eStara's CEO describes the applications for this technology, and explains how marketers benefit from adding it to their sites and online ads.

Note: The term "click-to-call" is sometimes confused with "pay-per-call." "Pay-per-call" is a business model for ad listings in search engines and directories that allows publishers to charge local advertisers on a per-call basis for each lead (call) they generate. "Click-to-call," along with call tracking, is a technology that enables the "pay-per-call" business model. But click-to-call can also be offered as a value-added lead generation and customer service solution. 

Click-to-call buttons are popping up everywhere-- on corporate websites, emails, interactive ads and search engine directory ads. Even media buzz has recently focused around click-to-call, with internet search giants Google and Yahoo! testing ways to enable immediate web-to-phone connections between buyers and sellers through their local search ads. Savvy marketers have proved you can drive material benefits from the technology, but many others are wondering how and when one should implement click-to-call.

Let's start with a quick primer on the technology. Click-to-call services let users click a button and immediately speak with a customer service representative. Customers can either place a call over the computer using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology or request an immediate call back from the advertiser by entering their phone number. Unlike a toll-free phone number, click-to-call services enable companies to monitor and control when and where online visitors migrate from the web to the phone sales channel. 

The reality is that self-service cannot always be achieved online, particularly when making complex purchasing decisions. For high-value transactions, there's nothing like the power of voice for closing the deal. Jupiter Research has found that when it comes to questions about billing and delivery, product support or service and general order inquiries, the relative majority of consumers prefer phone contact over any other alternative, including email, self-service tools and text chat.

Companies are getting smarter about who is on their websites and are taking more aggressive steps to optimize their websites to increase customer loyalty and avoid website abandonment. In addition, companies are recognizing that an ordinary telephone number on a website creates a blind spot that prevents them from using CRM (customer relationship management) and business intelligence analytics to improve the online sales experience. An increasing number of organizations are utilizing click-to-call services as a bridge between online and offline channels to address this and are experiencing latent benefits, such as increased sales conversion rates and shortened call handle times, in the process.

Click-to-call technology is driving benefits for companies from Amazon.com to DaimlerChrysler. Using click-to-call services, companies have found, on average:

• A 22 percent to 25 percent reduction in website abandonment from website pages with click-to-call services
• As much as a 100 percent increase in transaction conversions from click-to-call users versus toll-free callers
• 88 percent of click-to-call users say they are more likely to contact a company that offers a click-to-call service than one that does not.

While click-to-call technology has driven great benefits for many companies, marketers need to think about their business needs and how they can make a click-to-call deployment effective. Not all customer contact is cost-effective. For this reason, it's important that a company build a click-to-call strategy that adds to the customer experience without heavily taxing its call center and existing CRM resources.

Marketers need to think about where they should deploy click-to-call: on customer service websites, via text-ads on search engines or potentially in interactive ads. The technology can be placed nearly anywhere electronically, but marketers should be discerning and:

1. Identify where a company website loses the most high-value transactions
2. Know how and when to engage high-value customers.

With this information, an enterprise can offer the right kind of customer interaction and increase its online conversion rate without driving up CRM costs. The company can use less costly customer information tools (text chat, FAQs, search, email) to assist with non-transactional customer exchanges, and use services like click-to-call to help close complex sales.

Companies that use click-to-call services are also increasing usage of conditional link deployments. These dynamic deployments allow a company to collect data on a website visitor and broadcast a click-to-call button based on their profile and behavior while visiting the site. 

Through cross-channel data passing, the context of the customer's web session is preserved-- should the customer decide to contact the retailer via a traditional or conditional click-to-call button, the call center agent will have access to variable data that is collected during the conversation so that they can meet the customer's needs. This alleviates the usual customer anxiety of having to "start all over again" when they decide to leave the web and make a phone call. Plus, the data enables customer service representatives to identify where the caller was having trouble on the web and "push" informative web pages out to customers during a click-to-call session by simply pressing keys on their telephone touch pad. The customer service representative is then able to handle customer inquiries with greater ease by providing the customer with visual references while they talk.

Most enterprises find that if they were to deploy click-to-call services on every page of their websites, 30 percent of the buttons would drive 80 percent of the transaction-critical calls. Following the initial launch with a click-to-call service, companies are able to scale up or scale back the deployment of click-to-call buttons to benefit from this 80/30 rule.

Click-to-call has arrived, and savvy marketers across all industries are making it work for them to improve online sales conversions and customer satisfaction. Now it's time to make it work for you.

John Federman is chief executive officer of eStara, the leading provider of multi-channel communications solutions that increase online revenue by linking buyers and sellers. Founded in 1999, eStara now serves over 350 global enterprises across many industries, including directory and online publishing, financial services, travel and hospitality and online retail.