Hello everyone,

I hope all are well.

Thanks to everyone who posted a pic. There’s still time to upload one if you haven’t already.

I’ve been working with the developer on Chat. He is several days away from finishing the coding. Afterwards we’ll spend a few days configuring and testing before it’s fielded. Bear with us.

Closer to completion…the survey results are in. I’m providing these to you as a precursor to Chat for you to begin gathering an understanding of the general customer mindset. The value is when Chat is finally available you’ll have some idea of why a customer arrives at LetterRep.com and the difficulties they encounter so you can assist and steer them toward the purchase of your letters that suit their needs…or to the service of YOU writing a letter for them.

Here are the overall visitor results:

The key choice of interest above is ‘Ask an expert.’ ‘Browse’ and ‘Learn about products’ are almost the same and, as you can see, make up roughly 60% of all visits. ‘Ask an expert’ was chosen as a survey choice because it was felt, based on voicemails, answering messages and customer service emails that customers definitely come to the site looking for assistance. That’s why we’re adding Chat.

Customers are basically in search of free stuff - no question about it. Other sites that employ Chat have gone as far as requiring customers to input their credit card info before allowing access to the assistant just so the assistants can call a stop to the pressure for answers by requiring payment before any further assistance is given and the customer is that much closer to completing the sale. (I’d like to hear your thoughts on this…I’ve opted not to include it in this version of chat, but I’ll consider adding it if a large enough group feels it would screen the freebie-seekers from the true customers.)

Chat will allow us, the writers, to perform our normal work online and then, as customers click the ‘Ask an expert’ link appearing below our pics, interact with them - answering questions to assist, as much to help as to demonstrate to the customer that we, the chatting writers, have the product or service they need.

The goal for Chatting will be for writers to take the 60% of browsing-customers who click Chat and the 30% of assistance-seekers who click Chat, ask and answer questions about the customer’s needs, build trust and rapport, and lead them to the writer’s own letters or to a page to hire you exclusively to compose a letter for them. (We’re creating a writer’s side page to help you quickly find your letters and provide letter purchase-page links to the customer. You’ll also have a link to paste to the customer in chat to have them hire you exclusively to write a letter.)

Here’s the next bit of interesting data from the survey - The comments customers made when answering the open-ended questions: (Bear in mind that I removed some ‘fluff’ from the survey that didn’t make a difference in the results: Entries, such as, ‘asdfjkl;‘ ‘I wanted free stuff,’ ‘I don’t like surveys,’ etc.)

Question 1: What do you value most about the [company] website?

Question 2: Please tell us why you were not able to fully complete the purpose of your visit today?

In the first list above, with a few exceptions, the value customers assigned to LetterRep was the ability to work with a professional.

The second list is almost a unanimous annoucement from customers that they are/were unable to find the letters they need.

Chat can fix both of these. Here’s how…

Writers who take the time to professionally and courteously work with customers will satisfy the professional requirement from List 1. Building trust will be key! Learning the protocol of how to interact and finally sense when a customer is ready to buy will take a little time, but be patient and keep trying.

As you start to become successful, let us know. We’ll use your methods to build a general protocol for all writers…and, since you can only answer one customer at a time, it won’t be taking away from you.

As for the second list, I find it a little hard to believe…for goodness sake there over 9000 letters on LetterRep. Either not know how to search or not wanting to search is more likely the problem. Nonetheless, in the interest of improving our own sales, we’ll gladly conduct the search for them. That, however, may require help from the site, and, please trust that I’m all ears if you have a suggestion to make it better. First, the development team is creating an ‘Assist a customer’ page (those of you who were around for our earlier attempt at Chat will remember that link). During your chat sessions with customers, writers will be able to click the ‘Assist a customer’ link in their writers accounts. Within the accounts, writers will be able to search their own letters. I made this bold because it is only stage one of Chat. In time we will add the ability for writers to search all letters on the site and earn money through referrals. As for now, it will just be your letters that you can search. Searches will be based on the information you collect during your chat session with the customer. While determining the customer’s needs, you will be able to search on the ‘Assist a customer’ page and have results displayed and accompanied by links. We’re still working on the process, but you’ll either be able to copy-and-paste the link or click on it to have it pasted into the Chat window to be sent to the customer. When the customer clicks the link, they will be referred to the payment page. An additional link on the page will refer customers to a page for hiring you exclusively. This is just the stuff we thought of. As you conduct your chats, please, please, please let me know what would make it better and easier!!!

Chat will look a lot like Facebook’s chat, for anyone who’s used it. Please take a look at the survey comments above, and if you have any questions, please let me know.

Rob
admin[at]letterrep.com

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 1:45 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.