I added my Pizza Button to this blog

You can now contact me using my personal widget. You can click on the pizza button image on the left or you can click here.

I also added this option to my LinkedIn page.

preview PushCall code generator

Ok, it is very easy to start with PushCall. Registration and implementation will take about 5 minutes, after which your online customers can start communicating with you.

But we think it can be even easier...

Check out the video in which I give a preview of our code generator on YouTube:



Now it is even easier to start; register, enter your target ID and adjust settings for one of the PushCall widgets, and copy/paste the code into your web page.

And of course you can do this all for free...

some new stats

I checked our stats for some of our audio clients for November (1st till 22nd), and this info popped-up:

Browser
As you can see in the graph below (click to enlarge), IE still rules.



Flash plugin
The first 3 places are for version 10, with a total of over 88%, I guess people easily upgrade to new Flash plugin versions.



OS
I guess Windows rules...97%!



Resolution
A lot of different resolution settings, but not as different as it seems.

On the move...

PushCall is on the move...In the busiest time of the year, we will relocate from Rijswijk to Delft, which is actually about 500 meters away from our current location.

But I need to say that the new office looks pretty attractive to me...You can take a look here, thanks to Google Maps' street view.

PushCall chat used in large campaign

This week the PushCall chat service was used in a campaign with a lot of traffic. On Monday, there were about 2.500 chat requests. At the peak, there was a request every 6 seconds!

I was a bit worried in advance, since our chat solution was not tested in practice on such a scale. Of course we did all sorts of stress tests ourselves, but you never now what you might face during an actual campaign.

The first day, the chat operators were not able to answer all chat requests, resulting in a queue that caused some delay in the active chat sessions. The second day, the number of chat operators was doubled and the chat performance was ok.

To support our customer, we managed to add some extra functionality to the chat solution, enabling online customers to check the FAQ's when the chat operators are overloaded or outside office hours.

Call-me-Later live!

We deployed our Call-me-Later solution last week and it is a great new feature.

Yesterday we started this new solution with one of our customers in a large national campaign. I am curious to see what it will bring.

The screenshots show the (Dutch) Call-me-Later service. Online customers can enter
their phone number and the date and time they want to be called.

Time and date can be selected with easy to use pull down menu's. Time and date are based on the the office hours that are entered in the PushCall web interface.

When an online customer changes time or date, the button will change accordingly. I really like the button, which states: "Call me on {date} at {time}". This really is a natural process everybody will understand.

After the online customer clicks the button, she will get an overview of the request: "We have received your request and we will call you on {date} at {time}".

At exactly the given time PushCall automatically connects to the phone number provided. The called person gets a message ("Please hold while we are connecting you to....") and is connected to an agent.

I know what you think: "this is so simple, everybody understand that". I agree, but why is nobody offering such a service yet? As I said in my previous post, we do not accept the offer where we will be called 'sometime during the day'. We do want to use a Call-me-Later function when we know exactly when we are connected (when we are in our daily traffic jam or during a break).

I will keep you posted on results of our Call-me-Later function.

New feature: Call-me-Later (delayed Call-me-Now)

We are currently implementing a new feature: Call-me-later. This feature enables browsers to schedule a call when the Call-me-Now option is not available.

To schedule a call, the online visitor can enter her phone number and the exact time she wants to be connected to an agent. When the online visitor schedules a call for 9:05 the next (business) day, the call is initiated from the PushCall platform at exactly that time.

This function enables browsers to plan a call at their convenience. People know exactly when they want to be called (tomorrow at 9:05 when I am in my car) and are not interested in an estimate (tomorrow somewhere in the afternoon).

The Call-me-Later functionality is another way of improving your online customer contact availability.

Survey on Online Customer Service

A recent survey, commissioned by ATG, showed some interesting results. Not because the results are new (we already pitch them during our sales process), but because they confirm what we already know.

Key findings of the survey:

Live help services increase shopper conversion.
Access to live online help - via live voice or live text chat - is very important to online shoppers and plays a key role in converting them from browsers into buyers. It was rated the third most "important" of seven core Web site features, after clear pricing information, and the ability to quickly browse and research products and services.

Consumers want their questions answered while they shop.
Online shoppers, especially those who shop frequently, want to be sure they can get their questions answered right away by a real person when they are browsing and shopping online. The complexity of questions, sensitivity of information, prices of goods and services, and problems transacting online all drive consumers to choose live assisted services such as click to call and click to chat.

Consumers want choices for live help.
Nearly 85% of consumers who browse, research, and buy products and services online want the choice of click to call or click to chat to get live sales or service assistance. While consumers see value in both, their preferences and use of each vary, depending on product pricing, complexity, the information required of the consumer. In fact, 67% of the respondents reported that having live help options in the form of click to call end click to chat together would be useful when making purchases online.

A live human voice - without having to call a toll free number and wait on hold - is the preferred live help option for most consumers in most situations.
Yet text chat is preferred in specific situations - mainly when questions are more simple and straightforward - indicating a need to offer both options and allow the consumer to choose.

Demand for click to call out paces its availability on shopping sites.
Nearly twice as many consumers have tried click to chat versus click to call. These findings indicate a lack of broad availability of click to call options on consumer Web sites. Businesses offering only a toll-free number that routes online customers into their standard interactive voice response (IVR) system are potentially losing a substantial number of transactions.

To read the complete survey, check out the ATG Web site.

Interesting survey. It seems to me our widgets (Flash Overlay Menu and Pizza Button Menu) offer exactly the choice online consumers are looking for.

Electrabel CallBanner launched

Today another CallBanner is launched. Electrabel offers a CallBanner at energieprijzen.nl, a Dutch site that compares different utility companies.

The CallBanner offers the website visitors to call directly from the banner, by entering their phone number. Directly after the visitor clicks the 'call me' button, the connection to the provided phone number is established and forwarded to an Electrabel agent.

Besides the call option, the online visitor can click on the CallBanner to a landing page. This ensures the efficient use of the Callbanner; leads who want to contact you directly are able to start a call without the need to browse the landing page for contact details, and leads who prefer to go to the landing page, to investigate more about the offer.

Electrabel starts with 24/7 support (wow!) so the CallBanner does not have to change appearance outside office hours. When support is only available during office hours, the CallBanner offers a Call-me-Back solution outside office hours.

Click the banner below to see the dynamic version of the CallBanner.

New website PushCall

Ai, it has been a while since my last post... I will get back into it as from now (I hope).

Did we do anything the last months? Of course we did. There are some nice developments we are eager to share with you. In this post, I will focus on our new website.

I think we really improved our new website. It is now very easy to experience our Flash Overlay Menu on your own website. Check out our previewer on our homepage.

We changed our point of view towards our solutions. In our previous website, we focussed on our technical solutions; Web-to-Phone, Call-me-Now and Chat. In our current website, we also explain everything about our 'multi channel communication tools', but we also focus on specials (like our CallBanner), custom design and account management. Last but not least we explain more about what PushCall can add to your business (see also our post on our TNT Business Case).

Feel free to look around and do not hesitate to give your feed back. We know there are still some small bugs. We are working on solving them.

Nimbuzz wins at The Europas

Congratulations to Nimbuzz for winning in the category 'Best Mobile Startup' of the TechCrunch Europe awards.

Nimbuzz offers a mobile (and a PC) solution for Chat and VoIP. Nimbuzz is compatible with Skype, Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger and more. Nimbuzz can also be integrated in different community sites like Facebook and Myspace.

It's a great app. Check it out at http://www.nimbuzz.nl/en/

You might wonder why I mention Nimbuzz in this post. Well, Nimbuzz is a PushCall customer. Nimbuzz uses PushCall Web-to-Phone technology in their widgets. You can add Nimbuzz widgets to your profile pages of Facebook, Myspace and other community sites. The widget enables viewers of your profile to contact you directly by chat or phone. Using the PushCall Web-to-Phone option, people can call you directly from your profile page (from the browser window) and you will receive the call in your Nimbuzz app. (mobile or PC).

And, as we can see from the traffic on our platform Nimbuzz generates, they are doing quite well and are growing fast!

Live Help whitepaper

Just read an interesting paper on Live Help that was send to me. This paper, from ATG, offered some interesting stuff on live help. I will summarize the parts I liked best:

(1) According to Forrester Research, 66 percent of consumers do not apply for financial services online because they prefer to apply in person or over the phone, while 52 percent want human assistance to validate their decision (Source: "Getting More Financial Services Shoppers to Apply Online" Forrester Research, Inc., September 2008).

(2) What customer-centric organizations realize offering Live Help:

- reducing web site abandonment
- acquiring more customers
- increasing sales and form conversion rates
- increasing average order sizes and total sales
- increasing customer present value and lifetime value
- differentiating products and services
- accelerating customer sales cycles
- reducing contact center costs
- optimizing web site and live sales approaches

(3) Myth #1: Voice increases costs. Chat reduces costs.

(4) Myth #2: Voice is for sales. Chat is for service
[I think this is actually true, although ATG states it's a myth. When a question in a sales process is easy enough to handle by chat, my guess is that it can be handled by intelligent FAQ or virtual assistant as well. If you do not agree with my opinion, do not hesitate to react to this post!].

(5) Myth #3: Offering both chat and voice help is redundant - I don't need both.
[I agree that it's a myth; customers/visitors/buyers tend to have a preference for a certain channel, there fore companies should offer different channels to make sure abandonment of the sales process is not based on a missing channel].

(6) According to Gartner, web chats are only more cost-effective than voice calls when an agent can handle three or more chats at a time.

You probably knew some or even most of it already, but it is good to have confirmation once in a while.

Business Case - TNT

We created a business case for the pilot project with TNT Post in The Netherlands.

The goal of the project was to improve online customer contact in the business portal of TNT. Online visitors should be able to contact an agent as easy as possible when they have a question or want to order.
During the pilot, both our Web-to-Phone and Call-me-Now solution were added to the portal. In the next phase, our chat solution will be added as well.

Directly after the pilot started, it became clear that using PushCall immediately increases online sales. The ROI of the complete project (including contact center, project management and web implementation) was established within 1 month.

"The first month, PushCall invoiced about 200 Euro for the use of their solutions. The potential turnover was over 24.000 Euro...!"

Click here to view the complete business case (in Dutch).

PushCall CallBanner added in Telegraaf Ad Gallery

Our CallBanner is available for all online networks. TMG (Telegraaf Media Group) has added our CallBanner to their gallery, so advertisers can view an example of how it would look like in a campaign.

To view the CallBanner in the gallery (in Dutch), click here

FEM Tech 25 - 2009

PushCall is 1 of 5 ICT companies in The Netherlands that made it on the FEM Tech 25 list of 2009.

FEM Business asked several investors, analysts and start-up consultants about their hottest ICT picks in The Netherlands.

Click here to view the online article (in Dutch).

PushCall previewer

I just can't wait sharing the PushCall previewer with you. We have scheduled a nice UI on our website for it, but since the upgrade of our website is due for another 3 to 4 weeks, I am going to share it with you in this post.

We have a previewer for potential customers to experience the PushCall solutions. All though we have not the intention to sell exactly what the previewer shows, we notice that a lot of our customers like the previewer so much that this is what they actually want.

This is the URL you can use: http://smartcontactbutton.pushcall.com/preview/?url=www.[yourwebaddress.com]&target=demo&baseColor=0x008CCE&showOnNA=false

Fill in your web address in the URL and you will see your website with, in the right corner, a contact toaster. When you click on the toaster, a Flash overlay appears:


In the URL there are some other variables you can adjust:

target=demo
Using this target ID might get you in contact with one of us, which might be nice. But you can also start a free trial account on our website and use the target ID you are receiving from us. You can use your own phone number in your trial account for testing our web-to-phone and call-me-now solution and you can login to your webinterface to test the chat option.

baseColor=0x008CCE
You can change the color of the toaster as well as the buttons in the Flash overlay. This enables you to really match up with your website.

showOnNA=false
This part offers you the possibility to either show the contact options greyed out when not available or to not show unavailable options at all.

This is it. Try it and please feel free to give some feedback.

PushCall includes Google Analytics

First of all, it has been a while since my last post. I will try harder to keep you posted on developments...there are quite a lot of them!

In this post I want to inform you on the possibility of adding Google Analytics code to the PushCall customer contact solutions. This enables you to measure all sorts of interesting variables, like the number of views, clicks, calls, succeeded audio tests (for the web-to-phone solution) and the number of failed audio tests (and what part of the audio test failed).

We were exited with the information we are getting from Analytics.

I know you want me to give you some numbers....but I can only offer you the following graphs, based on about 1.1 million visitors on different customer websites. As you can see, we should not take Flash versions 8 or lower into account when developing new features, and there is still little change in the browser market...!

We released our new platform today...!

Without any serious issues (for now at least, there is always a change something pops-up in short term) we released our 2.5 platform.

Some interesting new features for our customers:

Add, delete or edit target ID's
Now our customers can manage their own targets; you want specific targets for sales and support? No problem. You can use different destination numbers but you can also route calls to the same destination and just use different ID's to see where your calls are coming from.

Add Google Analytics code
We now support Google Analytics code for both our web-to-phone and call-me-now solution. Just enter your Google Analytics code to the target ID you want to monitor and get feedback on usage and events.

Communicate over https
Customers can now use https to login to their web interface.

And last but not least, we improved our web self service environment; register and start using PushCall within 5 minutes...for free! You like the services? Extend your account to pro and get even more features to improve your online channel. We already heard some great results; in general you can expect about 20% of the people contacting you, to buy your product or service. And they will be pleased by the easy contact options your company offers!

Our first CallBanner campaign...!

Next Monday our first commercial CallBanner campaign is launched on the Reed Business network. Reed Business, a PushCall business partner, triggered a large Dutch insurance company to test the CallBanner on 3 of their websites: beurs.nl, zibb.nl and bizz.nl. 

We developed a CallBanner that is available during office hours. After office hours, a 'no call' banner is used.

The banner redirects to a landingspage, and during office hours both our Web-to-Phone as well as our Call-me-Now solution is added for direct contact.

Click on the banner to see the actual Flash banner functionality. 

Feel free to add some comments on this article!

Visit PushCall at TCD2009

You can visit PushCall at TCD2009 in Utrecht (NL) on April 21, 22 and 23.

During TCD, we will demo our general solutions

- Web-to-Phone
- Call-me-Now
- Click-to-Chat

and also specific solutions like

- our CallBanner
- PushCall tools embedded in PDF documents

We will also inform you on best practices on using our tools for lead generation and customer satisfaction. And believe me, this best practices will convince you to start using PushCall solutions!

You can register for free for TCD2009 by clicking on the banner below.

How Call-me-Now works

This is the next post on 'How PushCall solutions work'. Part 2: the PushCall Call-me-Now solution.

Our Call-me-Now solution offers website visitors to enter their phone number. Once they have entered their number, our platform automatically connects to this number. Once connected, the connection with a company representative is established.

The company offering the service can determine how many simultaneous calls they want to handle. Any extra call will be placed in a dynamic queue.

All windows you see in the demo video, can be personalized.

Check out the Call-me-Now demo video.

How Web-to-Phone works

In this post I will give a demo on how the PushCall Web-to-Phone solution works. I was testing Jing (nice solution!) and noticed how suitable this is for making demo's on different PushCall solutions. So here is part 1: the PushCall Web-to-Phone solution.

Our Web-to-Phone solution offers website visitors to directly call the company behind the website from the browser window (VoIP using their PC). The PC needs a headset or speakers and a microphone to make a call, but there is no need to install any software. We use Flash at the browser part, which is available on all PC's that are used for browsing the Internet.

At the website owners' part, we offer to redirect calls to their existing phone solution. No need to install or implement anything, they are up and running in 5 minutes!

Check this video for a demo. 

Check out our echo test yourself.

Business Case: insurance company

Company Challenge:

"We want to increase our customer service level towards our website visitors. Can we improve our service level in a way that we increase our online sales as well?"

Objective
Increase customer service level by offering fast, easy to use and free of charge voice solution to online customers and website visitors. Of all calls received through these channels, at least 10% must result in a direct sale or a prospect inquiry.

ResultPushCall offered a personalized and hosted Call-me-Now solution in just 1 week. The solution offers customers an immediate call from a company representative. BrainsGroup , one of PushCall's preferred partners, was able to deliver sales support, including highly skilled agents, within the given time frame as well.

About 1,5% of the website visitors used the voice solution to get in contact with the company. 

10% of all incoming calls resulted in at least a prospect inquiry; 20% of which resulted in a direct sale by phone.

Website visitors reacted very positive to the voice solutions. They were highly satisfied with the easy to use tools and also with the highly skilled agents answering the calls.
Although the project was originally meant for the period of 2 months, the insurance company decided to continue the services on their website.

CallBanner available in Semilo network

As of now, Semilo, a Dutch affiliate network with a monthly reach of 4 million views, offers the PushCall CallBanner to their advertisers.

To trigger advertisers, Semilo has started a campaign on their network with this nicely designed CallBanner. To check out the Flash version, click here.

Wonder how PushCall contact solutions can look like on your website?

We now offer a PushCall previewer that makes it possible.

You just enter your URL to the previewer and - optional - your target ID when you have a PushCall (trial) account. When you click the preview button, your web page will appear with our 'overlay' contact button injected in the right corner. Clicking this button will make our overlay appear with different contact options.

This solution is developed specifically for hosting companies. They can offer their customers this solution, injecting the corner button through a proxy. Their customers can activate the solution in the control panel without the need of adding code to their website. They just add the destination number they want to receive calls on, activate the service in the hosting companies control panel and they are up and running within 5 minutes.

We are going to implement this solution with some UK hosting companies in short term. I will keep you posted on conversion rates and the like!

We started our first CallBanner campaign today

This morning we started our first CallBanner on the Reed Business network. Our CallBanner is added to 2 (Dutch) business websites; fem.nl and beleggersbelangen.nl.

Just like our Adwords campaign, we did not experience any problems adding our banner to the DART ad management system of Double Click which is used by Reed Business. Again, a PushCall solution that is extremely easy to start with.

You can check out our Callbanner on the websites of Reed Business, or check the banner at our news section (it's in Dutch, but you will get the idea).

Let's see what the Callbanner will bring us. We are already talking to several media companies to investigate opportunities.

PushCall starts Adwords campaign with Call Banner

Today we started a Google Adwords campaign with our Call Banner. Once our Call Banner appeared in the Google network, we were (again) convinced of this solution: WOW!

Our banner was first shown on insurance.freeadvice.com and it worked exactly as it should; we were able to start a VoIP call directly from the banner. The call was redirected to our office phone and the quality of the call was great.

I really think this solution is a great tool for lead generation. Where outbound phone calls are accepted less by consumers over time, our Call Banner offers a way to receive calls based on a company's proposition. Since the caller initiates the contact, I am certain the conversion rate will increase and (probably just as important) the agent taking the calls is more enthusiastic about talking to people interested in the proposition instead of trying to convince random people of this proposition.

Now companies can extend their online communication to an affiliate network with a new innovative solution; instead of trying to get web visitors to your landing page, you can offer a direct communication channel from the affiliate website...

Let's see what will happen to this Call Banner. Next stop is a campaign in partnership with Reed Business, starting January 19 next, on both fembusiness.nl and beleggersbelangen.nl (Dutch business web portals).