Humanizing

One thing that separates shopping online from shopping at the mall is the latter's personal touch. But one technology vendor, eshare communications, Norcross, Ga., is looking to "humanize" the Internet by enabling customer service representatives to have real-time chats with online customers, according to Loyd J. Olson, the company's chief marketing officer.

Eshare's text-based chat software, called NetAgent, enables customer service representatives to interact with customers in real time, answering customers' questions about color, style and fit, just as they would if the customer was in the store. A customer clicks on a button to engage in a live chat with a customer service agent.

"One of the difficulties in shopping online is that you can't tell much beyond the picture of the product on the site," Olson says. "Retailers have to consider if their Web site is successfully representing their brand on the Web and providing the same level of customer service as they do in their stores."

Victoria's Secret, Cabela's and Talbots are among eshare's retail clients. Eshare, which reported $83.96 million in revenue last year, has installed systems in more than 2,500 customer sites in more than 40 countries.

Eshare has its roots in the telecommunications business. The company was founded in 1982 as Melita International, a vendor of "predictive dialing" systems used by telemarketers. Aleksander Szlam, the Polish immigrant who founded Melita, is the company's current chairman and CEO. In 1999, Melita acquired eShare Technologies, a provider of call center management systems. The company changed its name to eshare communications last year.

Merger plans: In its latest move, the company is planning to merge with divine, a provider of professional services and knowledge management systems. The merger is expected to be completed late in the third quarter or early in the fourth quarter, according to George Landgrebe, chief operating officer. Divine provides enterprise infrastructure software and technology solutions, as well as integration, training, and sales and marketing services. According to a joint announcement, eshare will operate as a business unit within divine and Szlam will act as president of the business unit as well as chief strategy officer for the combined companies.

"The companies will be complementary. Divine operates in the professional services sphere, while eshare is more focused on the call center," Landgrebe says.

Aside from the NetAgent live chat and email management software for customer service representatives, the company offers software, called Expressions, for online community discussions. Eshare also offers call center management software for routing incoming customer service calls.

"Management of email has been a problem for all companies offering services over the Internet, and retailers are no exception," Olson says. "When people send an email to a company, they expect a fast response. There is nothing more frustrating to the consumer than to send an email and get nothing back. According to a recent Gartner Group study, 70% of customer email takes five days or longer to get a response."

The eshare system uses artificial intelligence to route customer email to the appropriate person based on the content.

"The email gets to the right person to answer the question so that another agent, who might not have expertise in a certain area, doesn't spend time tracking down information that someone else could answer easily," Olson says.

Nutrisystem.com is using eshare's technology to answer customer inquiries online as well as build online communities and perform one-on-one consulting.

"We sell food and support services, but what we really do is build a relationship with our customers, and this technology has helped us in that goal," says Deborah Gallen, vice president of operations for the Horsham, Pa.-based firm. "Eshare has helped us customize and integrate the system into our existing platform, and that is very important in our view when working with a technology vendor."