Webinars. Everyone is doing them these days. But they’re not easy. How do you manage them so that the company and the customer get maximum value out of the experience?
Ask Wachovia Corp. The financial services firm began hosting online events in 2003, and now conducts up to 600 a year for both customers and staff. But enrolling and gathering information on participants was a time-consuming, labor-intensive process. Moreover, there was no system in place to capture profile information on registrants, event communications were not automated, registration and attendance data were not recorded and there was no way to limit registration, according to Glenn DeGeorge, E-commerce product management and developer for the company.
But Wachovia found a way to do all this while saving roughly $1,200 per Web conference: It turned to ViewCentral, a conferencing and event-management tool.
Now, when a Wachovia unit requests a Webinar or Web conference, DeGeorge chooses from a set of customizable templates to capture information and send reminder and follow-up emails. The tool also enables him to field pre- and post-event questionnaires. “Automated post-event evaluations enable the sales force to gear future conferences and seminars more toward what the customers want to see and hear,” DeGeorge says.
An additional benefit is that information gleaned from registrants helps the firm develop a presentation that is geared to the interests of the audience. Several business units at Wachovia use the ViewCentral tool for their online events.
Treasury Services uses it to train end customers, small-business people, on the use of the Wachovia Connection online banking service and products. Wholesale Marketing is taking advantage of it to introduce new Wachovia products and services. And internally, the human resources department uses it for internal training.
Pages from Wachovia’s Web site (www.Wachovia.com) are served up by ViewCentral. Event listings are posted to help registrants search and register for one or more of Wachovia’s seminars, product training sessions or Webinars.
The programs run from educating first time users how to changing their password and learn the basic navigation of Wachovia’s site to programs for system administrators to help set up and manage their company’s users. Recorded sessions can be requested if the Web conference is full.
“There’s a whole communication plan attached to the registration site,” says DeGeorge. “In addition to pre-event communications there are post-event evaluations and follow-ups to find out how interesting attendees thought the event was and if they thought the medium was appropriate. It’s a great resource, not only for people developing advertising and promotions, but also for the presenter who receives feedback.”
But it’s also a great resource for the company. For one thing, the firm saves money on travel and costs associated with offsite live meetings. Another benefit is time to market. Planning for an event from soup to nuts could take four to six weeks but with the automation it can be up and promoted in five to ten minutes.
DeGeorge admits that it’s hard to tie back revenue to a conference that was delivered. But he knows it’s meeting customer needs.
“When we get repeat attendance it’s clear that the customer has determined that it was important for them,” he says.
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