CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT: Consumer Disconnect

Study reveals VoIP’s failings as a CRM tool

Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP), widely touted a year ago as the next great leap forward in customer relationship management, has run into a kink in the virtual telephone cord: Consumers aren’t embracing it as a communications channel.

Its creators envisioned that customers using VoIP could communicate with service representatives, substituting speakers and microphones in their computers for transmitters and receivers in their telephones.

But a survey of 803 online consumers revealed that while 53% have the necessary computer equipment to take advantage of VoIP, only 18% of them have done so, according to a concept report from Jupiter Research. The firm, which conducts e-commerce studies, found that, of this percentage, more than seven out of 10 were not satisfied with the quality of the interaction.

Consumers indicated that they prefer e-mail and real-time online text-based chat to VoIP. If those methods didn’t produce satisfactory results, most indicated they would then make a phone call to the service center.

Only 1% said they would make a VoIP call if the company they were dealing with offered it as an option. Most consumers need a separate phone line to make customer service calls while online, or have to disconnect from the Web before making a call.

There are other technological barriers that can thwart consumers from using this channel. Firewalls and proxy servers may make it difficult to use. America Online, the dominant Internet service provider, does not allow unfettered access to VoIP-enabled call centers, effectively blocking a substantial portion of the online consumer community from using it.

Furthermore, despite the presence of high-speed, high-capacity connections, the inability to circumvent firewalls is the main reason the business-to-business market can’t take full advantage of VoIP-enabled customer service.

As broadband connections – which allow more data to be transmitted over telephone lines – become a standard access option, consumers will have fewer impediments to using this channel. Jupiter Research estimates that by 2004, 23 million U.S. households will adopt it.

However, by then the increased number of broadband hookups will allow consumers to use their telephones and dial-up Internet connections simultaneously. So customers won’t have a compelling reason to use an experimental technology when phone lines aren’t tied up accessing the Internet.