Online provider of outdoor products, equipment and gear leverages sister company's chat implementation to add value to its own customers, quickly and easily.
OutdoorPros.com, sister site to PlumberSurplus.com, launched in early 2008 as a pure play Internet retailer of a tremendous assortment of outdoor products, supplies, equipment and gear for the adventure enthusiast. Their wide variety of products range from Gerber knives and camping equipment to duty gear and skateboard decks.
PlumberSurplus.com has enjoyed remarkable success using LivePerson's live chat solution. Some 95% of their visitors who use live chat to receive personalized assistance say they're highly satisfied with the experience. Perhaps more compelling is the fact that visitors who chat convert at higher rates, and place orders that are 15% higher than the average order value of non-chatting visitors.
Challenge
PlumberSurplus.com's success with live chat was a strong incentive to make the technology available on OutdoorPros.com. Much of the gear offered on OutdoorPros.com is highly specialized, and hands-on assistance from a knowledgeable agent would provide significant benefits to their visitors. But how much work would be required to scale Contact Center to OutdoorPros.com?
Content aside, launching OurdoorPros.com had been much more of an effort in some cases than Gordian Project, the parent company of both sites, had originally anticipated. Although Gordian Project had existing relationships with Web vendors, not all implementations proved to be easier the second time around. From negotiating additional licenses to installing and testing software, the entire process had to start from the beginning in some cases, requiring enormous investments and energy from numerous staff members.
“We can assign chats based on custom variables and based on those variables, queue up the chats to a designated operator who is an expert.”
Joshua Mauldin
Customer Service Manager