In the February issue of Customer Interaction Solutions magazine, I wrote about a study conducted by Allurent that indicated that 82 percent of online shoppers, after a bad e-commerce experience, say they will never return to that company's Web site again. There is evidence aplenty that poor e-commerce and e-support experiences also significantly damage a company's store-based retail sales. The excuses are running out for companies with bad Web sites and a spotty record on remote support.

On Wednesday, Citrix GoToAssist is sponsoring an informative Webinar called "Empowering Your People With The Remote Support Competitive Edge." If you offer support via your company's Web site, you cannot afford to miss this Webinar. Your competitors will be listening.

http://www.tmcnet.com/Webinar/citrix/empowering-your-people.htm

TES

You may have noticed, via its humorous commercials involving a little Woody Allen-like guy attempting to get through to his credit card company and setting his kitchen on fire, that Citibank's CitiCard credit card division is offering a powerful new incentive to switch credit card companies: When you call the company, you can press "0" at any time during the IVR spiel and be connected to a live operator.

So what's a great differentiating point among credit cards? It really tells you what kind of world we live in when a company offers "being able to talk to a human whenever you want" as a superior selling point, and the rest of us fully agree. Many of us would be happy to pay a few extra points in interest rates if it guarantees us frustration-free calls to our credit card companies.

I'm looking through old issues of Telemarketing magazine, which some of you may know is the old name of Customer Interaction Solutions magazine, to discover information about an old program we used to run. I'm having an excellent blast from the past...even though the issues I'm looking through are only from 1993 and 1994, which doesn't seem very long ago, technology-wise it might as well be the Stone Age.

One article boasts about the cutting-edge benefits of CTI (computer-telephony integration), which actually allowed you to see customer records simultaneously with the phone call! (Seems very low-tech now, doesn't it?) Also, another article crows about the virtues of auto-dialing, which at the time was so helpful in replacing "existing technology." What was the "existing technology"?

We told you it was coming:

A proposed Oklahoma law that, if passed, will require any business doing inbound work with consumers in Oklahoma to make a live operator available if the customer zeroes out by pressing "O" or saying "operator". If the consumer cannot immediately zero out to an operator, that company is liable to fines.

The title of the bill is OK H.B. 2783, and we'll keep you updated as to its progress.

TES