Ecommerce may be hailed as the future of shopping, but many customers still prefer to shop online and then place their order by telephone. This could be due to fears about credit card security, an unfriendly checkout process or just because they crave the reassurance of a human voice confirming that the order is in the system.

Maybe people just have a query that they can’t easily find an answer to on your website. They could send you an email, but in the real world, a customer who wants to buy from you generally wants to buy immediately, and won’t patiently wait for a reply to an email that may take a day or so to arrive. They’ll simply go elsewhere. But if that customer can make a phone call and speak to a real person (and not an answering machine), the deal will be done. Continued reading >