April 7, 2021 • 42 mins
How can your business maintain vital human connection with your clients when you’re already stretched thin? In this episode of the ROI Online Podcast, Founder of TextChat Eric Kades talks about Chatbots and AI and how they relate to conversational interfaces–whether it’s customer support, service, or sales.
Eric is an entrepreneur, he’s the founder of TextChat—a revolutionary live chat software for small businesses that is highly personalized and brings the timeless touch of human connection to the sophistication of AI technology. TextChat makes website live chat as sociable and easy as texting with a friend, so you can stop missing messages and start closing sales. To date, Eric and his team of 75 have raised 1.6M and have accrued over 100 customers.
Sometimes as business owners we think that we need live agents available all day every day to close deals with customers. Eric and the TextChat team are rethinking how to approach customer communication using a simple, affordable, and effective alternative. It’s one less thing small businesses have to worry about.
Among other things, Eric and Steve discussed:
- What a live chat app and live chat support are
- How artificial intelligence and data add value to businesses
- How businesses can use artificial intelligence
- What a tech support business is
- What cart abandonment rate is—and what to do about it
- Why shopping cart abandonment is a problem for retailers
- How to reduce cart abandonment rate
You can learn more about Eric here:
Follow Eric on LinkedIn
You can learn more about TextChat here:
Read the books mentioned in this podcast:
The Golden Toilet by Steve Brown
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Eric Kades (00:04):
You can train AI over time to get better and
better at figuring out what itis the the the you're asking. At
the same time, once it figuresout what you're asking it goes
and taps the database and says,Okay, here's the right answer
for that question. But whatoften happens, especially in a
(00:24):
new instance, when you're juststarting to train it, it takes a
good six months to a year tocontinually update that AI to
train it to what you're tryingto get to. A lot of times,
you'll get stuck in what I callWrong answer hell, which I've
experienced myself.
Steve Brown (00:43):
Hi, everybody.
Welcome to the ROI onlinepodcast where we believe you,
the courageous entrepreneurs ofour day, are the invisible
heroes of our economy. You notonly improve our world with your
ideas, your grit and yourpassion, but you make our world
better. I'm Steve Brown. Andthis is a place where we have
great conversations with winnersjust like you while we laugh and
(01:06):
learn together.
Welcome to the ROI onlinepodcast. Steve Brown, thanks
Eric Kades (01:22):
for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Steve Brown (01:24):
So Eric, you have this, this company that here's
the thing, we're humans, and wejust want to talk to somebody,
but often we feel 1000s of milesaway from someone that could be
like, really resolving asolution for us. But there's not
(01:44):
many options. Right now you goonline, maybe there's a chat
message, and you got to wait.
But you don't know if you'retalking to a human. Or if you're
talking to a robot. And thenalso you send in an email, you
don't know when that email isgoing to be answered. But yet
you have this solution that isshortcutting that process and
can really get a connection witha live human in no time at all.
(02:08):
Yeah,
Eric Kades (02:11):
it's it's something that I came across about a
decade ago, I've been in thecontact center business for 20
plus years course, you know,started out answering phones
making outbound phone calls.
About 10 years ago, I started tohear about this thing called
Live Chat. And just out ofcommon sense, I said, wow, you
know, everyone's paying all thismoney to bring people to their
(02:34):
website. And that now there'sthis little widget that can pop
up and talk to people. So Isaid, this is a business that's
gonna happen in the future. Andsomething that we need to do for
our clients went to one of ourfirst or one of our voice
clients and said, Hey, we'regetting in the live chat
(02:55):
business. Now, would youconsider using live chat on your
website? They did. It was alarge for profit, publicly
traded, college and university.
And we became their number oneconverting lead source Go
figure. So immediately, whensomeone has a question, one of
(03:17):
my agents pops up and answersthose questions. And those
people that talk with us first,end up enrolling in that
college, better than any otherlead source that comes in
someone who calls someone whofills out a form, no matter what
it is, we still to this day, 10years later, are still there,
number one converting leadsource and I turned that into a
(03:39):
business. We went on to 50 pluscolleges and universities that
we do this for today. We'restill all of their number one
converting lead source. And whyis that? It's It's simple. It's
because we're answering people'squestions with real human beings
at the exact second that theyhave the question. So they have
(04:00):
anxiety about going to college.
And you know, when we're thereto answer to these credits
transfer, what's your fast fidate, they appreciate it. And
they say, Hey, this is a placethat I could see myself
attending. So all along thatjourney, I kind of had a
problem. The problem was on ourown website, when I would put
(04:20):
one of my live chat agents onthe website. Inevitably, we
would get a prospect looking atusing us for their live chat on
their University's website. Andthey would come in with a really
tough question specific about acertain software, and my agent
would know the answer and theywould just say, you know what,
(04:43):
sir? Man, that's a greatquestion. Let me get your name
and number and someone will callyou back. And then I would get
an email like an hour latersaying, you know what, we
decided we're not going to useyou because you don't really
understand your software. Weweren't even using our own song.
Where, and you know, we're gonnago a different direction. So I
went to the live chat softwarecompanies at that time and said,
(05:06):
Hey, I need a solution for this,I need to get my sales people,
you know, answering thesequestions, so we could answer
intelligently. And they all hadanswers for it. They all said,
Great, we have an app for that.
I said, awesome. I'll give theapp to our sales guys. Now, when
you know, University of NorthCarolina online comes to check
(05:28):
us out on our website, we'll beable to answer right away
intelligently. And we'll closethe deal. Well, college comes on
prospective college comes on toour website, and I'm on the
phone and someone else is doingsomeone out something else,
they're not in front of thecomputer. And the prospect is
(05:49):
waiting and waiting and waitingand waiting. And we never see
the app notification. So then Iget an email a half hour later
and says, Hey, we just came toyour website, and we waited
three minutes and no one pickedup. We're not going to use you
we could never have someone likethat represent our brand. And
they would shut and I would shutit down. So we sold live chat to
(06:13):
colleges and universities for adecade very successfully,
without having live chat on ourown website. And that was really
became the bane of my existencethat would keep me up at night
that we wouldn't be able toanswer our own live chat. Yes,
we can answer with our agents.
But we couldn't answer whenthose critical questions came
in. And these were big deals. Sowe didn't want to take that
(06:34):
risk. And I would just tellprospective clients to go look
at our competitors, go chat withthem, and they'll get a good
experience. And then we wouldclose the deal. But still, we're
a live chat company with no livechat. So one day, you know,
sitting here in my kitchen,Steve, I said to myself, What if
you could answer a live chatwith a text message?
(06:57):
That would be so simple. We'reall looking at our phones all
day long, we could send a textmessage to multiple people at
once. Whoever picked it up firstcould answer. And then we could
close the deal. So I went to theCTO is running our call center
software at the time and said,Hey, can you build a prototype
of this? Where make it so thesales team can answer with a
(07:19):
text message a couple weekslater, he had a prototype and
text chat was born. And westarted answering our live chats
on time and closing sales. So Inever really thought of it as a
product. It was just somethingthat we were going to use for
ourselves. And I told a friendabout it. He told his friend
about it. I happen to have an ecommerce store in Aspen,
(07:40):
Colorado small jewelry storecalled Taylor and SCA and told
Adam how we answer our livechats with text messages. And
Adams like, Oh my god, I gottatry that we've tried this live
chat company and that live chatcompany and this live chat
company. And we're never infront of our computer, right?
When the live check comes in, orwe're waiting on a customer. And
(08:03):
I gave it to Adam called me back10 minutes later said he just
closed at $800 jewelry sale, andhow can he invest in my company?
We went I said, Adam, you know,why don't you be our prototype.
And you know, our first betacustomer, we developed it. Over
the next four months, I gave itto another buddy. He closed the
(08:24):
sale immediately called me andsaid he wanted to invest in the
company and text chat was born.
And you know, it's very simple.
It's that immediate humanconnection. When someone is on
your website, either in shoppingmode or buying mode? And you
answer right away, you closethem 50% or more of the time.
Steve Brown (08:45):
So let's some text chat was born. But let's let's
do a little differentiationhere. Because in most people's
mind, text and chat is the samething. But it's not. It's very
different. So what is live chatapp?
Eric Kades (09:01):
Yeah, so that's a great question. And our name
actually is a little bit alittle bit confusing, although
it's a good brand name. LiveChat is that widget in the
bottom corner that you see onwebsites that pops up and says,
hey, how can I help you today?
And then they ask for your nameand email, and then you hope to
get transferred to a liveperson. But in today's world
(09:25):
with chatbots, some of the timeyou're just getting automation,
and then you're thinking you'regoing to speak with a live
person. And then you get thismessage that says great. We got
your information. Someone willget back to you in 24 hours and
often they never get back toyou. That's not what live chat
was designed to do. Live Chatwas designed to foster human
(09:47):
communication. Yeah, because itand I know this, Steve because
we come websites that have livechat and 80% of them. Do not ask
answer with a human being andit's really it's not live at all
it's very much dead chat andfrankly it's if you do it that
way it's very damaging to yourbrand because you're you're
(10:10):
breaking a promise to someoneyou're like duping them into
giving you information and theythink they're gonna get someone
and then they don't you'relosing that customer for life
when you do that to them
Steve Brown (10:24):
the premise these live chat apps were like okay we
are we're gonna use artificialintelligence to sift through
these initial interactions theseinitial interactions are
generally superficial they'rejust starting to search so live
chat could interact with these alittle bit until they hand it
off to a real person but whatmost people are finding is that
(10:49):
the folks that are supposed toset these up they don't know how
to program them properly numberone and then like you said you
they'll ghost you
Unknown (10:59):
yeah you know
Eric Kades (11:00):
to do live chat right this is why we have a
company for huge clients thathave millions of visitors a
month that get 1000s and1000s 10s of 1000s of chats a
month that's a full time teamthat is answering those live
chats well if you're a smallerbusiness like we don't get a
tremendous ton of traffic to ourcall center business but
Unknown (11:23):
i know that
Eric Kades (11:24):
when someone's on our website and it's a
prospective college that's a bigdeal for me i want to answer it
it's really hard to staff and ithink that's the biggest thing
that people run into they'relike i know this seems like a
great solution but i don't haveany extra people to handle this
i can't afford to hire people tosit by the computer for what
(11:45):
might be one or two or threechats a day even though i know
that if we have a human we'regonna close them but i still
don't have the staff to do thatso that's kind of you know what
we're trying to change and whytext chat makes it easy you know
even without extra staff i had achat come through on text chats
website i was on a sales calland a chat came through and it
(12:11):
goes out to our team members buti just want to jump out and
because i know if i get thatperson right away i'm gonna
close them and they're gonna bea new text chat customer i can
answer these when i'm talking onthe phone that's how easy it is
so that's kind of the bigdifferentiator you don't have to
be tied to a computer or hopeyou see one of 75 apps give you
a notification that's already onyour phone
Steve Brown (12:33):
so what is a like text chat
Eric Kades (12:36):
support so it's it's so all of a sudden i've been in
the telecom business for 20 plusyears texting has been around
for 20 years it started in thefinancial industry for security
pass codes all of a sudden it'sthe hot new e commerce thing
something that's been around fora couple of decades and what
(13:00):
text chat is you know in termsof text messaging is when
someone puts text us you knowand you got to give them your
name and your phone number totext but my argument is that's
great but not everyone wants togive you their cell phone number
and has that fear that you mightstart spamming spamming them
(13:23):
right you know just to get aquestion answered that that
might cause them to jump toanother site that they can just
live chat and get a quick answerso really the difference is
texting first of all is notalways automatic you know
someone might take 10 or 15minutes to respond to a text
message till they log into theircomputer or using that new text
(13:47):
company's app to respond to youwhere live chat is supposed to
be live and immediate and thebig difference again is you know
with i agree with all of themfirst of all if i am a big buyer
of ralph lauren for example iwould mind if loud ralph lauren
texted me special sales andthings like that but i also
(14:09):
don't want 10 brands texting mei want them to my go to brands
texting me and that's it maybe ihave room for two or three of
them so texting certainly hasits place in e commerce and any
kind of conversion but live chathas its place as well and i
would argue it's a betterconversion tool than texting
Steve Brown (14:32):
yeah the problem is we're mobile and so oftentimes
i'll decide i will handle i'llcall like energy company or
whatever i need to do this thisannoying thing that i'm going to
have to lose 45 minutes of mylife waiting on hold instead of
(14:53):
sitting somewhere i want to doit while i'm driving or i'm
trying to use my time better Ijust pictured that your tool
would be an awesome intercessorthere where it makes it easy to
get my answer, I can do it onthem move, and it just feels
more friendly, it feels morelike you respect my time in my
(15:18):
way of life. And so I just seethat your tools like what, uh,
how to make sales and techsupport and be so easy with your
tool?
Eric Kades (15:28):
It really is you get someone in that first minute, I
mean, there's a lot of data outthere, you know, I can give you
a couple stats 78% of customersbuy from the first business they
talk to, wow, think about that.
78% the other you know, one thatblows my mind is, you know, 390,
you have a 391% increase inconversion. When you speak to
(15:52):
someone within a minute. It'salmost like, how are businesses
not doing this, you know,customer support I in Forbes
just added a new article,customer sought support is the
new flagship store. So if you'recompeting with a bunch of other
businesses that are sellingsimilar products, if you can add
(16:13):
that layer of instantcommunication, you're gonna win.
Of course, you got to get themto your website, the first
place, but if you got themthere, you're gonna win?
Steve Brown (16:25):
Well, you don't, the default mindset is just send
millions of people to mywebsite, and I'll just get a few
of them. But in reality, most ofthe businesses that listen to
this podcast, they don't havemillions of visits, and they
can't afford to, to have 1000sof people come through and and
leave without any indication ofwhat happened. And their their
(16:49):
solution is to somehow usetechnology, this artificial
intelligence to hopefully meetand greet these people in in,
then raise a flag, we got a liveone here, bring a human. And yet
what you're offering shortcutsthat process. How does how, how
does artificial intelligence anddata add value to businesses?
(17:13):
And yet, yet, we still need thathuman connection?
Eric Kades (17:19):
It's a great question. And, look, we're a
chatbot company. So I believe inAI, conversational AI, which is
really two technologies, naturalnatural language processing and
machine learning, and advancedautomation. And I believe in a
big time, and where I believe init, we do this for some of our
(17:41):
college customers. Now we buildthem chat bots, look, if you're
coming in, and you need to reseta password, or you need to find
out a FASFA ID for your collegebecause you're filling out your
financial aid form. You don'tneed to speak to someone to get
that answer quickly. AI can pickthat up and say, Okay, here's
(18:03):
what that person's looking for,boom, here's your number in a
millisecond, you have youranswer, and you don't need to
talk to a human being. But thereare a lot of questions that you
can automate that and especiallyon a product that is you know,
more than $50, that you havesome anxiety about buying. We
like to use AI and automation toget buyers to humans, because we
(18:29):
know that AI is 1020 maybe nevergoing to be able to sell as well
as a human. So use thetechnology to either answer
someone's question quickly thatcan be automated or using
artificial intelligence toanswer it. But when someone
wants to buy something, and theyhave a question, get them to a
(18:50):
human, you're losing the game ifyou if you think about it any
other way.
Steve Brown (18:54):
That's hard to discern that moment when you
need to hand off to human. Sowhat is it about your technology
that makes it easy?
Eric Kades (19:02):
Well, a couple things, you know, AI and natural
language processing and machinelearning, which is
conversational ai, ai is kind ofthis broad term and no one
really knows what it means andyou know, the AI you're using to
figure out what's a great drugfor certain cancer is very
different than conversational AIand chatbots. And, you know,
(19:24):
converting on your website, andlike I just mentioned, that's
two key technologies, naturallanguage processing, and machine
learning. So on the naturallanguage processing side, you're
the software's trying to figureout what it is that you're
actually answering and areasking as though you can train
(19:48):
AI over time to get better andbetter at figuring out what it
is Steve, the the you're asking.
At the same time. Once itfigures out what you're asking.
It goes and taps the data. basinsays, Okay, here's the right
answer for that question. Butwhat often happens, especially
in a new instance, when you'rejust starting to train, and it
(20:09):
takes a good six months to ayear to continually update that
AI, to train it to what you'retrying to get to? A lot of
times, you'll get stuck in whatI call Wrong answer hell, which
I've experienced myself, I wentto a major automaker one of the
big, you know, four automakersin our country, and I am not
(20:32):
going to tell you the car, youknow, anything personal. I was
excited about a car that I readabout Motor Trend. And I went to
the website, and I firstquestion I asked the AI was, how
much does this cost? And they Icomes back? Sorry, I don't know
what you're asking me like themost obvious question. Right? I
(20:52):
went back and asked how muchdoes it cost three different
ways, and it still couldn'tanswer. And then it left me
hanging. And I was so you know,disenfranchised by the
experience that I didn't evencare about the car so much
anymore, and just forgot aboutthat new, exciting car. So it's
really important that you havethat safety valve, that when you
(21:14):
get in a wrong answer more thanonce or twice, that you're Oh,
you're able to transfer that toa human being, otherwise, you're
gonna lose a customer.
Steve Brown (21:27):
Hey, I wanted to pause right here and tell you
about a book that you need toget today. It's the funniest
book on marketing. It's calledthe Golden toilet, stop flushing
your marketing budget into yourwebsite and build a system that
grows your business. And guesswho wrote it? That's right. I
wrote it. And I wrote it justfor you. Because I want to help
(21:49):
you get past the last hurdles ofsetting up your business and
getting it squared away. I wroteit so that you can avoid time
wasting time wasting money,wasting frustration, get the
book on Audible. You can get iton Kindle, you can get it on
Amazon, but get the book, takeadvantage of the insights in
(22:10):
there. And let me know what youthink. And now back to this
excellent episode. Yeah, youthink about Alexa, you think
about, okay, Google, you thinkabout these great tools that I'm
going to set this little deviceon my desk that's going to to
lurk in monitor everything Isay. But if I happen to ask it a
(22:32):
question, it's supposed to spitout this wonderful answer that I
just needed, right at thatmoment. But I would, I would
argue that most of us havegotten 80%. wrong answers. I
don't understand that. I can'tanswer that these, these really
offensive answers that yourealize, Oh, I didn't ask it in
(22:55):
the right format. Therefore, itthis super smart thing can't
understand me, which is, it'snot a super smart thing. And
that it's so frustrating. And Ithink it's like this. It's it's
a barrier to adoption forbusinesses to put something like
this on their website, when itcould be this great solution.
(23:17):
But more often than not, it's abig frustrating for the people
that are the victims of it.
Eric Kades (23:22):
It really is. It's not fair. I mean, that's the
biggest company in the worlddoesn't have it all figured out
yet. And, you know, often I willsteer our clients away from even
using AI. There's a lot you cando with automation, where in
milliseconds, you could bringsomeone down a funnel with
(23:42):
buttons, as opposed to trying toguess what it is that they're
asking, and get the same resultwithout all that frustration and
confusion. So whenever we haveno matter how big decline is, I
always steer them the startingwith automation. And then let's
figure out what points of thisprocess does it make sense to
(24:03):
have some open endedconversation, but that's not the
way most people attack it.
Steve Brown (24:09):
We're talking with Eric cades. He's the CEO, text
chat calm. It's a greattechnology to help you connect
your clients, your potentialcustomers with humans, Eric. So
what I'm curious about is in theapplication of this for, you
(24:31):
know, the businesses, just drawa picture of an example. Like,
let's say I'm a plumber, and Iwant to, I want to implement
your technology. What does itlook like this solution?
Eric Kades (24:44):
Sure, it really requires no training. The
hardest part of it is you haveto put a line of code that we
give you onto your website. Nowwe're already integrated into
Shopify, we're an app in theShopify app. app stores. So if
you're an e commerce store, youdon't have to integrate any
software, you just go in, youanswer a few questions, click a
(25:07):
button, and this is live on yourwebsite. But if you're a
plumber, and you're not onShopify, you are going to have
to have your web designer, orwhoever's handling your website,
install that line of code foryou, we take it a step further,
where if you don't have thatperson accessible, as long as we
have a team of developers, aslong as we can get access to
(25:29):
your website, we'll install thecode for you. From that point,
you just have to be able toreceive a text message. If you
can receive a text message, youcan then chat with your people
via live chat in real time.
Because, gosh, yeah, that's it.
If you can text with yourfriends, you can do text chat.
(25:49):
And you get a text message whensomeone's live chatting, not
entering their phone number,just live chatting. You click on
a link in that text message. Andyou're in a two way conversation
with the person. Like I said, Ianswer that when I'm talking on
the phone.
Steve Brown (26:06):
So then the person that's on your website and types
in the question they have notgiving you their phone number.
Eric Kades (26:14):
Nope. There live chatting. We're just using the
text message notification as thedifferentiator because you don't
get those
Steve Brown (26:26):
app notifications, and then you you know, lose a
customer because you told themyou were going to speak to them
live and then you gave themnothing. And that text message
notification has really been thegame changer for all of our
businesses that uses so when youtalk about Shopify, the problem
(26:46):
with having a shopping cart, isthat people abandon the shopping
experience at some way inbecause they're something they
they're not clear on and so theygo Forget it. I'm gonna go on
and do something else. And thisis like a beautiful thing to to
reduce. cart abandonment, right.
Eric Kades (27:08):
100% I can't tell you how many stories I get
weekly, of this customer camein. This is someone that sells a
couple $1,000 it's calledairlift. And it's kind of like a
new kind of forklift. Yeah,someone came in from Australia.
(27:30):
And they were thinking aboutbuying it weren't sure if they
were going to buy it becausethey were worried about the
shipping costs. And my customergot the text chat, answered his
questions made them comfortablethat they're not going to get
crushed on shipping. This guythen got his airlift, went on
(27:51):
Instagram, promoted his airlift.
All these other contractors inhis area saw the Instagram, this
company now is opening adivision in Australia. And it
all started with that text chat,because a guy was worried about
shipping.
Steve Brown (28:11):
So why is shopping cart abandonment a problem for
retailers?
Eric Kades (28:16):
Because people have questions right? Before you
know, we talked about thatanxiety of making a purchase,
especially, you know, if it'smore than $20? You know, you
might put it all in there andI'll crap Am I going to be able
to get it by this date? Or, youknow, does this size really
going to fit me? I don't want togo through it. As you know, does
(28:38):
this necklace run big? Or howlong? Is it? Those kinds of
questions? are the ones thatcause people to jump out of the
shopping cart? So if there'ssomeone there to answer that
question and close them, they'renot going to jump.
Steve Brown (28:52):
So you're your data man. What is the cart
abandonment rate?
Eric Kades (28:59):
The cart abandonment rate in general on businesses or
you know, I gotta be honest withyou, I don't have that statistic
off the top of my head. I knowit's in the, you know, high 80%
something like that is crazy.
Steve Brown (29:16):
Yeah.
Eric Kades (29:17):
I mean, it's like, it's a huge problem on Shopify.
And it's, it's interesting. Iknow, it's a huge problem on
Shopify alone. And, look,Amazon's winning, because it's a
one click purchase, they have200 million of our credit cards
in their amazon prime. And soyou go to Amazon, you know,
(29:37):
you're getting you know, andit's gonna get the leverage and
you push a button, and boom, youget it when you're a small
business trying to compete withAmazon. And someone has a lot of
questions and they don't reallyknow you and they're putting in
their personal credit cardinformation and you're a small
business. They're jumpingbecause they're not secure that
(29:59):
this is Is what they reallywant. So, you know, this is a
game changer for cartabandonment, it's a game changer
for really any kind of businessthat you know, is selling
something, in my opinion, ifyou're selling something more
than $20, and it's worth it toyou to talk to that customer to
build a lifelong customer, youknow, you need to talk to them
(30:20):
right away.
Steve Brown (30:22):
So in Shopify, what are like the top three things
that you can do now, to reducecart abandonment rate.
Eric Kades (30:30):
One is certainly, you know, trying to collect a
phone number, so you can followup with the person. So, um, you
know, having that phone numberin your checkout form, and kind
of having that express consentthat you can follow up with the
person. So if you got theirphone number, and then they
(30:51):
jumped, you have a way ofgetting back to them. The other
is making that checkout processas easy as possible. I mean, if
I, as a personal shopper, if Ihave to go through a bunch of
hoops in a shopping cart, and goback to pages and check things,
once it becomes if it's not aseamless experience, once it
(31:11):
comes, becomes annoying to me,I'm gone. And I'm looking at
Amazon to see if they have thesame product, because I know I'm
gonna get it in a couple ofdays.
Steve Brown (31:20):
And then number three,
Eric Kades (31:22):
number three is really I would say, email follow
up is so critical as well. Ithink, you know, if you have
that contact information, youneed to follow up with that
person, maybe offer them adiscount, you know, you're
sorry, they laughed, but youreally want them as a customer
and, you know, come back andwe'll give you a 10% discount.
Steve Brown (31:43):
And then I really see that, that such a trend.
Small businesses are trying toestablish some sort of shopping
cart experience on theirwebsites, and to be able to have
your tool to complement thatprocess or hold their hand or to
check on him during that, thatmoment when they're actually
almost committed. You thinkabout what it takes to get
(32:07):
someone to your website, todecide on a product to start to
go through the identificationprocess, get out my credit card,
and then I'm about to buy andthen I go No, I'm out. Oh, my
gosh, that took a lot of effortto get someone there.
Eric Kades (32:24):
Yeah, you know, I, I've been battling digital
marketers for a decade now.
Because digital marketers, and ecommerce, especially people
think of every way possible toget someone to a website, and
try and convert them throughautomation and technology and
(32:45):
website design, and they'll doanything and everything, to not
have to talk to someone. And theamount of money that gets wasted
in spec is probably trillions ofdollars a year on digital
marketing, where if you justgive that person human
connection, you will close them.
(33:06):
And again, like I literally, Ifight this battle every day, you
know, in our contact centerbusiness. Always the digital
marketing guys, their domain isthe website for the College of
the university. And they don'twant this little thing popping
up. They've spent a year on thisbeautiful design. And bam, when
(33:27):
we do it, the higher upsimmediately like oh my god, this
is something that we need tospend money on. And I'll tell
you a really interesting factabout live chat this, this just
happened to me. So for years,I've been begging to our contact
center managers that we need toget pictures of people in this
(33:48):
little live chat widget. And soI actually fired someone because
he wasn't able to make thatmove. Okay. And I was doing
research have tons of data,millions and millions of live
chats for these colleges anduniversities. And I we would
always be arguing with, youknow, the look and design of
(34:11):
that chat widget that we callit. And we have this one client,
I'm not gonna mention names, whogets more chats, per website
visitors than any of our otherclients. And would you believe
in Steve, they have the ugliestchat widget of all of our
customers. But it's got a bigpicture of someone that says I'm
(34:35):
here to help you. So I know thatlike it's that picture that's
driving the people. So finally,just this month, we got everyone
converted over to havingpictures of people on their live
chat widget. Our revenue is up20% this month, and that's a
giant number in our contactcenter business when I made this
(34:57):
switch because I wanted to testit on our own text chat comm web
We started getting 800% morechats, because we put pictures
of ourselves there, as opposedto just some, you know, digital
cool looking thing. It didn'tmatter, put a picture of a
person, people click onpictures, and you probably have
(35:18):
you know that experience in yourdigital marketing. We want a
human connection, we crave it.
And everyone in the digitalworld is fighting against it.
Steve Brown (35:28):
I know that's and it's like, I've even gone to a
chat. And the first question Iasked, Are you a robot? Or are
you a human?
Eric Kades (35:37):
Yeah, you don't want to waste your time with a robot
right now you want a realanswer?
Steve Brown (35:41):
Yeah. So I've envisioned that the future of
websites would be that they'renot really websites. They're
just a big interactive, humanchatbot.
Eric Kades (35:52):
Absolutely. We have, you know, we're adding Facebook
Messenger and all these otherchannels. So even we come in the
other channels. But the nextthing we're going to add is
video. I've sold someone throughtext chat, Comm. We don't have
video yet, right. But guy comeson I see is in Westlake
California. He's an insurancebroker. He's looking for live
(36:13):
chat, he didn't understandsomething. He says to me, you
know, can we get on a zoom rightnow. And you can explain this to
me, I have the zoom app on myphone, I click a link, I send it
to them through the text chat.
Here's a total stranger, whowasn't going to give me any
information. And I'm having azoom conversation with the
(36:34):
person in three minutes. And ofcourse, he bought it.
Steve Brown (36:39):
You know, I've, I've coached like garage repair
folks and stuff. You know,here's, here's how the
conversation go, they go on thewebsite. Alright, my garage is
broke. So I go look for garagerepair, I get on a website, I
either call them or I fill out aform? And how nice would it be
to just do a text and then thatperson go, we'll walk out in the
(37:02):
garage? And let's turn FaceTimeon and turn your camera around
and show me what's broken. Canyou imagine how
Eric Kades (37:11):
in the future, it's starting to happen slowly, just
like I said, text messaging hasbeen around for 20 years. All of
a sudden, it's the new Oh myGod, I gotta have this for my e
commerce site, which it reallyisn't, you know, it's a great
tool. But it's not everyonewants to give their phone
number. So yes, it's going to belive human interaction. I mean,
(37:35):
like that Forbes articlecustomer support is the new
flagship store. So yeah, it'sgoing to be chat with us go to
Video. Let me show you exactlyhow that looks. I can walk
around the car showroom, I canwalk around the store and pick
up, you know, a blouse and say,here's how it looks. That's the
(37:55):
future. And frankly, during whenCoronavirus, first hit, we saved
a lot of straight retailbusinesses business. And you
know, they call me in tearssaying you're saving our
business. They didn't even havee commerce stores. But when
people went to their website,they could start a chat via text
(38:17):
chat, and still have aconversation and go to the
FaceTime and still sell themlike literally, they weren't
even ecommerce enabled, and theywere still making sales from
their website.
Steve Brown (38:29):
I mean, listening or you're watching the ROI
online podcast, our guest isEric cades. His company is text
chat calm. And his mission is tohelp humans Connect remotely to
humans to improve business. Andso our exclusive question that
on our YouTube channel is how tomake sales and tech support, you
(38:51):
can go there and listen to howhe coaches you on how you can
make sales right there via techsupport online. And Eric. So I
always like to ask, what's onequestion that we didn't talk
about that you would love?
What's one question I didn't askthat you'd love to answer?
Eric Kades (39:10):
Um, I think the answer is, uh, you know, again,
back to this AI and explaining alittle bit more about this
natural language processing andmachine learning. When people
talk about AI on your website,you know, I talking about AI,
to, you know, solve a cancerproblem. They're talking about
(39:35):
natural language processing andmachine learning. So if there's
anything that any of theWesterners take away from today,
those are the two technologiesthat you need to educate
yourself on, if you want to haveAI on your website.
Steve Brown (39:50):
So natural language processing is we ask the same
questions in all sorts ofdifferent ways humans and
they'll use different words fordifferent terms but they're
asking the same thematic requestor they're searching for
thematic a theme version of aquestion looking for solution in
(40:10):
natural language processingtakes all of our accents all of
our our ways that we ask andstarts to discern and overtime
gets better at going out whateric's asking is this and then
machine learning is like havinga whole category or curated
library of content that canquickly connect you with exactly
(40:34):
the information that you need toresearch for that solution right
Eric Kades (40:40):
that's exactly right and another good takeaway is if
you're going to go down thatpath you need someone to be
there still human involvementyeah need someone to be
monitoring the failures everyday so you're constantly tuning
it it's it's a never endingprocess just like building your
website and getting it toconvert better you have to be
(41:03):
constantly checking where itfails and if you're really not
gonna either have an outsourcecompany or someone that's
focusing on that on a dailybasis you're gonna fail at it
Steve Brown (41:13):
yeah it requires billions of interactions for
this super intelligenttechnology to actually get a
clue and that's the dilemma isthat small businesses don't have
billions of opportunities tocollect data and process it
Eric Kades (41:29):
it is and human i mean small businesses can win by
having a human yeah
Steve Brown (41:37):
that's perfect perfect both to put on this
conversation eric you've been agreat guest how can folks
connect with you to learn moreor maybe see about getting this
solution on their platform
Eric Kades (41:51):
just go to text chat comm you can sign up for a free
trial for 14 days and literallyright there you get your line of
code you put in your name andemail and phone number and
you're ready to go it's thateasy
Steve Brown (42:05):
alright excellent eric thanks for being on the roi
online podcast
Eric Kades (42:10):
thanks for having me steve it was a lot of fun
Steve Brown (42:12):
that's a wrap anyone that fun thank you so
much for joining us on thisshort version of a great
conversation with another greatguest on the roi online podcast
i'm your host Steve Brownreminding you that the full
version of this conversationexists everywhere that podcasts
live and also to remind you thatif you need help to grow your
(42:36):
business better then visit roionline calm and be sure to stay
tuned for another great episodeon the roi online podcast
You can train AI over time to get better and
better at figuring out what itis the the the you're asking. At
the same time, once it figuresout what you're asking it goes
and taps the database and says,Okay, here's the right answer
for that question. But whatoften happens, especially in a
(00:24):
new instance, when you're juststarting to train it, it takes a
good six months to a year tocontinually update that AI to
train it to what you're tryingto get to. A lot of times,
you'll get stuck in what I callWrong answer hell, which I've
experienced myself.
Steve Brown (00:43):
Hi, everybody.
Welcome to the ROI onlinepodcast where we believe you,
the courageous entrepreneurs ofour day, are the invisible
heroes of our economy. You notonly improve our world with your
ideas, your grit and yourpassion, but you make our world
better. I'm Steve Brown. Andthis is a place where we have
great conversations with winnersjust like you while we laugh and
(01:06):
learn together.
Welcome to the ROI onlinepodcast. Steve Brown, thanks
Eric Kades (01:22):
for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Steve Brown (01:24):
So Eric, you have this, this company that here's
the thing, we're humans, and wejust want to talk to somebody,
but often we feel 1000s of milesaway from someone that could be
like, really resolving asolution for us. But there's not
(01:44):
many options. Right now you goonline, maybe there's a chat
message, and you got to wait.
But you don't know if you'retalking to a human. Or if you're
talking to a robot. And thenalso you send in an email, you
don't know when that email isgoing to be answered. But yet
you have this solution that isshortcutting that process and
can really get a connection witha live human in no time at all.
(02:08):
Yeah,
Eric Kades (02:11):
it's it's something that I came across about a
decade ago, I've been in thecontact center business for 20
plus years course, you know,started out answering phones
making outbound phone calls.
About 10 years ago, I started tohear about this thing called
Live Chat. And just out ofcommon sense, I said, wow, you
know, everyone's paying all thismoney to bring people to their
(02:34):
website. And that now there'sthis little widget that can pop
up and talk to people. So Isaid, this is a business that's
gonna happen in the future. Andsomething that we need to do for
our clients went to one of ourfirst or one of our voice
clients and said, Hey, we'regetting in the live chat
(02:55):
business. Now, would youconsider using live chat on your
website? They did. It was alarge for profit, publicly
traded, college and university.
And we became their number oneconverting lead source Go
figure. So immediately, whensomeone has a question, one of
(03:17):
my agents pops up and answersthose questions. And those
people that talk with us first,end up enrolling in that
college, better than any otherlead source that comes in
someone who calls someone whofills out a form, no matter what
it is, we still to this day, 10years later, are still there,
number one converting leadsource and I turned that into a
(03:39):
business. We went on to 50 pluscolleges and universities that
we do this for today. We'restill all of their number one
converting lead source. And whyis that? It's It's simple. It's
because we're answering people'squestions with real human beings
at the exact second that theyhave the question. So they have
(04:00):
anxiety about going to college.
And you know, when we're thereto answer to these credits
transfer, what's your fast fidate, they appreciate it. And
they say, Hey, this is a placethat I could see myself
attending. So all along thatjourney, I kind of had a
problem. The problem was on ourown website, when I would put
(04:20):
one of my live chat agents onthe website. Inevitably, we
would get a prospect looking atusing us for their live chat on
their University's website. Andthey would come in with a really
tough question specific about acertain software, and my agent
would know the answer and theywould just say, you know what,
(04:43):
sir? Man, that's a greatquestion. Let me get your name
and number and someone will callyou back. And then I would get
an email like an hour latersaying, you know what, we
decided we're not going to useyou because you don't really
understand your software. Weweren't even using our own song.
Where, and you know, we're gonnago a different direction. So I
went to the live chat softwarecompanies at that time and said,
(05:06):
Hey, I need a solution for this,I need to get my sales people,
you know, answering thesequestions, so we could answer
intelligently. And they all hadanswers for it. They all said,
Great, we have an app for that.
I said, awesome. I'll give theapp to our sales guys. Now, when
you know, University of NorthCarolina online comes to check
(05:28):
us out on our website, we'll beable to answer right away
intelligently. And we'll closethe deal. Well, college comes on
prospective college comes on toour website, and I'm on the
phone and someone else is doingsomeone out something else,
they're not in front of thecomputer. And the prospect is
(05:49):
waiting and waiting and waitingand waiting. And we never see
the app notification. So then Iget an email a half hour later
and says, Hey, we just came toyour website, and we waited
three minutes and no one pickedup. We're not going to use you
we could never have someone likethat represent our brand. And
they would shut and I would shutit down. So we sold live chat to
(06:13):
colleges and universities for adecade very successfully,
without having live chat on ourown website. And that was really
became the bane of my existencethat would keep me up at night
that we wouldn't be able toanswer our own live chat. Yes,
we can answer with our agents.
But we couldn't answer whenthose critical questions came
in. And these were big deals. Sowe didn't want to take that
(06:34):
risk. And I would just tellprospective clients to go look
at our competitors, go chat withthem, and they'll get a good
experience. And then we wouldclose the deal. But still, we're
a live chat company with no livechat. So one day, you know,
sitting here in my kitchen,Steve, I said to myself, What if
you could answer a live chatwith a text message?
(06:57):
That would be so simple. We'reall looking at our phones all
day long, we could send a textmessage to multiple people at
once. Whoever picked it up firstcould answer. And then we could
close the deal. So I went to theCTO is running our call center
software at the time and said,Hey, can you build a prototype
of this? Where make it so thesales team can answer with a
(07:19):
text message a couple weekslater, he had a prototype and
text chat was born. And westarted answering our live chats
on time and closing sales. So Inever really thought of it as a
product. It was just somethingthat we were going to use for
ourselves. And I told a friendabout it. He told his friend
about it. I happen to have an ecommerce store in Aspen,
(07:40):
Colorado small jewelry storecalled Taylor and SCA and told
Adam how we answer our livechats with text messages. And
Adams like, Oh my god, I gottatry that we've tried this live
chat company and that live chatcompany and this live chat
company. And we're never infront of our computer, right?
When the live check comes in, orwe're waiting on a customer. And
(08:03):
I gave it to Adam called me back10 minutes later said he just
closed at $800 jewelry sale, andhow can he invest in my company?
We went I said, Adam, you know,why don't you be our prototype.
And you know, our first betacustomer, we developed it. Over
the next four months, I gave itto another buddy. He closed the
(08:24):
sale immediately called me andsaid he wanted to invest in the
company and text chat was born.
And you know, it's very simple.
It's that immediate humanconnection. When someone is on
your website, either in shoppingmode or buying mode? And you
answer right away, you closethem 50% or more of the time.
Steve Brown (08:45):
So let's some text chat was born. But let's let's
do a little differentiationhere. Because in most people's
mind, text and chat is the samething. But it's not. It's very
different. So what is live chatapp?
Eric Kades (09:01):
Yeah, so that's a great question. And our name
actually is a little bit alittle bit confusing, although
it's a good brand name. LiveChat is that widget in the
bottom corner that you see onwebsites that pops up and says,
hey, how can I help you today?
And then they ask for your nameand email, and then you hope to
get transferred to a liveperson. But in today's world
(09:25):
with chatbots, some of the timeyou're just getting automation,
and then you're thinking you'regoing to speak with a live
person. And then you get thismessage that says great. We got
your information. Someone willget back to you in 24 hours and
often they never get back toyou. That's not what live chat
was designed to do. Live Chatwas designed to foster human
(09:47):
communication. Yeah, because itand I know this, Steve because
we come websites that have livechat and 80% of them. Do not ask
answer with a human being andit's really it's not live at all
it's very much dead chat andfrankly it's if you do it that
way it's very damaging to yourbrand because you're you're
(10:10):
breaking a promise to someoneyou're like duping them into
giving you information and theythink they're gonna get someone
and then they don't you'relosing that customer for life
when you do that to them
Steve Brown (10:24):
the premise these live chat apps were like okay we
are we're gonna use artificialintelligence to sift through
these initial interactions theseinitial interactions are
generally superficial they'rejust starting to search so live
chat could interact with these alittle bit until they hand it
off to a real person but whatmost people are finding is that
(10:49):
the folks that are supposed toset these up they don't know how
to program them properly numberone and then like you said you
they'll ghost you
Unknown (10:59):
yeah you know
Eric Kades (11:00):
to do live chat right this is why we have a
company for huge clients thathave millions of visitors a
month that get 1000s and1000s 10s of 1000s of chats a
month that's a full time teamthat is answering those live
chats well if you're a smallerbusiness like we don't get a
tremendous ton of traffic to ourcall center business but
Unknown (11:23):
i know that
Eric Kades (11:24):
when someone's on our website and it's a
prospective college that's a bigdeal for me i want to answer it
it's really hard to staff and ithink that's the biggest thing
that people run into they'relike i know this seems like a
great solution but i don't haveany extra people to handle this
i can't afford to hire people tosit by the computer for what
(11:45):
might be one or two or threechats a day even though i know
that if we have a human we'regonna close them but i still
don't have the staff to do thatso that's kind of you know what
we're trying to change and whytext chat makes it easy you know
even without extra staff i had achat come through on text chats
website i was on a sales calland a chat came through and it
(12:11):
goes out to our team members buti just want to jump out and
because i know if i get thatperson right away i'm gonna
close them and they're gonna bea new text chat customer i can
answer these when i'm talking onthe phone that's how easy it is
so that's kind of the bigdifferentiator you don't have to
be tied to a computer or hopeyou see one of 75 apps give you
a notification that's already onyour phone
Steve Brown (12:33):
so what is a like text chat
Eric Kades (12:36):
support so it's it's so all of a sudden i've been in
the telecom business for 20 plusyears texting has been around
for 20 years it started in thefinancial industry for security
pass codes all of a sudden it'sthe hot new e commerce thing
something that's been around fora couple of decades and what
(13:00):
text chat is you know in termsof text messaging is when
someone puts text us you knowand you got to give them your
name and your phone number totext but my argument is that's
great but not everyone wants togive you their cell phone number
and has that fear that you mightstart spamming spamming them
(13:23):
right you know just to get aquestion answered that that
might cause them to jump toanother site that they can just
live chat and get a quick answerso really the difference is
texting first of all is notalways automatic you know
someone might take 10 or 15minutes to respond to a text
message till they log into theircomputer or using that new text
(13:47):
company's app to respond to youwhere live chat is supposed to
be live and immediate and thebig difference again is you know
with i agree with all of themfirst of all if i am a big buyer
of ralph lauren for example iwould mind if loud ralph lauren
texted me special sales andthings like that but i also
(14:09):
don't want 10 brands texting mei want them to my go to brands
texting me and that's it maybe ihave room for two or three of
them so texting certainly hasits place in e commerce and any
kind of conversion but live chathas its place as well and i
would argue it's a betterconversion tool than texting
Steve Brown (14:32):
yeah the problem is we're mobile and so oftentimes
i'll decide i will handle i'llcall like energy company or
whatever i need to do this thisannoying thing that i'm going to
have to lose 45 minutes of mylife waiting on hold instead of
(14:53):
sitting somewhere i want to doit while i'm driving or i'm
trying to use my time better Ijust pictured that your tool
would be an awesome intercessorthere where it makes it easy to
get my answer, I can do it onthem move, and it just feels
more friendly, it feels morelike you respect my time in my
(15:18):
way of life. And so I just seethat your tools like what, uh,
how to make sales and techsupport and be so easy with your
tool?
Eric Kades (15:28):
It really is you get someone in that first minute, I
mean, there's a lot of data outthere, you know, I can give you
a couple stats 78% of customersbuy from the first business they
talk to, wow, think about that.
78% the other you know, one thatblows my mind is, you know, 390,
you have a 391% increase inconversion. When you speak to
(15:52):
someone within a minute. It'salmost like, how are businesses
not doing this, you know,customer support I in Forbes
just added a new article,customer sought support is the
new flagship store. So if you'recompeting with a bunch of other
businesses that are sellingsimilar products, if you can add
(16:13):
that layer of instantcommunication, you're gonna win.
Of course, you got to get themto your website, the first
place, but if you got themthere, you're gonna win?
Steve Brown (16:25):
Well, you don't, the default mindset is just send
millions of people to mywebsite, and I'll just get a few
of them. But in reality, most ofthe businesses that listen to
this podcast, they don't havemillions of visits, and they
can't afford to, to have 1000sof people come through and and
leave without any indication ofwhat happened. And their their
(16:49):
solution is to somehow usetechnology, this artificial
intelligence to hopefully meetand greet these people in in,
then raise a flag, we got a liveone here, bring a human. And yet
what you're offering shortcutsthat process. How does how, how
does artificial intelligence anddata add value to businesses?
(17:13):
And yet, yet, we still need thathuman connection?
Eric Kades (17:19):
It's a great question. And, look, we're a
chatbot company. So I believe inAI, conversational AI, which is
really two technologies, naturalnatural language processing and
machine learning, and advancedautomation. And I believe in a
big time, and where I believe init, we do this for some of our
(17:41):
college customers. Now we buildthem chat bots, look, if you're
coming in, and you need to reseta password, or you need to find
out a FASFA ID for your collegebecause you're filling out your
financial aid form. You don'tneed to speak to someone to get
that answer quickly. AI can pickthat up and say, Okay, here's
(18:03):
what that person's looking for,boom, here's your number in a
millisecond, you have youranswer, and you don't need to
talk to a human being. But thereare a lot of questions that you
can automate that and especiallyon a product that is you know,
more than $50, that you havesome anxiety about buying. We
like to use AI and automation toget buyers to humans, because we
(18:29):
know that AI is 1020 maybe nevergoing to be able to sell as well
as a human. So use thetechnology to either answer
someone's question quickly thatcan be automated or using
artificial intelligence toanswer it. But when someone
wants to buy something, and theyhave a question, get them to a
(18:50):
human, you're losing the game ifyou if you think about it any
other way.
Steve Brown (18:54):
That's hard to discern that moment when you
need to hand off to human. Sowhat is it about your technology
that makes it easy?
Eric Kades (19:02):
Well, a couple things, you know, AI and natural
language processing and machinelearning, which is
conversational ai, ai is kind ofthis broad term and no one
really knows what it means andyou know, the AI you're using to
figure out what's a great drugfor certain cancer is very
different than conversational AIand chatbots. And, you know,
(19:24):
converting on your website, andlike I just mentioned, that's
two key technologies, naturallanguage processing, and machine
learning. So on the naturallanguage processing side, you're
the software's trying to figureout what it is that you're
actually answering and areasking as though you can train
(19:48):
AI over time to get better andbetter at figuring out what it
is Steve, the the you're asking.
At the same time. Once itfigures out what you're asking.
It goes and taps the data. basinsays, Okay, here's the right
answer for that question. Butwhat often happens, especially
in a new instance, when you'rejust starting to train, and it
(20:09):
takes a good six months to ayear to continually update that
AI, to train it to what you'retrying to get to? A lot of
times, you'll get stuck in whatI call Wrong answer hell, which
I've experienced myself, I wentto a major automaker one of the
big, you know, four automakersin our country, and I am not
(20:32):
going to tell you the car, youknow, anything personal. I was
excited about a car that I readabout Motor Trend. And I went to
the website, and I firstquestion I asked the AI was, how
much does this cost? And they Icomes back? Sorry, I don't know
what you're asking me like themost obvious question. Right? I
(20:52):
went back and asked how muchdoes it cost three different
ways, and it still couldn'tanswer. And then it left me
hanging. And I was so you know,disenfranchised by the
experience that I didn't evencare about the car so much
anymore, and just forgot aboutthat new, exciting car. So it's
really important that you havethat safety valve, that when you
(21:14):
get in a wrong answer more thanonce or twice, that you're Oh,
you're able to transfer that toa human being, otherwise, you're
gonna lose a customer.
Steve Brown (21:27):
Hey, I wanted to pause right here and tell you
about a book that you need toget today. It's the funniest
book on marketing. It's calledthe Golden toilet, stop flushing
your marketing budget into yourwebsite and build a system that
grows your business. And guesswho wrote it? That's right. I
wrote it. And I wrote it justfor you. Because I want to help
(21:49):
you get past the last hurdles ofsetting up your business and
getting it squared away. I wroteit so that you can avoid time
wasting time wasting money,wasting frustration, get the
book on Audible. You can get iton Kindle, you can get it on
Amazon, but get the book, takeadvantage of the insights in
(22:10):
there. And let me know what youthink. And now back to this
excellent episode. Yeah, youthink about Alexa, you think
about, okay, Google, you thinkabout these great tools that I'm
going to set this little deviceon my desk that's going to to
lurk in monitor everything Isay. But if I happen to ask it a
(22:32):
question, it's supposed to spitout this wonderful answer that I
just needed, right at thatmoment. But I would, I would
argue that most of us havegotten 80%. wrong answers. I
don't understand that. I can'tanswer that these, these really
offensive answers that yourealize, Oh, I didn't ask it in
(22:55):
the right format. Therefore, itthis super smart thing can't
understand me, which is, it'snot a super smart thing. And
that it's so frustrating. And Ithink it's like this. It's it's
a barrier to adoption forbusinesses to put something like
this on their website, when itcould be this great solution.
(23:17):
But more often than not, it's abig frustrating for the people
that are the victims of it.
Eric Kades (23:22):
It really is. It's not fair. I mean, that's the
biggest company in the worlddoesn't have it all figured out
yet. And, you know, often I willsteer our clients away from even
using AI. There's a lot you cando with automation, where in
milliseconds, you could bringsomeone down a funnel with
(23:42):
buttons, as opposed to trying toguess what it is that they're
asking, and get the same resultwithout all that frustration and
confusion. So whenever we haveno matter how big decline is, I
always steer them the startingwith automation. And then let's
figure out what points of thisprocess does it make sense to
(24:03):
have some open endedconversation, but that's not the
way most people attack it.
Steve Brown (24:09):
We're talking with Eric cades. He's the CEO, text
chat calm. It's a greattechnology to help you connect
your clients, your potentialcustomers with humans, Eric. So
what I'm curious about is in theapplication of this for, you
(24:31):
know, the businesses, just drawa picture of an example. Like,
let's say I'm a plumber, and Iwant to, I want to implement
your technology. What does itlook like this solution?
Eric Kades (24:44):
Sure, it really requires no training. The
hardest part of it is you haveto put a line of code that we
give you onto your website. Nowwe're already integrated into
Shopify, we're an app in theShopify app. app stores. So if
you're an e commerce store, youdon't have to integrate any
software, you just go in, youanswer a few questions, click a
(25:07):
button, and this is live on yourwebsite. But if you're a
plumber, and you're not onShopify, you are going to have
to have your web designer, orwhoever's handling your website,
install that line of code foryou, we take it a step further,
where if you don't have thatperson accessible, as long as we
have a team of developers, aslong as we can get access to
(25:29):
your website, we'll install thecode for you. From that point,
you just have to be able toreceive a text message. If you
can receive a text message, youcan then chat with your people
via live chat in real time.
Because, gosh, yeah, that's it.
If you can text with yourfriends, you can do text chat.
(25:49):
And you get a text message whensomeone's live chatting, not
entering their phone number,just live chatting. You click on
a link in that text message. Andyou're in a two way conversation
with the person. Like I said, Ianswer that when I'm talking on
the phone.
Steve Brown (26:06):
So then the person that's on your website and types
in the question they have notgiving you their phone number.
Eric Kades (26:14):
Nope. There live chatting. We're just using the
text message notification as thedifferentiator because you don't
get those
Steve Brown (26:26):
app notifications, and then you you know, lose a
customer because you told themyou were going to speak to them
live and then you gave themnothing. And that text message
notification has really been thegame changer for all of our
businesses that uses so when youtalk about Shopify, the problem
(26:46):
with having a shopping cart, isthat people abandon the shopping
experience at some way inbecause they're something they
they're not clear on and so theygo Forget it. I'm gonna go on
and do something else. And thisis like a beautiful thing to to
reduce. cart abandonment, right.
Eric Kades (27:08):
100% I can't tell you how many stories I get
weekly, of this customer camein. This is someone that sells a
couple $1,000 it's calledairlift. And it's kind of like a
new kind of forklift. Yeah,someone came in from Australia.
(27:30):
And they were thinking aboutbuying it weren't sure if they
were going to buy it becausethey were worried about the
shipping costs. And my customergot the text chat, answered his
questions made them comfortablethat they're not going to get
crushed on shipping. This guythen got his airlift, went on
(27:51):
Instagram, promoted his airlift.
All these other contractors inhis area saw the Instagram, this
company now is opening adivision in Australia. And it
all started with that text chat,because a guy was worried about
shipping.
Steve Brown (28:11):
So why is shopping cart abandonment a problem for
retailers?
Eric Kades (28:16):
Because people have questions right? Before you
know, we talked about thatanxiety of making a purchase,
especially, you know, if it'smore than $20? You know, you
might put it all in there andI'll crap Am I going to be able
to get it by this date? Or, youknow, does this size really
going to fit me? I don't want togo through it. As you know, does
(28:38):
this necklace run big? Or howlong? Is it? Those kinds of
questions? are the ones thatcause people to jump out of the
shopping cart? So if there'ssomeone there to answer that
question and close them, they'renot going to jump.
Steve Brown (28:52):
So you're your data man. What is the cart
abandonment rate?
Eric Kades (28:59):
The cart abandonment rate in general on businesses or
you know, I gotta be honest withyou, I don't have that statistic
off the top of my head. I knowit's in the, you know, high 80%
something like that is crazy.
Steve Brown (29:16):
Yeah.
Eric Kades (29:17):
I mean, it's like, it's a huge problem on Shopify.
And it's, it's interesting. Iknow, it's a huge problem on
Shopify alone. And, look,Amazon's winning, because it's a
one click purchase, they have200 million of our credit cards
in their amazon prime. And soyou go to Amazon, you know,
(29:37):
you're getting you know, andit's gonna get the leverage and
you push a button, and boom, youget it when you're a small
business trying to compete withAmazon. And someone has a lot of
questions and they don't reallyknow you and they're putting in
their personal credit cardinformation and you're a small
business. They're jumpingbecause they're not secure that
(29:59):
this is Is what they reallywant. So, you know, this is a
game changer for cartabandonment, it's a game changer
for really any kind of businessthat you know, is selling
something, in my opinion, ifyou're selling something more
than $20, and it's worth it toyou to talk to that customer to
build a lifelong customer, youknow, you need to talk to them
(30:20):
right away.
Steve Brown (30:22):
So in Shopify, what are like the top three things
that you can do now, to reducecart abandonment rate.
Eric Kades (30:30):
One is certainly, you know, trying to collect a
phone number, so you can followup with the person. So, um, you
know, having that phone numberin your checkout form, and kind
of having that express consentthat you can follow up with the
person. So if you got theirphone number, and then they
(30:51):
jumped, you have a way ofgetting back to them. The other
is making that checkout processas easy as possible. I mean, if
I, as a personal shopper, if Ihave to go through a bunch of
hoops in a shopping cart, and goback to pages and check things,
once it becomes if it's not aseamless experience, once it
(31:11):
comes, becomes annoying to me,I'm gone. And I'm looking at
Amazon to see if they have thesame product, because I know I'm
gonna get it in a couple ofdays.
Steve Brown (31:20):
And then number three,
Eric Kades (31:22):
number three is really I would say, email follow
up is so critical as well. Ithink, you know, if you have
that contact information, youneed to follow up with that
person, maybe offer them adiscount, you know, you're
sorry, they laughed, but youreally want them as a customer
and, you know, come back andwe'll give you a 10% discount.
Steve Brown (31:43):
And then I really see that, that such a trend.
Small businesses are trying toestablish some sort of shopping
cart experience on theirwebsites, and to be able to have
your tool to complement thatprocess or hold their hand or to
check on him during that, thatmoment when they're actually
almost committed. You thinkabout what it takes to get
(32:07):
someone to your website, todecide on a product to start to
go through the identificationprocess, get out my credit card,
and then I'm about to buy andthen I go No, I'm out. Oh, my
gosh, that took a lot of effortto get someone there.
Eric Kades (32:24):
Yeah, you know, I, I've been battling digital
marketers for a decade now.
Because digital marketers, and ecommerce, especially people
think of every way possible toget someone to a website, and
try and convert them throughautomation and technology and
(32:45):
website design, and they'll doanything and everything, to not
have to talk to someone. And theamount of money that gets wasted
in spec is probably trillions ofdollars a year on digital
marketing, where if you justgive that person human
connection, you will close them.
(33:06):
And again, like I literally, Ifight this battle every day, you
know, in our contact centerbusiness. Always the digital
marketing guys, their domain isthe website for the College of
the university. And they don'twant this little thing popping
up. They've spent a year on thisbeautiful design. And bam, when
(33:27):
we do it, the higher upsimmediately like oh my god, this
is something that we need tospend money on. And I'll tell
you a really interesting factabout live chat this, this just
happened to me. So for years,I've been begging to our contact
center managers that we need toget pictures of people in this
(33:48):
little live chat widget. And soI actually fired someone because
he wasn't able to make thatmove. Okay. And I was doing
research have tons of data,millions and millions of live
chats for these colleges anduniversities. And I we would
always be arguing with, youknow, the look and design of
(34:11):
that chat widget that we callit. And we have this one client,
I'm not gonna mention names, whogets more chats, per website
visitors than any of our otherclients. And would you believe
in Steve, they have the ugliestchat widget of all of our
customers. But it's got a bigpicture of someone that says I'm
(34:35):
here to help you. So I know thatlike it's that picture that's
driving the people. So finally,just this month, we got everyone
converted over to havingpictures of people on their live
chat widget. Our revenue is up20% this month, and that's a
giant number in our contactcenter business when I made this
(34:57):
switch because I wanted to testit on our own text chat comm web
We started getting 800% morechats, because we put pictures
of ourselves there, as opposedto just some, you know, digital
cool looking thing. It didn'tmatter, put a picture of a
person, people click onpictures, and you probably have
(35:18):
you know that experience in yourdigital marketing. We want a
human connection, we crave it.
And everyone in the digitalworld is fighting against it.
Steve Brown (35:28):
I know that's and it's like, I've even gone to a
chat. And the first question Iasked, Are you a robot? Or are
you a human?
Eric Kades (35:37):
Yeah, you don't want to waste your time with a robot
right now you want a realanswer?
Steve Brown (35:41):
Yeah. So I've envisioned that the future of
websites would be that they'renot really websites. They're
just a big interactive, humanchatbot.
Eric Kades (35:52):
Absolutely. We have, you know, we're adding Facebook
Messenger and all these otherchannels. So even we come in the
other channels. But the nextthing we're going to add is
video. I've sold someone throughtext chat, Comm. We don't have
video yet, right. But guy comeson I see is in Westlake
California. He's an insurancebroker. He's looking for live
(36:13):
chat, he didn't understandsomething. He says to me, you
know, can we get on a zoom rightnow. And you can explain this to
me, I have the zoom app on myphone, I click a link, I send it
to them through the text chat.
Here's a total stranger, whowasn't going to give me any
information. And I'm having azoom conversation with the
(36:34):
person in three minutes. And ofcourse, he bought it.
Steve Brown (36:39):
You know, I've, I've coached like garage repair
folks and stuff. You know,here's, here's how the
conversation go, they go on thewebsite. Alright, my garage is
broke. So I go look for garagerepair, I get on a website, I
either call them or I fill out aform? And how nice would it be
to just do a text and then thatperson go, we'll walk out in the
(37:02):
garage? And let's turn FaceTimeon and turn your camera around
and show me what's broken. Canyou imagine how
Eric Kades (37:11):
in the future, it's starting to happen slowly, just
like I said, text messaging hasbeen around for 20 years. All of
a sudden, it's the new Oh myGod, I gotta have this for my e
commerce site, which it reallyisn't, you know, it's a great
tool. But it's not everyonewants to give their phone
number. So yes, it's going to belive human interaction. I mean,
(37:35):
like that Forbes articlecustomer support is the new
flagship store. So yeah, it'sgoing to be chat with us go to
Video. Let me show you exactlyhow that looks. I can walk
around the car showroom, I canwalk around the store and pick
up, you know, a blouse and say,here's how it looks. That's the
(37:55):
future. And frankly, during whenCoronavirus, first hit, we saved
a lot of straight retailbusinesses business. And you
know, they call me in tearssaying you're saving our
business. They didn't even havee commerce stores. But when
people went to their website,they could start a chat via text
(38:17):
chat, and still have aconversation and go to the
FaceTime and still sell themlike literally, they weren't
even ecommerce enabled, and theywere still making sales from
their website.
Steve Brown (38:29):
I mean, listening or you're watching the ROI
online podcast, our guest isEric cades. His company is text
chat calm. And his mission is tohelp humans Connect remotely to
humans to improve business. Andso our exclusive question that
on our YouTube channel is how tomake sales and tech support, you
(38:51):
can go there and listen to howhe coaches you on how you can
make sales right there via techsupport online. And Eric. So I
always like to ask, what's onequestion that we didn't talk
about that you would love?
What's one question I didn't askthat you'd love to answer?
Eric Kades (39:10):
Um, I think the answer is, uh, you know, again,
back to this AI and explaining alittle bit more about this
natural language processing andmachine learning. When people
talk about AI on your website,you know, I talking about AI,
to, you know, solve a cancerproblem. They're talking about
(39:35):
natural language processing andmachine learning. So if there's
anything that any of theWesterners take away from today,
those are the two technologiesthat you need to educate
yourself on, if you want to haveAI on your website.
Steve Brown (39:50):
So natural language processing is we ask the same
questions in all sorts ofdifferent ways humans and
they'll use different words fordifferent terms but they're
asking the same thematic requestor they're searching for
thematic a theme version of aquestion looking for solution in
(40:10):
natural language processingtakes all of our accents all of
our our ways that we ask andstarts to discern and overtime
gets better at going out whateric's asking is this and then
machine learning is like havinga whole category or curated
library of content that canquickly connect you with exactly
(40:34):
the information that you need toresearch for that solution right
Eric Kades (40:40):
that's exactly right and another good takeaway is if
you're going to go down thatpath you need someone to be
there still human involvementyeah need someone to be
monitoring the failures everyday so you're constantly tuning
it it's it's a never endingprocess just like building your
website and getting it toconvert better you have to be
(41:03):
constantly checking where itfails and if you're really not
gonna either have an outsourcecompany or someone that's
focusing on that on a dailybasis you're gonna fail at it
Steve Brown (41:13):
yeah it requires billions of interactions for
this super intelligenttechnology to actually get a
clue and that's the dilemma isthat small businesses don't have
billions of opportunities tocollect data and process it
Eric Kades (41:29):
it is and human i mean small businesses can win by
having a human yeah
Steve Brown (41:37):
that's perfect perfect both to put on this
conversation eric you've been agreat guest how can folks
connect with you to learn moreor maybe see about getting this
solution on their platform
Eric Kades (41:51):
just go to text chat comm you can sign up for a free
trial for 14 days and literallyright there you get your line of
code you put in your name andemail and phone number and
you're ready to go it's thateasy
Steve Brown (42:05):
alright excellent eric thanks for being on the roi
online podcast
Eric Kades (42:10):
thanks for having me steve it was a lot of fun
Steve Brown (42:12):
that's a wrap anyone that fun thank you so
much for joining us on thisshort version of a great
conversation with another greatguest on the roi online podcast
i'm your host Steve Brownreminding you that the full
version of this conversationexists everywhere that podcasts
live and also to remind you thatif you need help to grow your
(42:36):
business better then visit roionline calm and be sure to stay
tuned for another great episodeon the roi online podcast
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