Overview
The implementation of online consulting forces companies to make some decisions about technical implementation, conversation management, and internal organization.
- What form of implementation do they choose: spontaneous or by appointment, with chat function or without, with two-way or one-way image transmission, with or without chat - or only by audio?
- Do they automate the start of the conversation with a chatbot and, if so, how does the transition to a consultation take place?
- How do they visually direct visitors to the consultation: via a fly-in button, on each product page, on the notepad, or in the shopping cart?
- When do they point visitors to the consultation: in the first second of the page load, with a delay, or only during a specific behavior such as comparing products?
- To what extent do you use upstream touchpoints in the customer journey to refer to online advice, such as blog articles based on SEO keyword sets and a YouTube channel?
- How do you design the transition from the consultation to the actual purchase: Should the consultation staff go to the checkout together with the callers or only make a purchase recommendation?
All these questions can only be answered together with the target group. But their needs have changed in the course of the pandemic. The clientele has become video-conferencing-savvy and consumption has shifted to the virtual space. What does this mean for the design of online consulting? The list of questions above shows the importance of the "virtual address", the transition from anonymous browsing to personal live video consulting. For comparison: at the real point of sale, consultants can address customers directly. In the online setting, however, this approach is impersonal and must be implemented with technical skill.
The preliminary project showed that online consulting via live video is practically unexplored in pre-sales. This is remarkable since at the same time there is talk of a "crisis of immediacy", i.e. customers who want immediate advice at any time. We see points of contact in the measurement of service quality in after-sales, in the topic of chatbots, virtual assistants, and remote experts.
