Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service

Transcription

1 Page 1 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service Twenty Solutions For Delivering Differentiated Eperiences A Forrester Research Report

2 For: Application Development & Delivery Professionals Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service by Kate Leggett and Art Schoeller, June 4, 2013 key takeaways The Chat Channel Enjoys High Satisfaction Ratings And Is Increasingly Important Chat usage rates as a customer service engagement channel have grown from 30% in 2009 to 43% in It is widely adopted by all generational segments and has high satisfaction ratings superseded only by voice interactions. Chat Vendor Solutions Aim to Support Several Customer-Related Goals A wide variety of stakeholders in an organization -- from ebusiness to marketing to customer service, and the contact center -- purchase and use chat as a customer engagement channel. Each stakeholder has different requirements that span customer service, customer retention, and revenue-generation goals. Chat Solutions Fall Into Five Broad Categories The chat vendor landscape is mature and crowded. Forrester groups chat vendors into five broad categories, which cater to a subset of stakeholders: standalone chat vendors, online engagement vendors, multichannel vendors, CRM suite customer service vendors, and contact center vendors. Map your needs to vendors within this contet. Forrester Research, Inc., 60 Acorn Park Drive, Cambridge, MA USA Tel: Fa:

3 June 4, 2013 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service Twenty Solutions For Delivering Differentiated Eperiences by Kate Leggett and Art Schoeller with Stephen Powers and Sarah Bookstein WHY READ THIS REPORT Customers demand superior service and support as the price for their ongoing loyalty and patronage, and they are increasingly leveraging the chat channel for customer service. The chat vendor landscape is mature and crowded. Many vendors offer a range of chat capabilities and support a broad set of usage scenarios that application development and delivery (AD&D) pros supporting customer service operations can choose from. This report spotlights the capabilities of 20 chat vendors and offers a decision framework for choosing the right type of chat solution for your needs. Table Of Contents 2 Chat: Critical To The Promise Of Effortless Customer Service Chat Vendors Fall Into Five Categories, Each With A Unique Focus Profiles Of Five Categories Of Chat Vendor Solutions Recommendations Build A Chat Vendor Strategy With A View Toward The Future Supplemental Material Notes & Resources Forrester analyzed data from Forrester s North American Technographics Customer Eperience Online Survey, Q (US). Forrester interviewed 20 chat vendors to solicit input for this report. Related Research Documents Assess Customer Service Capabilities To Pinpoint Opportunities For Better Service December 26, 2012 Build An Outside-In Contact Center Road Map November 20, 2012 Transform The Contact Center For Customer Service Ecellence June 22, , Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester, Technographics, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. To purchase reprints of this document, please [email protected]. For additional information, go to

4 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 2 Chat: critical to the promise of EFFORTLESS Customer Service Nearly all companies (92%) say that a good customer eperience is one of their top strategic priorities, and 60% say they want to use customer eperience as a competitive differentiator. 1 Customer service is often the cornerstone of a company s customer eperience strategy; 40% say that improving the customer eperience is their top customer service goal, with a further 40% saying that it s their second most important goal. 2 However, the reality is that few companies are doing anything about optimizing the service eperience; they still primarily focus on cost-control measures, and only 47% of companies have a dedicated budget for customer eperience initiatives let alone for improving the service eperience. 3 Forrester data shows that customers want efficient, effortless service. Fifty-two percent of US online adults say that they are very likely to abandon their online purchase if they cannot find a quick answer to their question, and 71% say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good service. 4 Customers are very comfortable engaging with companies for customer service via chat. Chat usage rates have risen in the past three years from 30% in 2009 to 43% in As well, all demographics are comfortable using this channel, with even one-third of Older Boomers (57-67) and the Golden Generation (68+) already using chat for customer service. Chat also has high satisfaction ratings across all generations satisfaction ratings that are only superseded by those of the voice channel. 5 After a slow start a decade ago, businesses today have embraced the chat channel, as chat can cost less than a voice call, especially for organizations that allow their agents to handle multiple chat sessions simultaneously. Companies can easily build a business case and justify the purchase of chat solutions. Organizations as large as Verizon, Virgin Atlantic, and Bank of America and as diverse as the Redwood City Police Department, The North Face, and Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) plastics have successfully deployed chat for customer service. In our most recent study of chat technology adoption rates for customer service, almost half of the organizations we surveyed had implemented chat as a communication channel for their customers. 6 Chat Helps Companies Push The Envelope On Customer Engagement Over the past decade, chat has become an integral component of online web and, more recently, mobile self-service. Chat is a mature channel, with clearly established best practices that deliver real business value. 7 The technology has demonstrated its ability to improve customer service department operational efficiency by collecting information to populate a service ticket and quickly answering customer questions by leveraging predefined answers from a content repository; to improve sales by reducing shopping cart abandonment rates; and to better sales conversion by helping educate customers during pre- and post-purchase interactions. Yet, companies reacting to customer demand for more personalized, targeted service eperiences are currently pushing the envelope on newer chat scenarios.

5 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 3 Chat success stories include: Delivering optimized customer eperiences. Drugstore.com incorporated Oracle RightNow s chat solution as a strategic component in supporting the company mission of delivering superior customer eperiences. Agents use chat to understand website visitor requirements, educate visitors on available products and product specifications, and guide them to the right products for their needs. Drugstore.com reports a 30% increase in conversion rates, a 20% increase in shopping cart size, reduced abandonment, and increased customer satisfaction. Increasing customer satisfaction. Virgin Atlantic Airways, a UK-based carrier, uses chat from LivePerson to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. Chat has reduced volume and backlog, allowing customer inquiries to be dealt with at first contact. Customers needs are met in real-time and chat has helped raise Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores to more than 80%. Costs per chat are less than both phone and costs. In addition, customers who chat have an average order value of more than 15% over those who self-serve; customers who chat also purchase products at nearly 3.5 times the rate of those who do not. Decreasing operational costs. Charter Communications, the fourth largest cable operator in the US, providing video, Internet, and phone services, uses Net IT s virtual agent solution in conjunction with an eisting chat application to provide a seamless eperience on its support site. By using reports to analyze chat sessions, Joe Murray, VP of customer care technology operations, eplains: Charter has been able to optimize operations by deflecting 78% of chats with better self-service content. For eample, Charter determined that 38% of incoming chat requests were for a reset of user names and passwords, which is now an automated service available to subscribers. Charter s attention to right-channeling customers to the right engagement mode either virtual agents or chat has resulted in a fivefold return on investment in the si months that the solution has been available. Optimizing agent utilization and forecasting. Financial services institution DNB Norway uses a chat solution from Genesys Telecommunications, which is integrated into its , social, and voice channels, to support customers in completing comple loan and mortgage applications online. Jan Thomas Lerstein, senior business developer responsible for all contact center solutions at DNB, eplains that chat volumes are high over 10 million a year, and each chat session is long, lasting close to 10 minutes. Agents during the day work in two groups: voice-only agents and agents who handle chat, Twitter, and . At night, when interaction volumes are lower, agents follow a truly blended model, handling interactions of all media types. Contact center managers rely on the unified reporting across communication channels to understand inquiry patterns and manage real-time inquiry loads across channels. They also use the unified workforce management capabilities to optimize agent scheduling and load forecasting across all channels.

6 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 4 Improving the consistency of customer service. ParetoLogic, a Canadian company offering PC security and utility programs, uses integrated chat and capabilities from egain to offer consistent service eperiences, including data and content, across these channels. Mark Rosario, operations analyst, says that customer service agents are more productive as they do not have to use different agent desktop tools for chat and interactions, which would impede their productivity. He also says that managers rely on consolidated chat and reports to manage their staff, and managing the IT infrastructure is much simpler as multiple channels are available from a single vendor solution. Increasing revenue. Abt Electronics is a US-based consumer electronics and appliance retailer that relies on LogMeIn s BoldChat solution to better engage visitors and increase sales conversion rates. Abt Electronics reports that while only 1% of online shoppers end up making a purchase, more than 20% of visitors who have engaged with Abt Electronics via a chat session convert to a sale. Additionally, about one-quarter of chat buyers end up purchasing additional items during their transaction. Selectively targeting customers for increased sales. Lenovo, a global manufacturer of consumer electronics, uses the predictive analytics that are part of [24]7 chat s solution to analyze visitor behavior and engage those visitors who show a propensity for purchasing products. Lenovo reports that chat has increased from less than 1% up to 30% of its online sales in less than a year without cannibalizing online self-service sales, while revenues per agent have increased fourfold. Lewis Broadna, eecutive director of web sales and marketing, eplains, The predictive analytics accurately tells us whom to target with chat, when to intervene, how to help, and what to offer. Now we spend more time helping the right customers in the right ways. Zero In On Vendors With The Right Vertical Focus And Track Record When choosing a chat vendor, the first questions you should ask relate to the vendor s background and high-level focus areas. Ask questions about its vertical focus; the size of deployment that the vendor is most comfortable supporting; the supported deployment options software-as-a-service (SaaS), on-premises, or via a managed services engagement; typical usage scenarios that the vendor supports; and customer references (see Figure 1).

7 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 5 Figure 1 Twenty Chat Vendors Offer A Range Of Uses And Vertical Epertise 1-1 Standalone chat vendors Vendor name Number of chat customers Average chat deployment size (number of chat agents) Main usage scenarios Largest chat deployment (number of chat agents) Netop Customer service (40%); help desk (35%), sales (25%) Velaro > Customer service (40%); Sales (30%); both sales and customer service (30%) Is chat typically purchased separately or standalone? Standalone (100%) Standalone (100%) Deployment options Vendor name Vertical focus Software-as-a-service Managed services On-premises Chat customer eample Netop Financial services (25%); healthcare (20%); government (25%) Redwood City Police Department ( Velaro ecommerce (25%); healthcare (20%); technology (20%); financial services (15%); education (15%); manufacturing (5%) Comcast, Humana, LinkedIn, Pfizer, SABIC ( UtilityPages/LiveChat/livechat.html)

8 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 6 Figure 1 Twenty Chat Vendors Offer A Range Of Uses And Vertical Epertise (Cont.) 1-2 Online engagement vendors Vendor name LivePerson BoldChat by LogMeIn TouchCommerce [24]7 <20 (launched Q3 2012) Number of chat customers Average chat deployment size (number of chat agents) Main usage scenarios Largest chat deployment (number of chat agents) Sales (50%); customer service (50%) 8, ,000 Sales/lead generation (70%); customer service (30%) 1,000 s s ecommerce (70%); customer service (30%). Approimately 75% use it for both functions. > >500 Sales/acquisition (60%); customer service (20%); both sales and customer service (20%) Is chat typically purchased separately or standalone? Standalone (40%); integrated solution (60%) Integrated solution (80%) LivePerson is moving to a fully bundled solution Standalone (60%); integrated solution (40%) Standalone (10%); integrated solution (90%)

9 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 7 Figure 1 Twenty Chat Vendors Offer A Range Of Uses And Vertical Epertise (Cont.) 1-2 Online engagement vendors (cont.) Deployment options Vendor name Vertical focus Software-as-a-service Managed services On-premises Chat customer eample [24]7 Financial services (30%); retail (25%): telecommunications (25%); other (20%) Proactive chat at: and LivePerson Telecommunications (34%); financial services (22%); retail (14%); technology (11%); other (19%) Flowers, Crate and Barrel, EarthLink, Virgin Atlantic ( com) BoldChat by LogMeIn ecommerce/retail (56%); financial services (12%); telecommunications (10%); education (5%); other (17%) AutoZone, Abt Electronics,Lemark, Motorola, The North Face TouchCommerce Telecommunications (50%); financial services/ insurance (20%); travel and hospitality (10%); retail (10%); other (10%) 24 Hour Fitness, Citizens Bank, Comcast, MetLife, Vodafone, SFR

10 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 8 Figure 1 Twenty Chat Vendors Offer A Range Of Uses And Vertical Epertise (Cont.) 1-3 Specialty multichannel customer service vendors Vendor name Kana Software Moie Software egain ,000 Sales/acquisition (20%); customer service (20%); both sales and customer service (60%) Net IT Parature Zendesk <20 Vendor did not disclose Vendor did not disclose Number of chat customers <20 Vendor did not disclose Average chat deployment size (number of chat agents) Main usage scenarios Largest chat deployment (number of chat agents) Standalone (20%); integrated solution (80%) 900 Customer service (100%) Integrated (100%) 50 10,000 Customer service (51%); sales (49%) 100 Customer service (75%); sales (25%) Customer service (90%); help desk (10%) 2, Customer service (75%); help desk (25%) Is chat typically purchased separately or standalone? Standalone (8%); integrated solution (92%) Integrated solution (100%) Almost eclusively integrated Integrated solution (100%)

11 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 9 Figure 1 Twenty Chat Vendors Offer A Range Of Uses And Vertical Epertise (Cont.) 1-3 Specialty multichannel customer service vendors (cont.) Deployment options Vendor name Vertical focus Software-as-a-service Managed services On-premises Chat customer eample egain Insurance and financial services, telco, and retail have accounted for circa 75% of recent revenue American Public University System, Canon, Farmers Insurance, Shopbop, Ebates, ParetoLogic, Talbot s West Business Services, Netrada Kana Software No vertical specialization Bally Total Fitness; Bank Leumi; BrightHouse Nteowrks; Starwood Moie Software Financial services (21%); retail (18%); media/ telecom (13%); services (10%); high-tech (6%); other (32%) ACN, Crocs, Dell, EPSON, Nationwide Insurance, Saks Fifth Avenue Net IT Even split between: travel, financial, and healthcare. Charter Communications Parature Technology (60%); public sector (20%); gaming/ entertainment (20%) Elsevier, emds, IBM, Tagged, Travelodge UK, Wharton School of Business, Zenoss Zendesk Broad industry focus. Concentration in: web applications (15%); software (14%), retail (8%); education (5%) YouSendIt, Zuora, dotmailer

12 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 10 Figure 1 Twenty Chat Vendors Offer A Range Of Uses And Vertical Epertise (Cont.) 1-4 CRM suite customer service vendors Vendor name Oracle (RightNow) salesforce.com 300 to 400 Vendor did not disclose Vendor did not disclose Number of chat customers Average chat deployment size (number of chat agents) Vendor did not disclose Main usage scenarios Largest chat deployment (number of chat agents) Customer service (80%); sales (20%) 200 1,000 In order of usage: customer service, sales, help desk Is chat typically purchased separately or standalone? Standalone (3.5%); integrated solution (96.5%) Integrated solution (100%) Deployment options Vendor name Vertical focus Software-as-a-service Managed services On-premises Chat customer eample Oracle (RightNow) Retail, public sector, financial services, communications, travel, transportation, hospitality Salesforce High-tech; gaming; telecommunications; financial services Activision (support.activision.com); Rosetta Stone (success.rosettastone.com)

13 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 11 Figure 1 Twenty Chat Vendors Offer A Range Of Uses And Vertical Epertise (Cont.) 1-5 Contact center vendors Vendor name Aspect Customer service ( 85%); sales (10%); help desk (5%) Avaya 2, In order of usage: customer service; help desk; sales Cisco to In order of usage: customer service; eternal help desk Genesys ,000 In order of usage: sales support; customer service, help desk Interactive Intelligence LiveOps ,000 In order of usage: customer service, sales, product education Vendor did not disclose Number of chat customers Average chat deployment size (number of chat agents) Main usage scenarios Largest chat deployment (number of chat agents) Customer service (78%); sales (20%); help desk (2%) Is chat typically purchased separately or standalone? Integrated solution (100%) Standalone (1%); integrated solution (99%) Standalone (10%); integrated solution (90%) Standalone (10%); integrated solution (90%) Integrated solution (100%) Integrated solution (100%)

14 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 12 Figure 1 Twenty Chat Vendors Offer A Range Of Uses And Vertical Epertise (Cont.) 1-5 Contact center vendors (cont.) Deployment options Vendor name Vertical focus Software-as-a-service Managed services On-premises Chat customer eample Aspect Financial services; outsourcing; healthcare; telecommunications Newport City Homes; VortalSoft; Wipro Networks Avaya Retail, service providers; financial services; utilities; insurance; technology Palm Coast Data; Chatanooga Power Electric Board Cisco No vertical specialization Genesys Financial services (36%); telecommunications (20%); retail (14%) National Center For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Children, UK; ESRI US; DNB Norway ( appo/chat/startchat?routingtag=hjelp_ kundeservice) Interactive Intelligence No vertical specialization webchatpage/new_dialer_open.asp LiveOps High-tech (28%); financial services (19%); retail (22%); other (32%) callus/ chat vendors fall into five categories, each with A unique focus The chat vendor landscape is crowded; for this report, we surveyed 20 key vendors that offer representative capabilities for each category and support a breadth of enterprise deployment sizes in industry verticals that have embraced the chat channel. Organizations must narrow the field to what category of vendor solution is most appropriate for their chat eperience initiatives by asking such questions as: What is your agent staffing model? Some organizations dedicate agents to a single communication channel, such as chat. Some restrict agents to working on a subset of

15 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 13 communication channels, such as chat, , and short message service (SMS), that require similar skill sets. Others embrace the blended agent model, where agents manage interactions over the breadth of voice, digital, and social media channels. Agents supporting digital and social interactions have a fundamentally different skill set than agents supporting voice interactions. You must carefully choose your staffing model, which will dictate historical reporting, unified queuing and routing requirements, workforce management needs, as well as the types of agent desktops supported. What organization will be purchasing and managing chat? ebusiness and marketing leaders are often the primary purchasers of digital engagement technologies, which include chat. For eample, in a survey of ebusiness and channel strategy eecutives, 91% said that they have profit and loss (P&L) responsibility for the website and digital channels, and another 69% said they have P&L responsibility for the mobile channel, including mobile chat. 8 These groups typically do not deeply integrate purchased technologies into customer management or product databases. 9 In addition, they focus on standardizing business processes and measures of success across the digital channels that they own but do not necessarily align them with processes and success measures defined for the voice channel, which the contact center typically manages. What is your chat engagement model reactive or proactive? Decide whether you want to focus on offering reactive chat or whether you also want to offer proactive chat and whether proactive chat will be a cornerstone to your customer engagement strategy. 10 If proactive chat is a cornerstone to your strategy, focus on vendors that allow you to test and optimize your proactive chat engagements and give you deep fleibility in the way you present proactive chat sessions to the customer. What is the end-to-end customer journey that you want to facilitate? You must decide whether to support a discrete customer chat journey or whether chat will be part of a broader customer engagement journey. For eample, determine if chat is offered as a natural escalation point to failed web self-service or virtual agent interaction where the visitor can t easily pinpoint a solution. Decide as well what type of session history you need to pass to the chat agent during an escalation to preserve the contet of the customer journey. What end goal are you supporting? It is imperative to define upfront what usage scenarios you will focus on, such as offering chat to decrease customer service operational costs, to increase revenue by decreasing shopping cart abandonment rates, or to better target customers for increased upsell and cross-sell opportunities. You must then define the critical capabilities to support your end goal. For eample, if you use chat to help with filling out forms where personal data is collected, you want to focus on vendors supporting security features such as payment card industry (PCI) compliance standards, which define encryption and data security standards, and field masking. If you use chat proactively for visitor engagement during an ecommerce interaction, consider vendors that facilitate testing of proactive chat rules and deep user interface (UI) customization.

16 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 14 Profiles of five categories of chat vendor solutions There are many vendors in the chat space with a broad range and wide variety of characteristics like background, capabilities, size, and focus areas. Forrester groups these vendors into five broad categories based on their primary uses in the marketplace: 1) standalone chat vendors; 2) online engagement vendors; 3) specialty multichannel customer service vendors; 4) customer relationship management (CRM) suite customer service vendors; and 5) contact center vendors. Each vendor category appeals to a specific type of buyer and usage scenario. However, many vendors listed have capabilities that could allow them to be well positioned to support alternate usage scenarios. Standalone Chat Vendor Solutions Provide Opportunities For Quick Wins Standalone chat vendors vendors that focus on providing only chat as an engagement channel provide mature, comprehensive and full-featured chat solutions targeted to a specific market segment, either small, midsize, or enterprise. These solutions are almost eclusively SaaS-based, although some vendors offer them as managed services. They are often deployed separate from eisting CRM solutions and customer or product databases, yet they can support such integrations depending on customer requirements. These solutions also include workflow engines tuned to only route chat sessions to agent groups, and individual chats can be managed to meet pre-established service-level agreements (SLAs). Typical buyers of these solutions include customer service, ebusiness, and ecommerce organizations. These standalone implementations provide these buyers with an easy-to-deploy and effective way for visitors to connect with a company, and they appear in a breadth of customer service, ecommerce and education scenarios, both in a reactive and proactive chat mode. Netop and Velaro are representative vendors for this solution category (see Figure 2).

17 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 15 Figure 2 Profile Of Two Standalone Chat Vendors 2-1 Netop Company Chat product Other vendor products that can be bundled with chat Netop provides software solutions that enable swift, secure, and seamless transfer of video, screens, sounds, and data between two or more computers. Netop s customer service solutions include secure remote access, as well as live tet-based and video chat. Netop Live Guide is Netop s chat solution. Chat is a standalone channel. Tet-based, audio, and video chat are supported. Customer UI Agent/ supervisor UI Chat session management Includes, but is not limited to, the ability to customize the UI, typing, wait time and offline indicators, business calendar support, pre-chat forms, and the ability to print and transcripts. Also includes the ability to switch from tet-based chat to video and audio chat. Includes, but is not limited to, HTML support for outgoing messages, spellchecking, use of predefined responses, keyboard shortcuts, autosuggestions, support for multiple simultaneous chat sessions, attachments, etc. The supervisor UI supports supervisor whisper and customer management capabilities. Highlights include: Management of routing rules and workflow, including assigning agents to queues. Proactive chat (rules-based, analytics-backed, and agent-offered) and split testing of proactive chat scenarios. Proactive chat can also be used to push contetual offers and content. Secure chats, post-chat customer surveys, reporting based on campaign, operator, and department metrics. Netop Live Guide is a standalone chat product. However, it can be bundled with Netop Remote Control and Netop OnDemand to create a joined communication and support tool for IT and customer service. Typical Contact centers, IT service managers, marketing organizational buyer Pricing models Per agent/per month

18 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 16 Figure 2 Profile Of Two Standalone Chat Vendors (Cont.) 2-2 Velaro Company Chat product Velaro offers web chat, primarily geared to the small and midmarket. Chat is a standalone channel. Chat is not integrated with a knowledge base of answers (via a partnership with GetSatisfaction). Customer UI Agent/ supervisor UI Chat session management Includes, but is not limited to, the ability to customize all aspects of the UI, typing, wait time and offline indicators, business calendar support, pre-chat forms, and the ability to print and transcripts. Includes, but is not limited to, HTML support for outgoing messages, spellchecking, use of predefined responses, keyboard shortcuts, autosuggestions, support for multiple simultaneous chat sessions, attachments, plug-ins, etc. The supervisor UI supports silent monitoring, supervisor whisper and barge-in capabilities, as well as customer management capabilities. Highlights include: Management of routing rules and workflow, including assigning agents to queues. Proactive chat (rules-based and agent-offered) split testing of proactive chat scenarios. Support for field masking, secure chat sessions, and PCI compliance. Post-chat customer surveys, robust real-time and historical reports. Other vendor Velaro chat is a standalone product. products that can be bundled with chat Typical Customer service and support, contact center, sales and marketing organizational buyer Pricing models Per agent/per month Online Engagement Chat Products Support Deeply Personalized Service Online web and mobile engagement vendors focus on providing proactive, personalized, and targeted customer interactions to visitors. Some use sophisticated proactive rules engines, while others use predictive analytics and decisioning solutions to target visitors with offers, multimedia content, and chat invitations optimized for whatever device the visitor is using, such as web, mobile, or tablet. In these scenarios, chat aims to increase sales conversion, supports customers in pre- and post-purchase scenarios, and increases customer satisfaction and long-term loyalty to the brand. These vendors provide deep customization of engagement interfaces, robust reporting, and analytics to manage and optimize visitor engagement. They are SaaS-based, and some vendors also offer solutions via a managed services model or a pay-for-performance model.

19 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 17 Buyers typically integrate online engagement chat solutions with other digital and social channels. Buyers for these solutions are the organizational owners of digital engagement channels, such as ecommerce, customer eperience, or customer service owner, and not the contact center owner. [24]7, LivePerson, BoldChat by LogMeIn, and TouchCommerce are representative vendors for this solution category (see Figure 3). Figure 3 Profile Of Four Online Engagement Chat Vendors 3-1 [24]7 Company Chat product Other vendor products that can be bundled with chat [24]7 s multichannel platform uses predictive analytics, real-time decisioning, and machine learning to fuel customer service and sales outcomes across an enterprise s online, mobile, social, and voice channels. The chat solution, [24]7 Assist, uses predictive models to target customers individually and engages them with rich content to support successful service and sales outcomes. Customer UI Agent/ supervisor UI Chat session management Includes, but is not limited to the ability to customize the UI, typing, wait time, and offline indicators; business calendar support; pre-chat forms; and the ability to print and transcripts. Also includes rich, two-way multimedia interactions controlled by chat agent. Includes, but is not limited to, HTML and multimedia support for outgoing messages, spellchecking, use of predefined responses, keyboard shortcuts, autosuggestions, support for multiple simultaneous chat sessions, attachments, plug-ins such as maps, forms, video, web apps to simplify task completion, etc. The agent UI provides an integrated view of customer information, interaction data, and suggested actions. The supervisor UI supports silent monitoring, supervisor whisper and barge-in capabilities, as well as customer management capabilities. Highlights include: Predictive chat (model-based) to better target customers based on real-time analysis of customer web and mobile journeys. Once the customer is engaged, the contet of the visitor is transferred to the agent. Security features include secure chat sessions, masking of data, and support for PCI compliance. Automated analysis of 100% of chat interactions used for data-driven performance management and coaching. Reports provide insight into key business and operational metrics across multiple interaction channels including chat, web, and voice. [24]7 Assist is part of an integrated suite of solutions that uses the [24]7 Predictive Eperience Platform to enable interactions in a single channel or across multiple channels including the following: chat, web self-service, mobile, speech interactive voice response (IVR), and social. Typical Marketing, sales, customer service organizational buyer Pricing models Pay-for-outcome model; [24]7 Assist is priced based on successful business outcomes (e.g., incremental revenues, successful task completion rates).

20 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 18 Figure 3 Profile Of Four Online Engagement Chat Vendors (Cont.) 3-2 LivePerson Company Chat product Other vendor products that can be bundled with chat LivePerson offers multiple digital engagement products across online, mobile, and social channels that are optimized via a behavioral and predictive targeting engine. Chat is one of the engagement channels that LivePerson offers. A predictive algorithmic engine drives LivePerson s proactive chat solution. This engine is used for real-time behavioral segmentation and targeting of online visitors. Customer UI Agent/ supervisor UI Chat session management Includes, but is not limited to, the ability to customize the UI, typing, wait time and offline indicators, business calendar support, pre-chat forms, and ability to print and transcripts. Also includes seamless escalation between video, voice, multimedia, mobile, collaboration (file share, co-browse) capabilities, as well as the ability to reconnect with the same agent if a chat session is interrupted. Includes, but is not limited to, HTML support for outgoing messages, spellchecking, use of predefined responses, keyboard shortcuts, autosuggestions, support for multiple simultaneous chat sessions, attachments, plug-ins (e.g., video files, video chat, co-browsing/desktop sharing), etc. The supervisor UI supports silent monitoring, supervisor whisper and barge-in capabilities, as well as customer management capabilities. Highlights include: Intelligence engine to proactively target and engage visitors with chat (rules-based, analytics-backed, and agent- offered) and split testing of proactive chat scenarios. Proactive chat can also be used to push click-to-call invitation or contetual offers and content. Management of routing rules and workflow, including assigning agents to queues. Support for field masking, secure chat sessions, and PCI compliance. Post-chat customer surveys and robust real-time and historical reports. LivePerson chat is moving to a model where customers will purchase the LivePerson engage platform service (LiveEngage) as a single product that will offer multiple capabilities including chat, voice, video, targeted content, and collaboration across web, social, and mobile channels. Platform APIs allow integration with third-party business applications and data sources (i.e., CRM, social). Typical Customer service, sales, marketing, ebusiness organizational buyer Pricing models Per agent/per month and per interaction

21 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 19 Figure 3 Profile Of Four Online Engagement Chat Vendors (Cont.) 3-3 LogMeIn (BoldChat) Company Chat product Other vendor products that can be bundled with chat LogMeIn offers cloud and mobile solutions for remote access, collaboration, file sharing, IT management, and customer service. BoldChat is LogMeIn s customer engagement solution for the small, midsized, and enterprise customer. Chat is one of the engagement channels that is part of the BoldChat suite. Customer UI Agent/ supervisor UI Chat session management Includes, but is not limited to, the ability to customize the UI, typing, queue position indicator, and the ability to hide chat links when chat services are unavailable; business calendar support; pre-chat forms; and the ability to print and transcripts. Includes, but is not limited to, HTML support for outgoing messages, spellchecking, use of predefined responses, keyboard shortcuts, autosuggestions based on understanding of incoming chats that include learning capabilities, agent conferencing, support for multiple simultaneous chat sessions, attachments, plug-ins, etc. The agent workspace is an integrated multichannel view that automatically prioritizes work for the agent so they can work across items from one place. The supervisor UI supports silent monitoring, supervisor whisper and barge-in capabilities, as well as customer management capabilities. Highlights include: Management of routing rules and workflow, including assigning agents to queues. Proactive chat (rules-based and agent-offered); BoldChat includes built-in A/B testing for invites and calculates the results within a 95% confidence interval. Conversion tracking allows firms to tie sales to specific chats for commission calculations. Security features include secure chat sessions, field masking, support for PCI compliance. Post-chat customer surveys and robust real-time and historical reports. BoldChat can be bundled with click-to-call, co-browse, , SMS, Twitter management, and remote control via LogMeIn Rescue. Typical ecommerce, customer service organizational buyer Pricing models Per concurrent agent seat/per month

22 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 20 Figure 3 Profile Of Four Online Engagement Chat Vendors (Cont.) 3-4 TouchCommerce Company Chat product Other vendor products that can be bundled with chat TouchCommerce offers a performance-based online engagement solution across multiple devices, based on real-time behavioral targeting, in a fully managed services model. Chat is one component of TouchCommerce s online engagement suite, offering both configurable proactive and reactive chat capabilities. Customer UI Agent/ supervisor UI Chat session management Includes, but is not limited to, the ability to customize the UI, typing, wait time and offline indicators, business calendar support, pre-chat forms, and the ability to print and transcripts. Visitors can move, resize, and pop out chat windows, allowing them to control the chat eperience. Includes, but is not limited to, HTML and multimedia support for outgoing messages, spellchecking, use of predefined responses, autosuggestions, support for multiple simultaneous chat sessions, attachments, and pushed content ranging from offers to videos (or any HTML5 content). The supervisor UI supports silent monitoring, supervisor whisper and barge-in capabilities, as well as customer management and agent monitoring capabilities. TouchCommerce uses a behavioral targeting engine to identify in-session browsing behavior, search terms, referring URLs, and site activity to present the right level of engagement (e.g., decision guide, offer, chat, or call) to the visitor. TouchCommerce maintains a data warehouse with the ability to mine, report, and segment data in order to optimize the targeting of chat sessions. TouchCommerce RightTouch chat solution can be bundled with click-to-call, automated guides, surveys, targeted content delivery, and co-browse. Typical ebusiness, customer eperience organizational buyer Pricing models Pricing includes monthly flat fees for technology and services with a variable pay-for-performance compensation component. Multichannel Customer Service Vendors Enable Cross-Channel Engagement Specialty multichannel customer service vendors provide solutions for standardizing the customer service delivery across a subset or the entire breadth of web self-service, digital ( , chat, SMS, etc.), and social communication channels. They have a central interaction hub of customer data and history, a repository of content accessible from all communication channels and routing, and queuing engines to route digital and social inquiries. These solutions also enable cross-channel communications, allowing a customer to start a conversation on one communication channel, such as a virtual agent interaction, and continue it on another, such as chat, without restarting the conversation. As a result, buyers typically implement chat capabilities from these vendors as part of a greater suite of products, most often focused on web self-service, digital, and social channels.

23 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 21 Even though these vendors have solutions that offer a unified agent desktop to process multichannel interactions, typically agents are dedicated to a single digital or social channel or a subset of channel types. While these solutions can t queue and route voice interactions, computer telephony integration (CTI) is typically used to pop voice calls to the agent desktop. Typical buyers for these solutions are ebusiness and customer service organizations solely dedicated to the operational management of digital and social channels or that have agent pools dedicated to these channels. egain, Moie Software, Net IT, Parature, and Zendesk are representative vendors for this solution category. Kana Software is an outlier. Its historical multichannel products fit this profile, but its new solution based on the technology integration of historical Kana multichannel solutions and Ciboodle s robust business process engine is currently positioned to the contact center buyer (see Figure 4). 11 Figure 4 Profile Of Si Specialty Multichannel Vendors 4-1 egain Software Company Chat product Other vendor products that can be bundled with chat egain provides comprehensive customer engagement capabilities over a broad set of communication channels and touchpoints, which include voice, self-service, digital, and social channels. Chat is a component of egain s multichannel communications offering. It includes tet-based and video chat. Customer UI Agent/ supervisor UI Chat session management Includes, but is not limited to, the ability to customize the UI, typing, wait time and offline indicators, business calendar support, pre-chat forms, and the ability to print and transcripts. It also supports unified tet-based, video, and co-browse capabilities. Includes, but is not limited to, HTML support for outgoing messages, spellchecking, use of predefined responses, keyboard shortcuts, autosuggestions, support for multiple simultaneous chat sessions, attachments, etc. The supervisor UI supports silent monitoring, supervisor whisper and barge-in capabilities, as well as the ability to push chats to agents. Highlights include: Management of routing rules and workflow, including assigning agents to queues. Proactive chat (rules-based and agent-offered), split testing of proactive chat scenarios. Proactive chat is also used to push contetual offers and real-time collaboration. Security features include secure chat session, support for PCI compliance, and field masking. Post-chat customer surveys and robust real-time and historical reports. egain chat can be integrated with autochat (chatbot), , co-browse, click-to-call, voice, SMS, and proactive offers. Typical Customer service, customer eperience, ebusiness organizational buyer Pricing models egain offers agent-based, session-based (for autochat), and interaction-based pricing models.

24 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 22 Figure 4 Profile Of Si Specialty Multichannel Vendors (Cont.) 4-2 Moie Software Company Chat product Other vendor products that can be bundled with chat Moie Software offers a unified product suite, Moie Spaces, that allows employees and customers to collaborate and communicate using self-service, voice, digital, and social channels. Chat is a component of Moie Software s multichannel customer-facing communications offering. Customer UI Agent/ supervisor UI Chat session management Includes, but is not limited to, the ability to customize the UI, typing, wait time and offline indicator, business calendar support, pre-chat forms, ability to print and transcripts. Also includes automated menu-based decision trees. The same UI supports co-browse and click-to-call capabilities. Includes, but is not limited to, HTML support for outgoing messages, spellchecking, use of predefined responses, keyboard shortcuts, autosuggestions, support for multiple simultaneous chat sessions, attachments, etc. The supervisor UI supports silent monitoring, and supervisor whisper and barge-in capabilities. The same UI supports co-browse and click-to-call capabilities. Highlights include: Management of routing rules and workflow, including assigning agents to queues. Proactive chat (rules-based and agent-offered) and split testing of proactive chat scenarios. Moie also offers analytics-based proactive chat for Facebook, where invitations or offers are pushed to visitors based on social profile information. Robust language support including localization of the customer UI and agent desktop. Security features include secure chat sessions, field masking, and support for PCI compliance. Post-chat customer surveys, robust real-time and historical business outcome, and operational reports. , phone, co-browse, web self-service, communities, social media channels for customer service; also a knowledge base for automated agent assistance and content creation Typical Customer service, ebusiness organizational buyer Pricing models Moie supports both per-agent/per-month and a perpetual license model.

25 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 23 Figure 4 Profile Of Si Specialty Multichannel Vendors (Cont.) 4-3 Net IT Company Chat product Other vendor products that can be bundled with chat Net IT delivers a natural-language platform that engages users across multiple channels, including web, mobile, and kiosk via a multimodal interface. Chat is an escalation channel to a live-agent interaction from a self-service virtual agent conversation. Customer UI Agent/ supervisor UI Chat session management Includes, but is not limited to, the ability to customize the UI, typing, wait time and offline indicators, business calendar support, pre-chat forms, and the ability to print and transcripts. Includes, but is not limited to, HTML support for outgoing messages, spellchecking, use of predefined responses, keyboard shortcuts, autosuggestions, support for multiple simultaneous chat sessions, attachments, agent-to-agent and agent-to-supervisor chat, etc. Also includes the ability to use the same natural language model for virtual agents to recommend answers to chat agents. The supervisor UI supports silent monitoring, supervisor whisper and barge-in capabilities, as well as customer management capabilities. Chat is an escalation channel for virtual agent conversations. Chats are automatically queued to the right-skilled agent based on the contet of the virtual agent conversation. Chat sessions are secure, and reports are available to understand the nature of escalations, as well as operational measures such as wait times, chat session lengths, and queue loading. Bundled with virtual agent solution Typical Customer eperience, customer service, ebusiness, marketing organizational buyer Pricing models Net IT supports a transactional model, perpetual model pricing, or annual subscription. Chat pricing is included with virtual agent pricing.

26 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 24 Figure 4 Profile Of Si Specialty Multichannel Vendors (Cont.) 4-4 Zendesk Company Chat product Other vendor products that can be bundled with chat Zendesk provides multichannel customer service and internal help desk solutions. Chat is a component of Zendesk s product suite. Customer UI Agent/ supervisor UI Chat session management Includes, but is not limited to, the ability to customize the UI, typing, offline and wait time indicators, and the ability to print and transcripts. Includes, but is not limited to, support for multiple simultaneous chat sessions and customer waiting indicator. There are limited supervisor-specific capabilities. Includes post-chat customer surveys and historical reporting. Bundled with Zendesk s suite, which includes , web portal, social (Facebook, Twitter), and voice channels Typical Customer service, IT organizational buyer Pricing models Zendesk supports a per-agent/per-month pricing model for its product suite. Chat is included in the suite pricing.

27 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 25 Figure 4 Profile Of Si Specialty Multichannel Vendors (Cont.) 4-5 Kana Software Company Chat product Other vendor products that can be bundled with chat Kana Software provides customer service solutions that couple process guidance and knowledge management capabilities and are used to standardize customer service eperiences across a broad set of communication channels and touchpoints. Chat is a component of Kana Software s process guidance solution. Customer UI Agent/ supervisor UI Chat session management Includes, but is not limited to, the ability to customize the UI, typing, wait time and offline indicators, business calendar support, pre-chat forms, and the ability to print and transcripts. Includes, but is not limited to, spellchecking, use of predefined responses, keyboard shortcuts, autosuggestions, support for multiple simultaneous chat sessions, etc. The supervisor UI supports silent monitoring, supervisor whisper and barge-in capabilities, as well as the ability to push chats to agents. Highlights include: Management of routing rules and workflow, including assigning agents to queues. Proactive chat (rules-based and agent-offered) and split testing of proactive chat scenarios. Proactive chat is also used to push contetual offers and real-time collaboration. Security features include secure chat session, support for PCI compliance, and field masking. Post-chat customer surveys and historical reports. Chat is integrated with management, the agent desktop, web self-service, and knowledge management. Typical Contact center organizational buyer Pricing models Kana Software supports perpetual licenses or on a per-agent/per-month subscription model (as a managed service).

28 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 26 Figure 4 Profile Of Si Specialty Multichannel Vendors (Cont.) 4-6 Parature Company Chat product Parature provides customer service and support solutions. Parature offers a customer portal, self-service knowledge base, a help desk ticketing application, and a breadth of digital and social channels for customer communication. Chat is a component of the Parature product suite. Customer UI Agent/ supervisor UI Chat session management Includes, but is not limited to, the ability to customize the UI, offline indicators, business calendar support, pre-chat forms, and the ability to print and transcripts. It also supports agent-to-agent chat capabilities. Includes, but is not limited to, the use of predefined responses, keyboard shortcuts, and support for multiple simultaneous chat sessions. The supervisor UI supports silent monitoring, supervisor whisper and barge-in capabilities, as well as ability to push chats to agents. Highlights include: Management of routing rules and workflow, including assigning agents to queues. Rules-based proactive chat and split testing of proactive chat scenarios. Post-chat customer surveys, historical reporting Other vendor Bundled with Parature s customer service suite products that can be bundled with chat Typical Customer service organizational buyer Pricing models Parature supports a per-agent/per-month pricing model. CRM Suite Customer Service Solutions Provide Comprehensive Customer Management CRM suite customer service solutions provide the breadth of sales and marketing automation as well as customer service capabilities. During the past five years, these solutions have greatly matured as vendors have focused on solidifying the building blocks of their customer service capabilities and folded new technologies such as social computing, business process management, decisioning, business intelligence, and mobility into their solutions. Now, many ecellent solutions not only provide customer service capabilities but can also be etended to provide holistic end-to-end customer management capabilities at a later date. 12 Vendors provide chat capabilities via both SaaS and on-premises offerings, and buyers often implement them as a part of a broader solution suite supporting customer service, customer

29 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 27 engagement, and revenue-generation scenarios. Typical buyers for these solutions are customer service, contact center, and ecommerce organizations that have operational responsibility of the digital channels but not necessarily the voice channel. These buyers tend to dedicate a subset of customer-facing personnel to managing the chat channel or a blend of digital channels that include chat. Oracle RightNow and salesforce.com are two representative vendors for this solution category (see Figure 5). Figure 5 Profile Of Two CRM Suite Customer Service Vendors 5-1 Oracle RightNow Company Chat product Other vendor products that can be bundled with chat Oracle RightNow Cloud Service delivers web, social, and contact center eperiences in a unified, cross-channel CRM suite customer service solution. Chat is a web and mobile communication channel that can be purchased standalone or bundled with Oracle RightNow s web eperience solution, social eperience solution, contact center eperience solution, and engage solution. Customer UI Agent/ supervisor UI Chat session management Includes, but is not limited to, the ability to customize the UI, typing, wait time and offline indicators, business calendar support, pre-chat forms, and the ability to print and transcripts. Also includes the ability to reconnect with the same agent if a chat session is interrupted. Includes, but is not limited to, HTML support for outgoing messages, spellchecking, use of predefined responses, keyboard shortcuts, autosuggestions, support for multiple simultaneous chat sessions, attachments, plug-ins, etc. The supervisor UI supports silent monitoring, supervisor whisper and barge-in capabilities, as well as customer management capabilities. Highlights include: Management of routing rules and workflow, including assigning agents to queues. Rules-based proactive and split testing of proactive chat scenarios. Robust language support including localization of the customer UI and agent desktop. Support for field masking, secure chat sessions, and PCI compliance. Post-chat customer surveys and robust real-time and historical reports. Bundled with: Web eperience solution that includes web self-service, assisted resolution, mobile service, and . Social eperience solution that includes self-service Facebook, support communities, innovation communities, and social monitoring. Contact center eperience solution that includes voice, , click-to-call, and co-browse. Engage solution that includes customer feedback, outreach, analytics, and knowledge. Typical Customer service, customer eperience, ecommerce organizational buyer Pricing models Oracle RightNow supports both a session-based and a per-agent/per-month pricing model.

30 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 28 Figure 5 Profile Of Two CRM Suite Customer Service Vendors (Cont.) 5-2 salesforce.com Company Chat product Other vendor products that can be bundled with chat Salesforce s Service Cloud delivers multichannel customer service and support capabilities with deep mobile and social capabilities. The Service Cloud is a key component of salesforce.com s CRM solution. Chat is a web and mobile communication channel that is bundled with other capabilities of the Service Cloud. Customer UI Agent/ supervisor UI Chat session management Includes, but is not limited to, piel-level customization of the UI, typing, wait time and offline indicators, pre-chat forms, and the ability to print and transcripts. It is deeply integrated with Salesforce s CRM data and processes. Includes, but is not limited to, spellchecking, use of predefined responses, keyboard shortcuts, autosuggestions, support for multiple simultaneous chat sessions, sneak-peek typing, attachments, plug-ins, etc. The supervisor UI has customer management capabilities and will support silent monitoring and whisper capabilities in H Highlights include: Management of routing rules and workflow, including assigning agents to queues. Rules-based proactive and split testing of proactive chat scenarios (H2 2013). Support for field masking and secure chat sessions and PCI compliance. Post-chat customer surveys and robust real-time and historical reports that can be etended with applications on the AppEchange. Chat can bundled with the following channel capabilities: phone and SMS. Co-browse will be integrated in the summer 2013 release. Chat can be bundled with salesforce.com s knowledge management. Chat can be bundled with partner solutions such as remote desktop control from LogMeIn. Typical Contact center, IT organizational buyer Pricing models Salesforce.com supports a per-agent/per-month pricing model. Unified Routing And Queuing Solutions Standardize Operations Across Media Types Contact center vendors have historically optimized voice call routing and queuing but now etend their capabilities to unified routing to include digital and social interactions. These vendors offer a unified agent desktop to support the blended agent model, which allows contact center agents to process all inbound and outbound interaction types. They also offer unified reporting across channels, as well as consistent and effective agent scheduling and forecasting across channels. Buyers of these solutions are predominantly contact center organizations that have operational management responsibility for all communication channels and are focused on supporting customer service and technical support usage scenarios. These buyers primarily focus on the voice channel,

31 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 29 with a small subset of interactions occurring over the digital channels. They use chat as part of a greater contact center solution that can but does not necessarily have to integrate with CRM customer service solutions. They also rely on the unified cross-channel reporting to optimize agent resourcing. Aspect, Avaya, Cisco, Genesys Telecommunications, Interactive Intelligence, and LiveOps are representative vendors for this solution category (see Figure 6). Figure 6 Profile Of Si Contact Center Vendors 6-1 Aspect Company Chat product Other vendor products that can be bundled with chat Aspect provides contact center, workforce optimization, and back-office applications. Chat is part of Aspect s contact center solution. Customer UI Agent/ supervisor UI Chat session management Includes, but is not limited to, ability to customize the UI, typing, offline indicators, pre-chat forms, ability to print and transcripts. Includes, but is not limited to, HTML formatting of outgoing chats, use of predefined responses that can be pushed to visitors, keyboard shortcuts, autosuggestions, support for plug-ins. Multiple chat session support is planned for summer Agent screen actions can be captured and recorded, and agent-to-agent chat via Microsoft Lync is supported. The supervisor UI supports silent monitoring, whisper, barge-in capabilities, and customer management capabilities. Highlights include: Unified queuing and routing for all media types. Security features include secure chat session and support for PCI compliance. Also includes chat routing for quality monitoring. Reporting is unified across all media types. Chat can be deployed as a standalone channel, but to date it is always bundled with the contact center supporting voice and . Typical Contact center organizational buyer Pricing models Aspect supports both per-agent/per-month and perpetual license pricing models.

32 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 30 Figure 6 Profile Of Si Contact Center Vendors (Cont.) 6-2 Avaya Company Chat product Other vendor products that can be bundled with chat Avaya offers business collaboration and communications solutions, providing unified communications, real-time video collaboration, contact center, and networking solutions. Chat is part of Avaya s contact center solutions that use the same queuing and routing engine for all media types (voice, digital, and social). Customer UI Agent/ supervisor UI Chat session management Includes, but is not limited to, ability to customize the UI, typing, wait time and offline indicators, pre-chat forms, ability to print, and transcripts. Chat sessions can be automated, where automatic responses are given based on natural language understanding of incoming questions. Automated chat sessions can be escalated to a live agent upon customer request or via rules. Includes, but is not limited to, HTML support for outgoing messages, spellchecking, use of predefined responses, keyboard shortcuts, autosuggestions, support for multiple simultaneous chat sessions, attachments, etc. The supervisor UI supports silent monitoring, supervisor whisper and barge-in capabilities, as well as customer management capabilities. Highlights include: Unified queuing and routing for all media types. Proactive chat (rules-based and agent-offered), split testing of proactive chat scenarios. Support for field masking, secure chat sessions, and PCI compliance. Also includes post-chat customer surveys. Reporting is robust and unified for all media types. Avaya chat can be bundled with the Avaya Elite Solution Stack and Avaya Aura Contact Center Solution Stack. Each includes multichannel capabilities that support voice, , web chat, IM, SMS, fa, callback, click-to-call, social media, and video. Typical Contact center, IT organizational buyer Pricing models Avaya supports both per-agent/per-month and perpetual license pricing models.

33 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 31 Figure 6 Profile Of Si Contact Center Vendors (Cont.) 6-3 Cisco Company Chat product Other vendor products that can be bundled with chat Typical organizational buyer Pricing models Cisco provides IP-based networking and business communications and collaboration products. Chat is part of Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise solution, which uses the same queuing and routing engine for all media types (voice, digital, and social). Customer UI Agent/ supervisor UI Chat session management Includes, but is not limited to, the ability to customize the UI, typing and offline indicators, pre-chat forms, and the ability to print and transcripts. Includes, but is not limited to, HTML support for outgoing messages, spellchecking, use of predefined responses, keyboard shortcuts, autosuggestions, support for multiple simultaneous chat sessions, attachments, plug-ins, etc. The supervisor UI supports silent monitoring, as well as customer management capabilities. Highlights include: Unified queuing and routing for all media types. Proactive chat (rules-based and agent-offered). Support for secure chat sessions and PCI compliance. Also includes post-chat customer surveys. Reporting is robust and unified for all media types. Cisco s web interaction manager can be bundled with Cisco s Unified Contact Center Enterprise solution. Customer service, IT Cisco supports a perpetual license pricing model.

34 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 32 Figure 6 Profile Of Si Contact Center Vendors (Cont.) 6-4 Genesys Telecommunications Company Chat product Other vendor products that can be bundled with chat Genesys offers web, social, and mobile customer service solutions, including unified communications, contact center, workforce optimization, and performance management products. Genesys also offers a broad set of industry solutions for insurance, government, healthcare, collections, telecommunications, financial services, and others. Chat is part of Genesys customer service solutions that use the same queuing and routing engine for all media types (voice, digital, and social). Chats are routed to agents based on resource availability as well as the customer s contact history. Customer UI Agent/ supervisor UI Chat session management Includes, but is not limited to, the ability to customize the UI, typing, wait time and offline indicators, pre-chat forms, and the ability to print and transcripts. Includes, but is not limited to, HTML support for outgoing messages, spellchecking, use of predefined responses, keyboard shortcuts, autosuggestions, support for multiple simultaneous chat sessions, attachments, plug-ins, etc. Agents can push web pages or files to customers as appropriate. The supervisor UI supports silent monitoring; supervisor whisper and barge-in capabilities; background coaching using chat, IM, or voice; as well as customer management capabilities. Highlights include: Unified queuing and routing for all media types. Rules-based proactive chat and split testing of proactive chat scenarios. Security features include support for secure chat sessions and PCI compliance. They also include post-chat customer surveys. Reporting is robust, unified, and normalized across all media types. Genesys chat can be bundled with voice, , SMS, co-browse, web, mobile, social, and other products. Typical Contact center, customer service, ebusiness organizational buyer Pricing models Genesys supports both per-agent/per-month and perpetual pricing model.

35 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 33 Figure 6 Profile Of Si Contact Center Vendors (Cont.) 6-5 Interactive Intelligence Company Chat product Other vendor products that can be bundled with chat Typical organizational buyer Pricing models Interactive Intelligence provides contact center automation, unified communications, and business process automation software and services. Chat is part of Interactive Intelligence s multichannel contact center solution. Chats are treated as a peer to other media types such as phone call and . As such, chats can be placed on hold, transferred, and recorded for quality assurance. Customer UI Agent/ supervisor UI Chat session management Includes, but is not limited to, the ability to customize the UI, typing, wait time and offline indicators, pre-chat forms, and the ability to print and transcripts. Includes, but is not limited to, spellchecking, use of predefined responses, keyboard shortcuts, autosuggestions, support for multiple simultaneous chat sessions, attachments, etc. The supervisor UI supports silent monitoring, supervisor whisper and barge-in capabilities, as well as customer management capabilities. Highlights include: Unified queuing and routing for all media types. Rules-based and agent-initiated proactive chat and split testing of proactive chat scenarios. Support for field masking, secure chat sessions, and PCI compliance. Also includes post-chat customer surveys and chat routing for quality monitoring. Reporting is unified and normalized across all media types. Chat is part of the Customer Interaction Center solution suite that supports phone, , chat, SMS, fa. Contact center Interactive Intelligence licenses contact center seats per agent.

36 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 34 Figure 6 Profile Of Si Contact Center Vendors (Cont.) 6-6 LiveOps Company Chat product LiveOps provides a cloud-based multichannel contact center platform, contact center applications, and talent, all of which can be separately purchased. Chat is part of LiveOps multichannel contact center solution that uses the same queuing and routing engine for all media types. Chat conversations can be moved to an alternate channel, and the end-to-end cross-channel interaction is available in a single record. Customer UI Agent/ supervisor UI Includes, but is not limited to, the ability to customize the UI, typing, offline indicators, pre-chat forms, and the ability to print and transcripts. Includes, but is not limited to, spellchecking, use of predefined responses that can be pushed to visitors, keyboard shortcuts, autosuggestions, support for multiple simultaneous chat sessions, attachments, and the ability to push ad hoc and preconfigured website links, etc. The system can be configured to prioritize delivery of incoming chats over other channels. The supervisor UI supports customer management capabilities. Other vendor products that can be bundled with chat Typical organizational buyer Chat session management Highlights include: Unified queuing and routing for all media types. Rules-based proactive chat and split testing of proactive chat scenarios. Security features include secure chat sessions, field masking, and support for PCI compliance. Also includes chat routing for quality monitoring. Reporting is unified across all media types. Chat can be purchased standalone or can be bundled with voice, SMS, and social (Facebook and Twitter). Contact center, inside sales, customer service Pricing models LiveOps supports a per-agent/per-month pricing model. RECOMMENDATIONS BUILD A CHAT VENDOR STRATEGY WITH A VIEW TOWARD THE FUTURE AD&D pros supporting customer service organizations should consider a chat vendor strategy that will meet today s demands while also keeping an eye to the future. Specifically, you should: Build solid partnerships with the organization that will be using the chat solution. You need to partner with the buyer and user of the chat solution, whether it is the ebusiness, customer eperience, ecommerce, or contact center eecutive, to investigate the vendor landscape, determine the pros and cons of different vendor solutions, and identify the types of integrations that you need to support. You must then work together to map a subset of

37 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 35 vendor solutions to your company s specific requirements, keeping an eye toward future growth and usage. Recognize that successful chat deployments typically epand. Chat deployments will likely begin with one usage scenario funded by one business unit. Initial deployments tend to be small and implemented in a standalone manner, but they quickly epand in scope and compleity, including the number of back-end integrations needed. Plan to support social, mobile, and other devices. As consumers seek customer support on a growing range of devices and touchpoints, it will be increasingly important to consider the role of social, mobile, and other devices in a chat engagement strategy. Chat vendors are already etending their offerings into social, mobile, and other technologies. Focus on enabling three key groups: customers, agents, and supervisors. The vendors that we surveyed support a breadth and depth of agent desktop usability requirements. Some are very basic, only allowing an agent to support a single chat session at a time, and don t offer the agent any productivity tools to help efficiently manage chat conversations. Other vendor solutions deliver more intuitive eperiences and enable agents and supervisors to collaborate. Demo chat solutions from not one but three perspectives customer, agent, and supervisor to ensure a good fit for your requirements. Recognize that chat agents have fundamentally different skills than voice agents. Even if you support a breadth of communication channels in your customer service organization, be cognizant that the skill set of agents handling chat sessions is fundamentally different than the skill set that is needed for voice interaction. Make sure that you dedicate your agents to the channels that you support for maimum efficiency, productivity, and customer satisfaction. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL Companies Interviewed For This Document [24]7 egain Aspect Avaya Charter Communications Cisco Systems DNB Norway Genesys Telecommunications Interactive Intelligence Kana Software LiveOps LivePerson

38 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 36 LogMeIn Moie Software Netop Net IT Oracle (RightNow) ParetoLogic salesforce.com TouchCommerce Velaro Zendesk Parature Endnotes 1 In a survey of 100 customer eperience decision-makers, 23% reported that improving the customer eperience is their top strategic priority for 2013, and 69% reported that it is on the list of strategic priorities but not No. 1. In addition, 13% want to use customer eperience to differentiate themselves across any industry, and 47% want to use it to distinguish themselves from other leaders in their industry. See the March 22, 2013, The State Of Customer Eperience Management, 2013 report. 2 In a survey of 75 customer service professionals, conducted in conjunction with CustomerThink, 40% of survey respondents said that improving the customer eperience was their top goal in their current planning cycle, and another 40% said that it was their second most important goal. See the November 7, 2011, Craft Your Contact Center Investment Plans In Light of Technology Adoption Patterns report. 3 In a survey of 100 customer eperience eecutives, 47% of survey respondents say that they have a dedicated customer eperience budget in place for See the March 22, 2013, The State Of Customer Eperience Management, 2013 report. 4 Source: North American Technographics Customer Eperience Online Survey, Q (US). For more information on understanding how to improve your customer service strategy, see the March 11, 2013, Understand Communication Channel Needs To Craft Your Customer Service Strategy report. 5 The phone channel has a 69% satisfaction rating the highest satisfaction score that is reported in our North American Technographics Customer Eperience Online Survey, Q (US). The chat channel, at 63%, has the second highest satisfaction rating. See the March 11, 2013, Understand Communication Channel Needs To Craft Your Customer Service Strategy report. 6 In a survey of 75 customer service professionals, conducted in conjunction with CustomerThink, 43% of survey respondents said that they had implemented chat, 7% were epanding their chat deployments, and another 7% were piloting chat. See the November 7, 2011, To Invest Wisely, Know The Business Value Of Diverse Contact Center Solutions report. 7 Chat best practices are robust and have been defined for many years. See the March 9, 2009, Best Practices: Implementing Online Chat report. 8 In a survey of 144 ebusiness and channel strategy professionals, when asked what channels the ebusiness eecutive had P&L responsibility for, 91% said that they were responsible for the website and digital

39 Market Overview: Chat Solutions For Customer Service 37 channels, and another 69% said they were responsible for the mobile channel, which includes mobile chat. See the December 18, 2012, Choose The Right Customer Service Solution For Your Business report. 9 In a survey of 144 ebusiness and channel strategy professionals, when asked how they felt about their company s eecution in the following areas, 19% were confident with their multichannel eecution, and 21% were confident with their back-end integration capabilities. See the December 18, 2012, Choose The Right Customer Service Solution For Your Business report. 10 Proactive chat triggering of chat invitations based on a predefined set of visitor behavior metrics achieves quantitative business goals such as increasing conversion rates and revenue per order as well as shortening sales cycles. Other goals for industries such as insurance and banking include improving quote or application form completion rates. While reactive chat is more typically applied to customer support goals, proactive chat may also be useful for improving service or offering segmented service to high-value customers. See the June 4, 2010, Making Proactive Chat Work report. 11 Kana Software acquired Ciboodle in July 2012, and it has been deeply integrating product lines since this acquisition. Source: Kate Leggett, More Market Consolidation As Kana Software Buys Sword Ciboodle. It s A Sound Strategy, But The Proof Will Be In The Eecution, Kate Leggett s Blog, July 10, 2012 ( blogs.forrester.com/kate_leggett/ more_market_consolidation_as_kana_software_buys_sword_ ciboodle_its_a_sound_strategy_but_the_proof_wil). 12 To assess the state of the customer service CRM suite solutions and see how the vendors stack up against each other, Forrester recently evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of 18 vendors using the Forrester Wave methodology. See the July 11, 2012, The Forrester Wave : CRM Suite Customer Service Solutions, Q report.

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