IM Here to Help

On Tuesday, Lorna Borenstein, vice president and general manager of eBay Inc., talked with conference goers at eTail 2003 East. One highlight of the presentation indicated that eBay has experienced a 135% return on investing in real-time customer service via chat.

After testing chat capabilities with visitors, inactive registrants, and active users — and finding that live chat boosted activity across the board — eBay increased chat capacity 15-fold. One secret? Staff the customer service chats with employees, not third-party outsourcers.

How closely are you connected to your customers? How immediately can you react to their needs?