The Role Of Instant Messaging In Network Marketing

Since the birth of ICQ, Instant messaging (IM) class services are widely welcomed by Internet users. Chat tool More and more, besides ICQ, users have more MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and so on. Domestic users tend to use Tencent QQ. These instant messaging tools were originally born for chatting, but their functions have long gone beyond the scope of chatting, and in fact, they are inseparable from work and life. If they are used properly, they can also play an important role. Marketing function 。

According to a survey conducted by Jupiter Media Metrix and a survey in November 2001, the number of American users who use IM at home increased by 48% over the past year, while the time of using IM in work increased by 110%. By October 2001, the number of American users who used IM in work had reached 13 million 400 thousand, an increase of 34% over September. Meanwhile, the number of users using instant messaging at home increased from 42 million in September to 53 million 800 thousand in October.

At home and at work, there are so many users using instant messaging services. Apart from the general links between friends and colleagues, they can also play more practical value. The role of network marketing is first manifested in customer service. The survey company showed that the demand for punctuality of the service was higher and higher. The expected response time was reduced from 24 hours two years ago to 12 hours last year. Now, most customers want to get customer service inquiries within 6 hours, and even a large number of customers are seeking instant satisfaction service, so all kinds of instant messages are just the ideal online customer service tools. The research results of Modalis Research (http://www.modalis.com), an American research firm, show that 6% of American websites use IM as a customer service tool. 45% of consumers are satisfied with this. However, because of the high demand for customer service personnel and the higher cost of customer service, it has not been widely adopted, but this kind of instant service has become one of the most popular and popular online customer service means. It should be paid attention to, especially in areas such as online retailing, online insurance, etc., which require higher customer service.

Recently, research by Basex, a consultancy research firm, showed that instant messaging services are very helpful for improving the order success rate in online sales. If you use instant messaging to develop customer service reasonably, the percentage of customers giving up shopping cart can be reduced by 20%, so that the total volume of online shopping in the United States will increase by $20 billion.

Customer abandonment of shopping cart is a common phenomenon in online sales. Unlike customers buying in supermarkets, the proportion of shopping cart abandonment is very high. Basex's research shows that this ratio is 50%. In the recent research of e-commerce portal BizRate.com, it was found that the proportion of customers giving up shopping cart was as high as 75%. The results of market research firm Datamonitor also obtained similar conclusions: in 2001, 69.4% of potential online transactions were not completed, of which 8.1% were caused by sellers who could not give answers when customers asked questions.

Online consumers can give up virtual shopping carts for many reasons, such as: customers just want to experience the shopping process, do not want to really complete the order, fail to determine whether certain commodities are their own expectations, lack of confidence in the safety of online transactions, temporary change of ideas, long delivery time, high delivery cost, no free distribution of users, no suitable ways to get rich, and cheaper products for other websites.

In order to solve the problem of reducing customers' abandonment of shopping carts, we can further analyze the online shopping behavior of consumers: users have certain purchase plans before buying, may only want to buy the goods they want, and they can put the shopping cart before they can decide whether they are suitable for their own products, and then give up the shopping before paying the cash register. Or when they see a product or a product outside the plan, no friends or guides can consult and consult, so they often hesitate. In fact, all these phenomena contain the same problem: the website lacks real-time interaction, including the interaction between consumers and websites and customers who purchase similar products. Just in time, instant messaging services can play an advantage in this respect. Technically speaking, there should be no major obstacles.

There are many specific applications of instant messaging, and some websites have used instant messaging to develop deep customer services and give full play to their marketing functions. For example, users who browse the same product can share with each other, share knowledge about the product, and discuss with each other on a number of issues. They can achieve long-distance "shopping together", increase the enjoyment of online shopping, and also help customers to understand goods quickly. If customers repeatedly look at a certain commodity, it seems that when they are hesitant, a virtual shopping guide or a virtual product expert can pop up a dialogue window in time, and give instant information to the customer's necessary introduction, which will definitely help users purchase decisions and improve the order success rate.

Besides the functions of online customer service and product guide, instant information will play a greater role in Internet marketing in the near future.