Home shopping company Ideal Shopping Direct is working to increase its turnover by finding out how and why its online customers abandon purchases – and then getting in touch to help those customers complete their purchases.
It has installed Tealeaf’s Customer Experience Management software on its websites, www.idealworld.tv and www.createandcraft.tv in order to work out where customers struggle and to recover lost revenue. Through its customer call centre, it is contacting shoppers who abandon purchases in order to find out if they need help to complete the sale, and says that in its first eight weeks it has converted 40% of these abandoned sales into purchases.
The company, which sells through four TV channels – Ideal World, Ideal Extra, Ideal & More, and Create and Craft – has recently expanded its online operations in order to give TV viewers an alternative to the call centre for making their purchases. It also aims to attract shoppers who are not part of its TV audience.
The Tealeaf systems give Ideal Shopping insight into what all its customers are doing on the website, and allows the retailer to adapt the site accordingly.
“For a company used to the tangible medium of television based shopping, the lack of visibility to online customers was only too obvious”, said Mike Hancox, chief executive at Ideal Shopping Direct. “The web is a strategically significant channel for us, and Tealeaf allows us to approach the web channel with a sophisticated outlook, rather than merely guessing at problems, issues and their potential solutions. Additionally, by using Tealeaf in our call centre, we are able to recoup otherwise unrecoverable lost revenues and improve the experience our customers have when interacting with our brand.”
John Lillie, Tealeaf vice president of UK and Southern Europe, said: “As Ideal Shopping focuses more time and energy on its online strategy, Tealeaf provides the necessary tools to make its website a reliable and effective channel for helping customers complete transactions, thereby contributing to the bottom line. Innovations like the outbound calling programme will allow Ideal Shopping to put customer experience at the heart of its business and reap the rewards as a result.”