We'd like to add some sort of interactive help option to our website, either click-to-call vs. click-to-chat software . Which is the better bet if our goal is to reduce costs and improve the overall customer experience?

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We shouldn't have to choose between reducing costs and improving the overall customer experience, but what if we did? Would you prefer to reduce costs, or would you prefer to improve the overall customer experience and thereby probably help your top line instead of just your cost line? With that in mind, you have to look very carefully at your market. If your market is a self-help kind of market and your customers are used to that sort of thing, then your click-to-chat software is probably your best bet. But if it's an older market, boomers and above, then click-to-call software might be better because they might be better adapted to voice help. So, the question becomes not just which one will end up costing you more, but which will provide the help that removes the barriers to completing the kinds of transactions online that make your business a success.

Now, having said that, let me also suggest that there may be a way that you can do both. It may be that you do click-to-chat for prolonged periods during the day, and you do click-to-call in the late afternoon or early evening or whatever turns out to be your busiest time. It's possible that you need some combination of the two because different customers have different needs and will need help from you in different ways. So, it's important to look at containing your costs, and also in completing your transactions and making sure that customers who are purchasing something from you are able to complete that process in a way that works for you and for them.

Hear more in Creating Customer Value, a SearchCRM.com monthly podcast series with Peppers and Rogers.

This was first published in May 2009

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