Add Click-to-Call to Your Site

Connect with customers by adding a click-to-call feature to your site.
Entrepreneur Magazine - June 2006

You know how important good customer service is to the success of your website, so why not take it up a notch with click-to-call technology? The feature, which has grown more affordable and popular thanks to VoIP, gives customers real-time support, differentiates your site from the competition and can boost sales, too.

Click-to-call makes it easy for customers to connect directly with a sales or customer service agent: They simply click an icon on your site and input their phone number. Within seconds, they receive a call from an agent who can provide a guided online experience and even suggest complementary items and relevant offers based on the caller's information. "Click-to-call can immediately help address consumer buying concerns, encourage upsells and increase conversion from web-site visitors," says Sucharita Mulpuru, a senior analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Wikipedia explains click to call quite extensively;

Click-to-call (CTC) refers to the process of converting web-based traffic into direct telephony communication between an end user and some other entity.

"The term "click-to-call" is sometimes confused with "pay-per-call." "Pay-per-call" is a business model for ad listings in search engines and directories that allows publishers to charge local advertisers on a per-call basis for each lead (call) they generate. "Click-to-call," along with call tracking, is a technology that enables the "pay-per-call" business model. But click-to-call can also be offered as a value-added lead generation and customer service solution"

Click-to-call buttons are popping up everywhere-- on corporate websites, emails, interactive ads and search engine directory ads. Even media buzz has recently focused around click-to-call, with internet search giants Google and Yahoo! testing ways to enable immediate web-to-phone connections between buyers and sellers through their local search ads.

The reality is that self-service cannot always be achieved online, particularly when making complex purchasing decisions. For high-value transactions, there's nothing like the power of voice for closing the deal. Jupiter Research has found that when it comes to questions about billing and delivery, product support or service and general order inquiries, the relative majority of consumers prefer phone contact over any other alternative, including email, self-service tools and text chat.

Companies are getting smarter about who is on their websites and are taking more aggressive steps to optimize their websites to increase customer loyalty and avoid website abandonment. In addition, companies are recognizing that an ordinary telephone number on a website creates a blind spot that prevents them from using CRM (customer relationship management) and business intelligence analytics to improve the online sales experience. An increasing number of organizations are utilizing click-to-call services as a bridge between online and offline channels to address this and are experiencing latent benefits, such as increased sales conversion rates and shortened call handle times, in the process.

Click-to-call technology is driving benefits for companies from Amazon.com to DaimlerChrysler. Using click-to-call services, companies have found, on average:

• A 22 percent to 25 percent reduction in website abandonment from website pages with click-to-call services
• As much as a 100 percent increase in transaction conversions from click-to-call users versus toll-free callers
• 88 percent of click-to-call users say they are more likely to contact a company that offers a click-to-call service than one that does not.