Mammothgolf.com Gives Customers Some Face Time

Software Magazine, Sept, 1999 by Elizabeth U. Harding

Jim Thompson wants to put mammothgolf. corn on the map. So far, the golf equipment retailer Mammoth Golf has forged strategic partnerships with leading Internet portal sites and information providers such as America Online, Yahoo!, Excite, and USAToday.com. And Thompson, marketing vice president, has developed national advertising campaigns for MSNBC and the Golf Channel, and for high-profile golf magazines.

However, his vision for increasing his site is to provide a high level of personal service, also via the Web. "One of the fundamental goals is to emulate a real-life shopping experience and personalize it as much as possible," he says. To personalize the online customer service interaction, he subscribed to the FaceTime Message Exchange Internet customer service from FaceTime Communications, Foster City, Calif.

The product integrates with AOL Instant Messenger or Yahoo! Pager to enhance online shopping. It enables customer service representatives (CSRs) at Mammoth Golf's site to interact with three to six Web site visitors simultaneously. Customer information is stored in a database and shared among the CSRs. FaceTime offers its service as an application service provider, meaning Mammoth Golf did not need to hire an IT person to manage it. "We did not want another layer of complication with a packaged Internet customer service solution that would need periodic maintenance," Thompson says. Mammoth Golf is projecting 14,000 to 15,000 shoppers per day on its site.