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.