Synchrony and Creative Good Help Clients Avoid the $6 Billion Customer Experience Gap

Business Wire, Dec 16, 1999

CINCINNATI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 16, 1999--

Synchrony Communications Inc., the leading provider of web-native, remote-hosted relationship management solutions for e-business, and Creative Good, the Web's leading customer experience strategy consulting and research firm, have teamed up to help clients avoid many of the pitfalls of building and sustaining online businesses.

According to a study conducted by Creative Good and co-branded and distributed by Synchrony, even the most well-known and respected e-businesses have a lot to learn about creating and sustaining a positive customer experience, especially in times of peak demand. The "Holiday '99 E-Commerce" report found that 39 percent of test shoppers at 10 leading online retailers were unable to complete transactions due to poor site design and inadequate customer relationship management resources. This rate of failure translates into a $6 billion loss of potential revenues this holiday season.

Furthermore, 56% of test shoppers' attempts to use site search engines failed. If these attempts had succeeded, and only 25% had resulted in purchases, online retailers would have earned an additional $3.9 billion this year.

According to Synchrony, when you add the cost of poor customer service and the marketing dollars spent driving consumers to sites that don't work, these figures climb much higher.

"Making it easy for your customers to find information is an important first step," said Mark Richey, CEO and founder of Synchrony. "In addition, you must have the resources in place to guide them successfully through the transaction, and to meet times of peak demand. And, you must be able to add resources immediately to ensure you aren't your own worst competitor."

"Holiday shoppers are going online in greater numbers this year because they want to reduce the time and energy they spend in traditional brick-and-mortar shopping. If they can't access the information they need and quickly understand how to order the products they want, they'll become frustrated with the process and go back to what they know best," said Phil Terry, CEO of Creative Good.

Creative Good and Synchrony assist clients with the two primary pieces of the online experience puzzle. Creative Good helps clients create web sites that are easy to navigate and comfortable for the end user. Synchrony's electronic customer relationship management solution enables clients to better serve customers through the transaction process and after the sale.

Synchrony eCRM is delivered as a subscription service via the Internet, which dramatically reduces implementation costs and time and eliminates the risks of traditional CRM investments. Clients pay usage costs as they are incurred, and adding additional agents to the existing contact center is as simple as adding a PC with an Internet connection and a phone. Because Synchrony eCRM is remote-hosted, customer service demands do not impact site infrastructure. Synchrony assumes total responsibility for the solution.

"Traditional customer relationship management applications would require weeks or months of programming changes to allow users to handle a spike in demand. Synchrony's solution allows e-businesses to rapidly expand customer service resources according to business needs," Richey said.

"This year, online retailers will spend millions of dollars in advertising to drive millions of customers to sites that don't work," said Terry. "We've already seen some high-profile examples of this, and peak holiday shopping days are still ahead." The Holiday '99 E-Commerce study is available at http://www.creativegood.com/holiday99/indexv.html.> About Creative Good

Creative Good is a strategy consulting firm and research focused on the online customer experience. Creative Good brings clients higher revenue, more customer retention, better branding, and enhanced productivity by improving the customer experience on their e-commerce, intranet, content, and community sites. For more information, visit www.creativegood.com.

About Synchrony

Established in 1997, Synchrony Communications is a pioneer in the application remote hosting revolution. The Synchrony electronic customer relationship management solution for business enables customers to communicate with companies via a choice of communication channels - phone, fax, email and web-chats. Using Synchrony's Intelligent Interaction Manager(TM), each contact is combined with a customer interaction history and context-sensitive resources, then routed to the first available customer service agent, ensuring an appropriate and consistent response to customer inquiries regardless of the communication channel. Synchrony is on Internet at www.synchrony.net.