time" auction format to include "Buy It Now" standard shopping; shopping by UPC, ISBN, or other kind of SKU (viaHalf.com); online classified advertisements (via Kijiji or eBay Classifieds); online event ticket trading (via StubHub); online money transfers (via PayPal)[5] and other services.
With Live800, Ebay Finds the Ticket to Success
Ebay is growing fast and Anderson, customer service director, knows that the key to successful growth is to keep customers happy along the way. Today, with the help of Live800, his customers have never been happier.
Headquartered in California, Ebay has been a leader in the internet and online retailing industry for many years, and serves worldwide; since it has an office in China, Ebay quickly boom the sales as well as the staff number. Now Ebay China has a professional team with more than 200 staffs, with over 18,000 pieces daily updated information. And that it has 4,500,000 registered users now and the average daily page views are about 1 million. These giant traffic volumes go beyond the limits of traditional call services to satisfy visitors. As a result, the company must be prepared to respond to a wide variety of complex customer support issues.
Major new contract creates the need for a serious help desk system
As Ebay recently prepared to convert more visitors to customers, the company realized it needed a more reliable and effective way of chatting with each visitor. The fast-growing company had tried using as many phones as possible, but was frustrated by the results.
"We needed a web-based system that did not require a MS Exchange server or software that had to be installed on every computer— a serious complaint that would allow our distributed team to collaborate when delivering customer support," explains Anderson. Sometimes, staffs can't answer customers' questions on time or the answers are too complicated to explain, which directly leads to complaints. Adding to the urgency, Ebay had agreed to provide 24/7 support to handle thousands of calls from end users.
Online help desk system sets up in 20 minutes, enables unprecedented service When Anderson started Live800's free 7-day trial, it took less than 20 minutes to set up a new online support system. Within 7 days, Ebay had completely migrated its help desk operations to Live800. In April 2009, Ebay added a second round of Live800 accounts dedicated solely to its China end user call center operation.
"We were in a hurry to get our help desk ramped up for the China account, and Live800 delivered what we needed," Anderson recalled. "In terms of getting started and adding users, we don't think any other system can compare to Live800. Our operations in China are giving the online help desk system high praise."
"Our customers are saying they've never seen service like this," says Anderson. "People get an email confirmation of their enquiries within two minutes, and everything is tracked through to resolution. We can often resolve issues within an hour—but even when we can't, we can always keep customers informed of their case status."
A partner to emulate
"Not only does Live800 respond to our support requests within minutes, but they're completely transparent with their customers," Anderson explains. "That's a completely excellent concept to many businesses—but it's an approach we're adopting at Ebay. If we can pattern our service goals after Live800's and achieve them, we'll know we're on the right track."
EF
AT A GLANCE
Industry: Education / Training
Location: Hongkong and Sweden
Customer Since: August 2010
Use Case: Customer service and internal help desk solution
Favorite Feature: Customized functions and customer-based solution
Why Live800?
Integration with CRM and Google Analytics fully making things go according to our requirements
Perfect customer service's workflow and management
Web-based help desk solution eliminates the need to install software locally
Easy-to-use interface means little learning curve
EF introduction
EF Education is the world's largest private educational company that specializes in English training, educational tours and cultural exchange. EF Education was founded in 1965 by a young Swedish entrepreneur named Bertil Hult. Four decades later, EF Education is the world's largest private education company, with a group of fifteen subsidiaries and non-profit organizations centered around language learning, educational travel and degree programs. Today, EF has more than 34,000 employees, teachers and volunteers worldwide. With offices and schools in 51 countries, EF has turned the world into a global classroom.
Live Chat in Action
Since implementing Live800 in 2010, EF has seen chat volume increases from about 30000 chats a month in the summer to more than 81000 chats a month during the 2010 holiday season. Available whenever EF is open, live chat is on the "contact us" page as well as whenever a consumer pulls up an individual product page. The feedback from consumers has been overwhelmingly positive. Johnny, "We have people online asking us very in-depth questions about course materials and features, so we need CSRs (customer service representatives) who really know their stuff. While we do use some pre-formatted messages for simple inquiries, Live800 is enabling us to provide more detailed information that potential students need in a very concise and customized manner."
Ramping up for the Holidays
While CSRs handle chat as well as phone during the quieter season, there will be a portion of the staff dedicated to chat during the holiday season. When discussing how they'd allocate staff, Eric, "Phone calls tend to be more straightforward. They are people who know what courses they want to learn and are ready to book a demo class when calling EF. Conversely, people tend to initiate a chat as part of their fact-finding process. In fact, our average chat session is about 30% longer than a phone call. All of this means that chat is more critical to conversion for us. Given this, it's important to have some of our most knowledgeable and experienced CSRs on Live800." In addition to the existing chat implementation, the customer service team is also planning to roll out proactive chat for the first time. Helen, "We believe this will help promote an exceptional customer experience. We also estimate that it will increase our chat volume by at least 20-35%."
A Win/Win Partnership
Less than a year after implementing Live800, EF has been able to enhance customer service on its website and continues to see chat volume grow. It's a communication channel that enables customers to connect with EF in a way that works and allows EF to provide a way to efficiently and cost-effectively drive increased conversions.
Philips
AT A GLANCE
Industry: Manufacturing, sales and supports
Location: Holand
Customer Since: March 2009
Use Case: Support and sales
Why Live800?
Improved sales and support services for an average of 8,000 chats a week
Reduced response times by generating reports with scores for all chat operators
Philips introduction
Royal Philips Electronics is one of the world's biggest electronics companies and Europe's largest, with sales of US$ 33.9 billion in 1998. It is a global leader in color television sets, lighting, electric shavers, color picture tubes for televisions and monitors, and one-chip TV products. Its 233,700 employees in more than 60 countries are active in the areas of lighting, consumer electronics, domestic appliances, components, semiconductors, medical systems, business electronics, and IT services (Origin). Philips is quoted on the NYSE, London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and other stock exchanges.
Keeping up with growth.
Royal Philips Electronics is eighth on Fortune's list of global top 30 electronics corporations. It is active in about 80 businesses, varying from consumer electronics to domestic appliances, and from security systems to semiconductors. "So you can't imagine how overwhelming the volume is." Zorro said,"We need a powerful online communications management system that could help our company better manage large inbound volumes and improve customer service." After a long search for the right solution, he decided on Live800 standard.
"We used another chat product for about a year," Zorro said. "It was nothing like Live800. They had none of the features, like the ability to pull up a chat history. The Live800 standard has everything we wanted."
Nothing but positive.
Even with up to 12,000 visitors a day, Philips makes every website visit count. Its 10 Live800 operators offer the best sales and support possible on each of their 6,000 to 8,000 chats a week, while the sophisticated email management component of Live800 Standard enables the company to efficiently manage about 18,000 emails every week. And they're keeping customers satisfied.
Philips uses proactive invitations to boost chat volume. Philips has seen positive comments specifically about the live chat feature in 90 percent of its surveys. That's because their customers find it easy to use, and the chat operators can better understand their issues.
"Live800 has already thought of every single thing that I could possibly need—it's all in their products," Zorro said. "For instance, the chat history feature is incredible. Operators can pull up a chat history on someone and go back to all the chats we've ever had with them. It makes us so smart about every customer." Plus, Philips can run weekly reports to grade the response times and quality of service of its operators.
"I highly doubt we would be where we are today without Live800's live chat and email management features," Zorro said. "I just can't imagine doing the volume we do without these products."
Philips so heavily relies on Internet based communications that they removed their phone number from the website and stopped taking calls altogether. Because chat is a more efficient way to help customers, the strategy saves money which the firm passes on in the form of lower prices.
AIG
AT A GLANCE
Industry: Professional insurance services
Location: New York / America
Customer Since: June 2010
Use Case: Customer service support, sales support and internal help desk solution
Why Live800?
Ease and speed of setup
Accessibility by multiple supports and services through a web browser
Online interface that can streamline customer support, CRM, Analytics
Ability to centralize sales and support service
AIG introduction
American International Group, Inc. NYSE: AIG, also known as AIG, is an American multinational insurance corporation. Its corporate headquarters is reported as 180 Maiden Lane in New York City (was formerly in the American International Building in New York City). The British headquarters office is on Fenchurch Streetin London, continental Europe operations are based in La Défense, Paris, and its Asian headquarters office is in Hong Kong. According to the 2011 Forbes Global 2000 list, AIG was the 29th-largest public company in the world. It was listed on the Dow Jones Industrial Average from April 8, 2004 to September 22, 2008. AIG suffered from a liquidity crisis when its credit ratings were downgraded below "AA" levels in September 2008. The United StatesFederal Reserve Bank on September 16, 2008 created an $85 billion credit facility to enable the company to meet increased collateral obligations consequent to the credit rating downgrade, in exchange for the issuance of a stock warrant to the Federal Reserve Bank for 79.9% of the equity of AIG. The Federal Reserve Bank and the United States Treasury by May 2009 had increased the potential financial support to AIG, with the support of an investment of as much as $70 billion, a $60 billion credit line and $52.5 billion to buy mortgage-based assets owned or guaranteed by AIG, increasing the total amount available to as much as $182.5 billion.[6][7] AIG subsequently sold a number of its subsidiaries and other assets to pay down loans received, and continues to seek buyers of its assets.
With Live800, AIG finds it's efficient communication through live chat
There is a lot of potential communication happening in an insurance environment. Potential customers inquire about prices and relevant services, existing clients ask about their renew and other profitable services. Simplifying that communication can prove produce better and, what is even more important, faster experience for all the involved parties.
David, Marketing Director of AGI, shares his experience of using Live800 in an insurance consulting online and how big of a difference it makes in day to day communication with potential customers.
"Live800 allowed us to answer multiple questions quickly and efficiently, taking a slight burden off our e-mail and phone flow. The information we gather before and after the chat has been an invaluable secondary gain."– David, Marketing Director of AIG Asia
Providing easy to reach and efficient communication tool for customers was the key factor of AIG live chat. David reports that they wanted to "provide potential and current customers an easier and efficient way to communicate with us."
When looking for a replacement for their old chatting solution, David was looking for a few crucial things that facilitated efficient communication: "Previously, we utilized other chat tools. Live800 allowed multiple employees to be online at the same time, had an easy way to track chat history, and allowed for ease of chat transfers. The initial expectation was to continue to provide easy ersonalized customer service."
Using the right tools
In order to provide customers with informative and quick responses, AIG's live chat agents used a number of Live800 features. The most important features, shaping the whole implementation, consist of:
Chat history– easy to track and go through chat history allows for quick recollection of previously handled cases and inquiries
Chat transfers– helpful when directing a visitor to correct department or when the visitor chatted previously with a different agent
Push pages– using push pages operators can point a visitor in the right way without the need to remember or write down a number of links
Canned responses– allow portions of text to be stored for later use; they can significantly decrease response time for common questions
Push pages and canned responses are the two features that David found especially helpful:
"The push pages and canned responses are great. Instead of providing the customers a link, we can send the direct page to them. They only have to click the icon to get the information. The canned responses have allowed for quick dissemination of accurate and uniform information."
AIG website and live chat
Features like this can shorten the enquiry process significantly. customers can receive helpful information or be directed to helpful resources within seconds of asking a question. This kind of service allows for more questions answered and general increase in handling the traffic on site.
"I tested it personally and knew on the first day of trials that it was exactly what I was looking to implement. It was the right amount without being too much compared to our experiences with the other systems."
Success measured in satisfied visitors
Live800 seemed like the best fit for AIG since it provided just the right combination of features and a lower price than other live chat providers, David informs:
"It was not as expensive as other chat systems, but also had the features we most needed such as history and simplicity which were unavailable with free or less expensive options."
An implementation of 20 agents on AIG's page managed to drive and handle a large portion of the traffic that the phone and e-mail were receiving previously. Moving the traffic and handling it with more suitable tools allows for fast and efficient communication.
The response from the users of AIG's live chat has also been successful, since, as David reports, they can access the needed information while handling other tasks:
"Our clients appear to enjoy Live800. Specifically, some of them have been able to use the function while they are at work. "
GAP
AT A GLANCE
Industry: Clothing retailer chain company
Location: San Francisco
Customer Since: June 2010
Use Case: Customer service and sales help solution
Favorite Feature: Customized functions and customer-based and online robot solution
Why Live800?
Integration with CRM and Google Analytics fully making things go according to our requirements
Perfect customer service's workflow and management
Web-based help desk solution eliminates the need to install software locally
Easy-to-use interface means little learning curve
GAP introduction
The Gap, Inc. (NYSE: GPS) is an American clothing and accessories retailer based in San Francisco, California, and founded in 1969 by Donald G. Fisher and Doris F. Fisher. The company has five primary brands: the namesake Gap banner, Banana Republic, Old Navy, Piperlime and Athleta. As of September 2008, Gap, Inc. has approximately 135,000 employees and operates 3,076 stores worldwide, of which 2,551 are in the United States. Gap, Inc. remains the largest specialty apparel retailer in the U.S., though it has recently been surpassed by the Spanish-based Inditex Group as the world's largest apparel retailer. Despite the company's publicly traded status, the Fisher family remains deeply involved in Gap, Inc.'s business and collectively owns a significant quantity of the company's stock. Donald Fisher served as Chairman of the Board until 2004, playing a role in the ouster of then-CEO Millard Drexler in 2002, and remained on the board until his death on September 27, 2009. Fisher's wife and their son, Robert J. Fisher, also serve on Gap's board of directors. Robert succeeded his father as chairman in 2004 and also served asCEO on an interim basis following the resignation of Paul Presslerin 2007, bGAPore being succeeded permanently by Glenn K. Murphy.
Choosing a live chat provider
When looking for a chat solution, they were searching for a company that would provide them with just the right functions and offer a lot of flexibility. The chat was supposed to be a channel for solving any technical inquiries, helping with billing and answering general questions. The choice came between Live800, which was found online when Fisher's CS and IT team searched for possible solutions, and LivePerson, which was referred by a friend. Eventually, Live800 was chosen because it seemed it would be easier to setup and didn't force them to jump through hoops, making the implementation process painless and much more fluent. Another thing about Live800 that Fisher liked was how easy it was for him to contact us and learn more about our solution.
Live800 in action: Flexible solution makes customer service easier
Starting with a 10 seats implementation, GAP's live chat quickly picked up speed and loads of visitors started to pour in. Currently, they receive as many as 50000 chats a week and the number continues to grow.
"We've been encouraging people to use live chat, it's become a really significant marketing tool for us. We are implementing additional ways of encouraging people to use it." The flexibility of Live800 really hit the spot for GAP. Having a worldwide CS staff, GAP needed a system that was easily manageable and deployable in any place.
"Our customers and our customer service people LOVE IT!"
Apart from the flexibility, GAP benefits also from the multiple language support, having a chat option for 4 languages. Another part of the solution that GAP is using are the integrations with Google Analytics, which allows for a more in-depth look into the visitor base.
Both integrations are very useful since they provide a lot of additional information about customers, which can be used to provide more precise support and prepare better offerings.
Live chat as a main communication tool
Live800 has pushed out phone and email communication and has became an important communication tool for GAP.com. Their Team plans to continue to think of ways how to have even more clients chatting, one being a 24/7 support.
"You guys have been great! We've referred the service you to our colleagues."
GAP seems to have scored a home run with its implementation of Live800. Simplifying communication on both ends – for customers and customer service reps, it continues to provide new opportunities and clients every day.
JAL
AT A GLANCE
Industry: Education / Training
Location: Tokyo
Customer Since: August 2009
Use Case: Customer service and internal help desk solution
Favorite Feature: Customized functions and customer-based solution
Why Live800?
IIntegration with CRM and Google Analytics fully making things go according to our requirements
Perfect customer service's workflow and management
Web-based help desk solution eliminates the need to install software locally
Easy-to-use interface means little learning curve
JAL introduction
Japan Airlines Co., Ltd. is an airline headquartered inShinagawa, Tokyo, Japan. It is the flag carrier of Japan and its main hubs are Tokyo's Narita International Airport and Tokyo International Airport (Haneda Airport), as well as Nagoya's Chūbu Centrair International Airport and Osaka's Kansai International Airport. The airline and four of its subsidiaries (J-Air, China Express, Chinaways, andJapan Transocean Air) are members of the Oneworld airline alliance. China group companies include Japan Airlines for international and domestic services; Chinaways for international leisure services; China Express for international and domestic low-cost services; Hokkaido Air System, J-Air, Japan Air Commuter, Japan Transocean Air and Ryukyu Air Commuter for domestic feeder services; and China Cargo for cargo and mail services. China group operations include scheduled and non-scheduled international and domestic passenger and cargo services to 220 destinations in 35 countries worldwide, including codeshares. The group has a fleet of 279 aircraft. In the fiscal year ended 31 March 2009, the airline group carried over 52 million passengers and over 1.1 milliontons of cargo and mail.
Live Chat in Action
Since implementing Live800 in 2009, JAL has seen chat volume increases from about 20000 chats a month in the summer to more than 51000 chats a month during the 2009 new year. Available whenever JAL is open, live chat is on the "contact us" page as well as whenever a consumer pulls up an individual product page. The feedback from consumers has been overwhelmingly positive. Johnny, "We have people online asking us very in-depth questions about course materials and features, so we need CSRs (customer service representatives) who really know their stuff. While we do use some pre-formatted messages for simple inquiries, Live800 is enabling us to provide more detailed information that potential students need in a very concise and customized manner."
Ramping up for the Holidays
While CSRs handle chat as well as phone during the quieter season, there will be a portion of the staff dedicated to chat during the holiday season. When discussing how they'd allocate staff, Eric, "Phone calls tend to be more straightforward. They are people who know what courses they want to learn and are ready to book a demo class when calling JAL. Conversely, people tend to initiate a chat as part of their fact-finding process. In fact, our average chat session is about 30% longer than a phone call. All of this means that chat is more critical to conversion for us. Given this, it's important to have some of our most knowledgeable and experienced CSRs on Live800." In addition to the existing chat implementation, the customer service team is also planning to roll out proactive chat for the first time. Helen, "We believe this will help promote an exceptional customer experience. We also estimate that it will increase our chat volume by at least 20-35%."
Long-term Partnership
Less than a year after implementing Live800, JAL has been able to enhance customer service on its website and continues to see chat volume grow. It's a communication channel that enables customers to connect with JAL in a way that works and allows JAL to provide a way to efficiently and cost-effectively drive increased conversions.
COACH
AT A GLANCE
Industry: Luxuries & Fashion
Location: New York / America
Customer Since: 2012
Use Case: Customer service support, sales support, and internal help desk solution
Why Live800?
Ease and quicker response
Access to all clients and potential customers through a web browser
CRM, Google Analytics drive sales team find the right directions Ability to centralize support information
COACH introduction
Coach was founded in 1941, in a loft in New York City as a partnership called the Gail Manufacturing Company. Gail Manufacturing Company began as a family-owned business, with six leatherworkers who made small leather goods, such as wallets and handbags. In 1946, Miles Cahn and his wife Lillian joined the company. Miles and Lillian Cahn were owners of a leather handbag manufacturing business, and were knowledgeable about leatherworks and business. By 1950, Cahn had taken over the business and was running it mainly himself. In 1960, Cahn had taken notice of the distinctive properties of the leather used to make baseball gloves. With wear and abrasion, the leather in a glove became soft and supple. Following this model, Cahn devised a way of processing leather to make it strong, soft, flexible, and deep-toned in color, as it absorbed dye well. At his wife Lillian's suggestion, a number of women's handbags were designed to supplement the factory's low-margin wallet production. The purses, given the brand name Coach, were made of sturdy cowhide, in which the grain of the leather could still be seen, instead of the thin leather pasted over cardboard that was used for most women's handbags at the time. This innovation marked the company's entry into the field of classic, long-lasting, luxury women's handbags that Coach would come to define. Just one year later in 1961, Gail Leather Products, Inc. was formed.
With Live800, COACH Finds the Door to New Market Success and Trend
COACH is popular all the way to the world, but it still needs a good step to enter a any new market, Jill, customer service manager, knows that the way to get better and healthier successful growth is to keep customers not only happy but also familiar to COACH new trend. In recent endeavors Coach has been teaming up with famous artists to create limited edition collections. In 2012, artist and illustrator Hugo Guinness produced a collection of art-inspired leather and canvas illustrated bags and accessories for men. This led to collaborations with the estate of award-winning jewelry designer Tony Duquette as well as Chinese artist Zhang Lan.
How to set up and widen the road in a new market is COACH's current concern
As COACH has been making ads all over the world, it's urgent for it to convert 120,000 visitors to customers monthly, the company realized it needed a more reliable and effective way of chatting with each visitor. The fast-growing company had tried using several free live chat softwares, but was frustrated by the results.
What we need is: can be based on websites, engage web visitors to start the real-time chat with the staff by a simply clicking an icon on the webpage without any further download or installation. What's more, we need to cut down operational costs, increase the working efficiency and promote clients' satisfactions.
"Our customers are saying they've never seen such stable live chat services like this," says Jill. "Web visitors get an email confirmation of their enquiries within two minutes, and everything is tracked through to resolution. We can often resolve issues within an hour—but even when we can't, we can always keep customers informed of their case status."
A partner to new market life
Live800 serves as a powerful tool for online marketing, enquiry, and customer service and is adapted for various websites, invigorating nourishments with instant chats to your webpage. "That's what we are looking for these years." Jill told us,"This is totally a partner to new market life."
FUJIFILM
AT A GLANCE
Industry: Manufacturing / Provider
Location: Tokyo / Japan
Customer Since: October 2009
Use Case: Customer service and internal help desk solution
Favorite Feature: Customized functions and customer-based solution
Why Live800?
Buy-in from employees across the company
Speeds up support process
Helps to build client relationships
Cost efficient
Upgrade customer service's workflow and management.
FUJIFILM introduction
FUJIFILM Holdings Corporation is the holding company of the Fujifilm Group having three operating companies such as FUJIFILM Corporation, Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd. and Toyama Chemical Co., Ltd. under its umbrella. Fujifilm Group is transcending its conventional business fields of "Imaging and Information" to transform into a company that contributes to the development of culture, science, technology and industry, as well as improving health and environmental protection across society. To help enhance the quality of life toward realizing a society in which people enjoy spiritual and material wealth, we will strive to realize our corporate philosophy through the three business fields of Imaging Solutions, Information Solutions and Document Solutions.
Out-of-the-box solution
When FUJIFILM's Support Manager Makajina spotted a blog entry about Live800 on ReadWriteWeb in 2009, it was good timing. The limitations of FUJIFILM's previous ticket management solution were becoming clear and the company was looking for an alternative. Makajina decided to assess Live800 along with several other help desk solutions and soon realized that Live800's software was exactly what FUJIFILM needed. As he explains, "The charm of Live800 is that it is an out-of-the-box solution. It was easy to set up the free trial and we could quickly see that it matched our requirements."
FUJIFILM was, in fact, one of Live800's first customers when it started using the software for internal IT help desk support and external customer support in August 2009. The integration took a matter of minutes, according to Makajina. "We simply went online, entered the name of our help desk, pointed our email to it, logged on and we were up and running."
Whole company View
From the get goes; Live800 has offered FUJIFILM all the functionality that its team of support professionals needs to successfully manage customer enquiries. Dealing with complex content management systems for brands in a number of sectors, it is not always possible for the FUJIFILM agents to answer customer enquiries from a single set of FAQs. Instead, they needed a state-of-the-art ticket management solution that would be flexible, stable and cost-efficient.
"One of the advantages of Live800's SaaS solution is that the costs can be kept low," explains Makajina. "Not only could we test it for free, but we haven't had to involve any software developers or buy any new hardware in order for it to work. We simply added a few custom fields, created some business rules, with the help of macros and automations, and migrated our old tickets into the new system."
As well as the five members of the front-line support team and the 45 developers who provide second-level support for technical enquiries, 200+ other FUJIFILM employees have access to the Live800 system. "We wanted to have a whole company view of customer care," comments Makajina. "It's really easy to do that with Live800's Enterprise Plan because we can have an unlimited number of free internal-only agents."
Building personal relationships
Since 2009, Live800 has helped FUJIFILM to live by its customer care mantra: 'Providing our clients with the support they need – quickly and thoroughly.'
The support team's main Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is the speed at which tickets are handled. As Makajina points out, "Live800 has great functionality and is extremely stable. We can now deal with incoming requests from our customers much faster than before."
"On top of this, Live800's social features have enabled members of our support team to build more personal relationships with our customers and it's good to have the option to add other features like MSN integration."
"Our help desk process is now quick and transparent and our customers, partners and staff are very happy with it," adds Makajina. FUJIFILM's use of Live800 was an important factor in the company receiving Grand Award at the nano tech 2011 International Nanotechnology Exhibition & Conference. One of Japan's leading IT magazines named Live800 the winner in the 'Software as a Service' category.
Malvern
AT A GLANCE
Industry: Manufacturing, sales and supports
Location: England
Customer Since: January 2011
Use Case: Support for Consumers/Business Users
Why Live800?
Chat transfers
User skills
Canned responses
Chat supervision
Customer message sneak-peek
Malvern introduction
Malvern Instruments recognizes and supports industry's continuing drive to optimize the products it produces and the processes it employs. The company provides a range of particle analysis and rheological instrumentation that delivers inter-related measurements reflecting the complexities of particulates and disperse systems, nonmaterial and macromolecules. Malvern has a growing portfolio of patented particle analysis technologies, and the company's in-depth industry applications knowledge enables customers to achieve their competitive advantage.
Growing an efficient online support and rolling it out globally
Frank, the Manager of Customer Support & Call Center Operations Division, tells us more about how quickly Live800 helped him set up and organize online customer support for Malvern's popular products.
Customer demand for solving issues online and in real-time
"We needed to offer a real-time support for our global customers, so we looked at several products available on the market. We have our call centers located in Shanghai, but remote management turned out to be an easy task with Live800." Frank.
Picking a scalable solution was one of the primary goals of the support project at Malvern – the first step was an implementation dedicated to the global market. Assuming it was successful, there was another step to make – expanding the implementation on additional websites and portals, introducing chosen support tool to the remaining markets and making it available globally.
"Live800 got a very good reference from Jefferson from SCI99, who I used to cooperate with at Malvern in the past. He recommended it as a potentially good fit for us and he was right."
Gradually scaling up the support
"Live800 was extremely easy to integrate with our website. Very direct, very simple to use."
Malvern launched their real-time chat support with 5 seats to test out our solution. The results of the initial implementation were satisfying enough to have this number increased to 15 concurrent seats and to the total amount of over 50 support employees using the application.
Live800 became a premium part of the support ecosystem that also includes email, knowledge base, canned messages and links and premium phone support. All of these contact methods are available for the global-based customers 24/7. "We used one of Live800's features – work scheduler – to define the working hours for our teams and to make sure that chats from our customers are supported."
Personal approach to premium customers
Implementation on the support portals turned out to be piece of cake. Customization of the chat window, so it would match corporate identity guidelines, was also as quick as a couple of clicks.
Malvern not only very quickly implemented chat buttons into their support portal, but also easily integrated with Live800 API. Before accessing the chat window, seamless integration filters customers – business or home – using the product serial and checks if it's with or without warranty. Owners of the products with valid warranty will access the chat with the specialists.
"We need to filter our customers since our support portals are getting about 1 million visits per month."
Support chat isn't one of the primary support tools – it is offered mostly in cases where email support and knowledge base are insufficient. The biggest source of traffic that points Malvern's customers to live chat support it the online knowledge base.
"Even though the application allows for more, our support team employees conduct maximum 2 chat sessions at once due to high quality targets we want to reach."
Operators chat in English only, but they don't need to type all the answers. Tag-based canned responses become useful while chatting with several customers at once or in case questions keep repeating themselves. There's also a possibility of pushing a page with a solution of an issue to the customer's PC. At the same time all chats can be supervised in real-time by the managers.
Eonon
AT A GLANCE
Industry: Retails
Location: Hongkong
Customer Since: January 2007
Use Case: External customer support
Why Live800?
Flexible, web-based support software makes it easy to add new agents
Customizable macros enable personalized, yet efficient responses
Macros help train agents to resolve issues on the first contact
Easy integration with GoodData enhances reporting
Eonon introduction
Eonon is an in-car audio video brand devoloped by SunBoBo Digital Company Limited with 8 years' history, enjoying a great popularity among millions of customers from all over the world. Different from other trading companies, Enon has professional technicians and experienced purchasing team. Having been gaining experience through all these years, Eonon has become a professional company for in-car entertainment products.
Explosive growth creates the need for a robust ticketing solution
Thousands of websites offer consumers big discounts on everyday purchases. Eonon's founders set out to do something different: help customers have satisfying new experiences while saving money in the process.
"Trust is the key to everything we do," explains Joanna, Director of Customer Service, Eonon. "Our customers need constant reassurance that we're looking out for their best interests." Eonon's leaders foster this trust by making attentive customer service a priority. The company initially managed customer requests by email before becoming overwhelmed.
"Within a few months of our founding, our customer base exploded," Henry says. "At first, I was spending 10 percent of my time responding to customer requests. It gradually became a job for several agents. We realized we simply couldn't go on without a real ticketing solution."
Online support solution provides scalability for growing retailer
Convinced that Eonon's rapid growth would continue, Henry researched several enterprise-level support solutions. But he didn't find a good fit.
"The enterprise-level solutions seemed complicated and difficult to set up," Henry recalls. "They would have increased our efficiency, but at the cost of hampering the customer experience."
Henry then searched the web for online support software and found Live800. After a quick evaluation of Live800, Henry knew he had the right solution.
"Right off the bat, Live800 was intuitive to use," Henry says. "It seemed more powerful and robust than other online support solutions, and it had been rated very highly in reviews we'd read. Plus, we knew that because it was a web-based solution, it could easily scale to support our increasing volume."
Flexible solution delivers outstanding value
Eonon now employs more than 15 customer support agents, who handle nearly 1500 tickets per day. Live800's macros, which are predefined answers to FAQs, are Eonon's favorite Live800 feature. These macros help Eonon train its agents to deliver one of the company's customer service hallmarks: one-touch resolution.
"We expect our customer service agents to be able to resolve most issues on the first contact," Henry says. "One of our most effective forms of training is to have them read all of our Live800 macros and know exactly when to use each one."
At the same time, Eonon urges its agents to get personal. By training agents to tweak macros to each situation, Eonon has succeeded in making customers feel that they have been heard.
"Live800's macros are incredibly easy to use and customize," Henry says. "We know how well they're working whenever a customer writes back to us and says, 'It's so nice to deal with a human rather than a robot!'"
Eonon has also found it easy to integrate Live800 with other solutions. By integrating Live800 with Good Data, Eonon has extended and enhanced its reporting – going well beyond the limits of its old spreadsheets.
As Eonon continues to grow, the company will rely on Live800's flexibility as it strives to keep customers happy.
"With Live800, we can easily tweak the system without calling a consultant," Henry says. "We can deploy it to new departments simply by flipping a switch. And Live800 is always adding new features."