eBay should be talking to eStara

Nobody ever expected transactions to increase with the help of PC-to-PC voice calls between two eBay members. That is because Click-to-Call is very much a contextual communication. It is much more than just a call connection. I contacted a long time expert in the field, eStara. I asked them what it takes to make Click-to-Call a success.

Here comes the Click-to-Call science: Click-to-Call solutions should be able to engage customer proactively based on any number of business rules, including customer status, shopping cart contents, or time spent on a page. What that means is that when customers use Click-to-Call, the context of their online session is delivered to the contact center agent so that the customer does not have to start all over from scratch and re-enter information they have already provided online. Additionally, Click-to-Call solutions should allow for real-time, customizable reporting that helps tie web analytics to the contact center to improve call handle times and increase sales conversions.

There are two things eBay should note from the above:

(1) The seller on the auction site only knows details about the item he put up for auction. If he gets a Skype buzz he does not know the context of caller’s online session i.e. he does not have access to information about which pages the caller has been visiting or what he has so far bid for during the most recent online session prior to the call. (2) Click to call is a consumer-to-business application. It is not a consumer-to-consumer application. You cannot throw a peer-to-peer Skype dialer at the problem and hope to close more auctions.

According to eStara, in e-commerce, estimated 30-40% transactions take place in call centre environment. Unfortunately eBay cannot really run a call centre for selling your household items, because it does not have information about these items.