Insights Success is “The Best Business Magazine” in the world for enterprises. Being a platform, it focuses distinctively on emerging as well as leading fastest growing companies, their confrontational style of doing businesses and the way of delivering effective and collaborative solutions to strengthen market share.
Zingtree was recently featured in the Insights Success roundup of the most innovative contact center solution providers of 2018, where our co-founder and CEO, Bill Dettering, was able to share some of the ideas and momentum behind Zingtree, as well as what makes it such a powerful tool. Here’s just a portion of the article below:
The Incredible change that led to the Birth of their Flagship Online Toolkit
Zingtree was initially borne by an existing consumer software company that Bill had founded in the early 2000’s. While looking at ways to address the rising cost of customer support and repetitive tickets that were delivered on a daily basis, the company decided to hard code decision tree troubleshooters as part of its online support process.
What happened next was an incredible change and improvement in the support efforts; immediately, they saw a 25–30% reduction in the number of tickets received. This drastic reduction led them to the conclusion that many customers preferred to self-solve their inquiries and issues at any time, provided a guided online solution. This “Aha” moment initiated the development process of a simple-touse toolkit that allowed anyone to build their customized decision trees.
Easy-to-Use Characteristic to soar its Popularity
Coming from a consumer background, Zingtree focused on developing a platform that does not require IT involvement. With its online-toolkit, content, and support, managers can easily build and manage their decision trees and agent scripts without the need of back-end developers and technical knowledge. Zingtree has received numerous comments from customers as to how fun and easy Zingtree’s solution is for creating, customizing, publishing, and managing decision trees online. From the initial launch of Zingtree, they discovered very quickly that customers had many and varied customer support needs that could ultimately be streamlined, simplified, and improved.
The idea of interactive troubleshooter-style trees for selfhelp technical support quickly expanded into other exciting areas. Call center companies started engaging with Zingtree for building, and testing guided agent scripts for their teams. Currently, 50% of the Zingtree customers are either call center companies or businesses that have employees who specifically use Zingtree for agent scripting purposes. As businesses see the benefits of a script as a guide for their agents, as well as an excellent tool for training and onboarding, they delve a little deeper into the use of customer-facing decision trees. This theme has become more common as companies are looking to streamline all organizational processes including the ability to provide immediate and unattended answers for self-solving.
Customer support has changed exponentially in the last few years. Better technology, more informed consumers, and higher expectations for fast access have all shaped how support is handled in businesses today. In the last year alone, the relationship between customer support and customer experience have become much closer, and have made a much larger impact.
According to a Walker study, by the year 2020 customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. Companies and organizations will need to continue to adapt their support and experience strategies to keep customers engaged, informed, purchasing, and happy with the brand. Those who fail to do so will face more difficult competition in the market, as other brands are paving the way to success through positive customer experience. In fact, next year alone, it’s projected that 89% of businesses are soon expected to compete mainly on customer experience.
What’s to come is a direct reflection of what’s already been learned, and customer support is no different. Here are some of the most influential customer support stats of 2017 that will have an impact on what’s to come in 2018 and beyond.
62% of companies view customer experience delivered by the contact centers as a competitive differentiator.
Gartner has stated that “companies that implement customer experience projects begin by focusing on ways they collect and analyze customer feedback. This is a great starting point for meeting your customers’ expectations.” They’ve reported that:
In 2018 more than 50% of organizations will redirect their investments to customer experience innovations.
By 2020 a customer will manage 85% of the relationship with an enterprise without interacting with a human, so make sure to give your customers the direction and tools they need to accomplish tasks themselves.
Companies with the strongest omnichannel customer engagement strategies retain an average of 89% of their customers, as compared to 33% for companies with weak omnichannel strategies.
50% of customers think it’s important to solve product or service issues themselves.
In 2018, companies should make it a top priority that their customers can easily find answers to their questions, and solve their issues through personalized, self-service support options. Organizations that take customer support and customer experience to heart and make a real effort will have more effective strategies in the marketplace and will stand out to consumers.
In short, businesses in 2018 need to:
Get set up with personalization
Offer self-service, multi-channel support
Use smooth UX and UI to provide a pleasant experience
Know and understand your customers
Zingtree decision trees help organizations of all shapes, sizes, and industries to improve their customer experience and support channels. Build online, interactive trees that allow customers to self-solve, are easy to customize and personalize, and offer businesses the ability to collect valuable information to better understand their customers.
As end-users are using your Zingtree decision trees, you can add any information collected during the session into a MailChimp mailing list. Zingtree has a handy MailChimp App for just this purpose.
Here’s how to add data from Zingtree to a MailChimp list.
In Zingtree, go to Account, My Apps, and click add Add MailChimp. The MailChimp configuration screen appears:
Enter a name for this App. For example: “Add to Mailing List”.
Enter the MailChimp API Key. To find your API Key, log into MailChimp, and select Account, Extra, API Keys. Generate an API key if you haven’t done so already.
Enter your MailChimp List ID into the configuration. In MailChimp, click Lists, then select Settings from the drop-down next to your list. The List ID will be at the bottom of the page.
Click Add MailChimp App when finished.
Edit the node where you want to add to a MailChimp list. Look under Show Advanced Options, Send Message To App. Pick the name of the app you just created: “MailChimp: Add to Mailing List”.
Important: The field names you are using in Zingtree must match the merge tag names in MailChimp. So if you have merge tags NAME and ADDRESS in MailChimp, you would use variables named NAME and ADDRESS in Zingtree. You can find the merge tags for each field in MailChimp from List, Settings under List fields and *|MERGE|* tags. They will appear like this:
In Zingtree, the email address of the end user should be a variable named either EMAIL or email.
Once the end-user reaches the node you built in step 6, MailChimp will receive the information collected by Zingtree and add all matching fields to the list for email.
Do you have a cool application for this feature? Let us know on our Feedback page.
Whether you’re an online retailer or consumer, Black Friday is a crazy time of the year. For customer support teams, in particular, the stress and demand can seem neverending – it’s not a question of if a customer will have an issue or question, but when. Adding extra layers of employees needing (and deserving) time off of work around these times and generally higher stress levels, startups and small businesses especially can feel the tension around customer support.
Black Friday On-Demand: Salesforce Industry Report
To be frank, mobile and on-demand options truly reign supreme. Customers today expect a smooth purchasing experience, fast shipping, and even faster customer support.
Salesforce combined the insights on the activity of over 500 million global shoppers and billions of transactions, millions of public social media conversations, and data from Salesforce’s annual Connected Shoppers Report to give retailers and online businesses the intelligence they need keep moving forward this holiday season.
Here’s what VP of Industry Insights, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Rob Garf, had to say:
“Just like watching television, holiday shopping has moved from an appointment based activity to an on-demand activity. Salesforce expects to see continued growth not only in mobile orders and website visits, but also in newer technologies such as mobile payments and artificial intelligence. It’s not too late for retailers to make adjustments today in order to meet consumer expectations and better compete this holiday season.”
A Better System of Customer Support for the Holidays
So, how does an online business truly prepare for holiday shopping? A new trend in customer support: self-service.
Interactive decision trees allow customers to quickly and easily navigate through processes, products, troubleshooting, and more. Setting up a completely automated, information-filled FAQ or knowledge base, simple-to-use product finder, or digestible problem-solving can solve a myriad of internal issues (and your customer’s, too!).
Our retail customers are able to solve problems and answer questions outside of regular and holiday office hours, as well as encourage more sales and truly streamline the customer support process. Take a look at some of our own resources for improving customer support here, and stop by our own decision tree-built knowledge base here.
Ready to start streamlining retail customer support for your eCommerce business? Get in touch with us, or sign up for an account.
Interactive troubleshooters are becoming a more frequent way to solve problems involving complex, technical products. Since most complex equipment for industries like manufacturing, videography, and hardware/software have fewer “expert technicians,” the need for more intelligent support systems has risen. Where issues and complicated instructions run rampant, the fastest way to find the solution to a problem is with interactive troubleshooters.
Caterpillar, the US manufacturer of construction and farm equipment, is using Zingtree troubleshooters in their manufacturing plant. Likewise, IT Works, the most relied-on resource for collecting information on living environments. We even got our own start by building troubleshooters for another software company, Applian Technologies.
Self-Solving with Troubleshooters
With complicated products and tools, troubleshooters aim to help find the area of the problem by narrowing down other contextual factors. By offering an interactive format to simplify the issue, you have solved part of the problem already.
For highly-specialized or complex products, it can take a while to get fixed or for the right person in the right location to come and fix it, in many cases. Troubleshooting solutions make it easier for expert technicians to judge the issue and solve accordingly, and for less-than-expert level folks to figure things out.
Success Stories: Troubleshooters in Practice
For the U.S.-based manufacturing company, Caterpillar, this rings especially true. With an array of complex (and often large) manufacturing tools in use, equipment operators across the country needed an easier way to help work through issues and find answers anywhere. When an error code comes up, operators and technicians are able to assess the problem and find a way to fix it.
The decisions behind Applian’s customer support are also powered by our troubleshooters. The results? The company saved over $30,000 on resources per year and 15 hours of support time per week.
Here’s one of the Applian troubleshooters you can take a look at:
Building an Interactive Experience
Instructions are easier to follow from an interactive decision tree if the user is being guided by easy-to-follow, bite-sized directions. With complex products and tools, there is generally a lot of important information to cover – with no real understanding of your user’s experience level, it’s better to be as user-friendly as you can. You can even include videos, images and other types of media within your troubleshooter to make things even more easy to digest.
We have heaps of information on how to get started building troubleshooters right away – there’s a method that fits just about everyone! For more ideas, tips, and inspiration, we recommend having a look at our troubleshooters on display in the Gallery, as well as checking the blog for a catalog of best tips for building. There’s something in there for every industry!
After creating your in-depth, intuitive decision tree, end users will be delighted with the ease of providing a faster solution. Ready to start your revolutionary, problem-solving troubleshooter? Take a shot, or reach out to us if you need some expert advice.
There’s one aspect of insurance that everyone can come to the same conclusion about: it’s complicated. Whether you’re talking about home insurance, life insurance, travel insurance, property insurance, or any other type you can name, the same issues around complexity arise. In an industry so deeply-rooted in lots of paperwork, fact-checking, and claims processing, important and confusing details of all sizes are plentiful.
Agent scripts are one solution that has really helped to simplify these types of everyday insurance processes. In today’s digital world, however, the traditional call script is being replaced with something even more effective and easy-to-use. Interactive decision trees and agent scripts for insurance make it easy to pick products, follow processes, and collect important data.
Leading companies and independent insurance agents worldwide use interactive decision trees for insurance to streamline and simplify every detail – meaning more people helped, more money saved, and more consistently-positive interactions reported. Here’s how some of our insurance-based customers are taking advantage of interactive decision trees:
Case 1: AFLAC
AFLAC, a leading insurance provider in the US, is using interactive decision trees for insurance to guide their insurance sales agents in order to locate and offer the best possible policies for prospective customers.
Case 2: Zudy
Zudy, a no-code enterprise platform, works with insurance companies to provide interactive insurance scripts around their most important and complicated topics, including claims processing.
Case 3: Easy Insurance Scripts
Easy Insurance Scripts partners with Zingtree to deliver powerful agent scripts to insurance agents, along with its roster of equally helpful tools and resources for agents.
While the use cases and exact results may vary from agent to agent, organization to organization, the benefits really boil down to 3 main things:
Consistency
Guidance
Simplification
Let’s take a closer look…
Consistency
Details in the insurance industry are more than important – they are absolutely vital to the integrity of the practice itself. With so many critical details and rules within every claims process, consistency in the information and experience provided cannot be overlooked.
To ensure consistency, interactive decision trees and agent scripts are completely standardized across the board. For real-time conversations, training scenarios, and processing situations, having a consistent and reliable script can help to achieve the intended goals.
Guidance
In many insurance interactions – training or otherwise – interactive, step-by-step guidance can be incredibly useful. Insurance agents and organizations are using interactive decision trees to guide customers to the best products for their needs, as well as guide agents in exactly to say next.
Ted Baker, Founder of Easy Insurance Scripts finds that “with scripts for guiding conversations, interactive trees to train new agents, and the reporting that comes along with it, agents are able to provide a better customer experience that’s consistent and informative.“
Simplification
Making things more simple is usually the best route to go. When you’re talking about insurance, however, the details that are being simplified still need to maintain their integrity. Interactive decision trees for insurance allow agents to ask a few pointed questions, collect the necessary information, and file what needs to be completed all in one streamlined format.
By asking a few questions and simplifying each task through a series of easy-to-follow, guided steps, decision trees and agent scripts for insurance ensure the correct process is followed for recommending policies and processing claims every time.
These 3 digestible, yet extremely powerful benefits of interactive decision trees are enough to make every customer interaction more positive and productive. Have any questions? You can see live examples and learn more about our solutions for insurance agents and organizations on our site, or feel free to reach out directly.
If you’re a Zendesk user in a Contact Center environment, you’ll want to be using our Zendesk Agent Scripting app. This makes it easy to guide, train and onboard agents and is a huge productivity booster for everyone.
The Agent Scripting app appears as a button in the right-hand panel:
Click Open Script, and you’ll see your decision tree in a pop-over like this:
If another agent picks up the ticket, they return to the last viewed node, and can see each step taken previously by opening the History:
Benefits of the Zendesk Agent Scripting App
Standardization: Show a guided path for each ticket, so that Agents follow the proper operating policies or troubleshooting procedures.
Pause and Resume: If a ticket is transferred, the supervisor or new agent is taken to the last place in the script, and can see the history of the previous steps taken.
Automatic Script Selection: The Agent Scripting App can choose a script based on the Zendesk brand, Zendesk ticket tags, or the value of a custom field.
Agent Feedback: Agents can send feedback directly to the authors of the decision trees with a single button click. Feedback is delivered to each author’s email, and includes the tree ID and node number where the feedback was sent from.
Zendesk Ticket Data in your Scripts: Values in any custom field, as well as Zendesk ticket tags and user tags, are transferred into your script so you can echo them, or use these variables to branch via Logic Nodes.
Automatic Ticket Updating: Tags and custom fields in the ticket can be updated from actions in the script – either via buttons clicked in the script, or from data entry collected.
New Features in Version 10
If you’re using a previous version of the Zendesk Agent Scripting app, you may want to upgrade to take advantages of these new benefits:
Pop-overs: Scripts now appear as pop-overs, rather than being constrained to the right-hand panel.
Ticket Updating: Your tickets can automatically update by navigating the script, or by entering data into Zingtree Data Entry Fields. For example, the start of your script could offer the agent a choice of a product, and the “product” field in your ticket will be automatically selected when the agent makes a choice.
Note: Don’t remove the current version of Agent Scripting until you are ready to make the switch. Versions 9 and earlier may not be updated going forward.
Demo Video
This two minute video shows you how Agents interact with the Agent Scripting App:
Getting Started
Here are the basic steps to get up and running:
Build an interactive decision tree script with Zingtree (or use one of our demos to start).
Install the Agent Scripting App (version 10) into Zendesk.
Configure the Agent Scripting app within Zendesk.
If you want to have your decision tree scripts update your Zendesk tickets, you’ll need to add variables and/or tags to your Zingtree tree to match your Zendesk setup.
If you want to enable automatic script selection, you’ll need to add tags to your trees in Zingtree and configure the Zendesk Agent Scripting app properly.
Installing the Agent Scripting App into Zendesk
Download and configure the Zendesk Agent Scripting App version 10 like so:
In Zendesk, click the Admin icon and go to Apps > Manage.
Click Upload Private App.
The Upload App page appears.
Enter “Zingtree Agent Scripting” for the App Name.
For App File, locate the filezingtree-agent-scripting-v10.zip you downloaded in step 1.
Click Upload, then confirm if necessary.
Configuring the App
Once you’ve uploaded the app, click App Configuration to see the configuration screen:
Here’s what each item does:
Tree ID: This is the default tree that appears when agents click “Open Script”. (You should always have a default tree.)
Hide Integration Setup Info: When you are setting up Agent Scripting for the first time, you may need some information about your Zendesk setup to take advantage of automatically updating ticket fields. An “Integration Setup Info” link appears by default when you first install the app, and ticking this option hides it.
Match Tree Tags to Zendesk Brand: If this option is checked, the subdomain of the selected brand will be matched to a Zingtree tree tag. Any matching tree or trees will appear. For example, if the brand subdomain is xyz.zendesk.com, any trees tagged as xyz (using the Zingtree Settings tool) will appear.
Match Tree Tags to Zendesk Ticket Tags: If checked, the values in the Zendesk ticket tags will be matched with your Zingtree tree tags (set via the Zingtree Settings tool) to show one or more matching scripts.
Match Tree Tags to values in a Custom field: If you want to use a custom field value to show matching scripts, enter the Zendesk custom field identifier here. The field name can be found using the Integration Setup Info link that first appears in the sidebar when you install the app.
Zingtree API key: Each organization in Zingtree has an API key, which is used to match scripts. If you’re using one of the tag matching options, this is required. Your API key can be found at zingtree.com under Help, API.
Enabling Automatic Script Selection
Automatic Script Selection works by matching tree tags you set in Zingtree to values in the Brand, Tags, or a custom field in a Zendesk ticket. For example, if a tree is tagged with “astrology”, and the ticket tags include “astrology”, then that tree appears. If several trees match, then they will all appear, and the agent can choose one.
To open a script based upon Brand:
Add tags to your trees for each brand you want to match. So if one of your brands is xyz.zendesk.com, use xyz as a tree tag in Zingtree for all the trees you want to show.
Make sure Match Tree Tags to Zendesk Brand is checked in the App Configuration.
To open a script based upon Zendesk ticket tags:
Add tags to your trees for each tag you want to match. So if one of your ticket tag possibilities is “billing”, use billing as a tree tag in Zingtree for all the trees you want to show.
Make sure Match Tree Tags to Zendesk Ticket Tags is checked in the App Configuration.
To open a script based upon a custom field:
Add tags to your trees for each possible custom field value you want to match. So if one of your custom field values is “billing”, use billing as a tree tag in Zingtree for all the trees you want to show.
Make sure the proper Zendesk field variable name is entered for Match Tree Tags to values in a Custom Field is checked in the App Configuration.
Adding tags to a tree in Zingtree is done like this:
Select a tree from My Trees.
Go to the Settings tool.
Click the Organize tab.
Enter or select a tag from the Tree Tags field.
Click Update Settings.
How to Configure to Update Ticket Fields
As agents navigate through your trees, their use of the decision tree scripts you create can automatically update any custom fields in that ticket. This can be done in two ways:
By clicking a button in a script
By entering data into Zingtree data entry fields.
The key is to use variable names in your Zingtree that match the ones used in Zendesk.
First of all, determine the names of the variables in Zendesk by clicking the Integration Setup Info link in the Agent Scripting app. You’ll see something like this:
You’ll see the label for the field as it appears in Zendesk’s ticket form, and the Zendesk variable next to it. In the above example, the Product custom field variable is custom_field_22899289. This is a drop-down selector, and the Zendesk values for the field options are astrology and insurance.
For the rest of this example, we’ll use custom_field_22899289as the custom field variable.
To make a button selection update a custom field, you’ll set it up in your Zingtree as follows:
Go to the Overview tool, and edit the node whose button selections will update the ticket.
Click Edit Buttons (or Add Buttons if you don’t have any buttons defined). The button editor appears:
Make sure Assign Button Click Variable is checked. This makes the other options appear.
For the Button Click Variable, enter your custom field variable from Zendesk (custom_field_22899289 in the example).
For each button option, enter the value of the variable under Score/Value. If this is a drop-down list in your Zendesk ticket, you’ll need to make sure the Score/Value entered matches one of the drop-down option values as shown in the Integration Setup Info.
Click Save Changes when you’re done configuring buttons.
Bonus: Adding Tags via button clicks:
Button clicks can also add tags to a ticket. In the above example, clicking Something Else adds the tag other_tag to the ticket. Just include the tag name with two colons after the button text. So entering a button like Something Else::other_tag will add the tag other_tag to the ticket if this is clicked, but agents will only see Something Else as an option.
Using Zingtree Data Entry Fields to Update Tickets
Just like the above example, you can also use Zingtree for data entry, and have that data automatically transferred to your ticket. The key is to use the same variable name in Zingtree as you used in Zendesk. The Integration Setup Info link in the sidebar will give you those Zendesk variable names.
Example: If you have a text entry field in Zingtree you want to update into the Zendesk field custom_field_1234, you would set up the variable name as follows:
Try It with Example Data
You can use trees from the Zingtree Gallery to see how the Agent Scripting app works.
For a single tree, enter ’14’ as the Tree ID. This will show an Astrology website troubleshooter example.
For multiple trees, see how a tree can be selected by tag by doing the following:
Enter 6a103737e44e4aa6e1e4b6b0bcb46f83 as the API key.
Make sure Match Tree Tags to Zendesk Ticket Tagsis checked.
Try entering one or more of these tags into a ticket: “zingtree”, “astrology”, “pet_rock”.
Having exceptional customer service isn’t reserved for typical B2C companies. In such a tumultuous and often scary industry (for consumers, at least), insurance companies and agents must also take a close look at how their customers are perceiving the assistance they are getting. Understanding is also a huge part of this customer experience. Why? Because insurance is complicated.
Improving Insurance Call with Decision Tree Scripts
For many insurance companies, automation is an angle that’s gaining traction for providing more streamlined and consistent customer service. Our partnership with EasyInsuranceScripts.com is a great example of how decision trees are being used to simplify.
Simply put, Ted Baker, the Founder of EasyInsuranceScripts.com, envisioned a more streamlined way to improve how independent insurance agents were being trained, guided through complicated conversations and policy selections, and processing claims. In an industry with so many small, yet important, details to be understood, these conversations and processes can become intimidating very quickly.
With our own knowledge and experience in simplifying the complex, we knew decision trees would be an ideal fit. Joining forces between Zingtree and EasyInsuranceScripts.com has allowed Ted’s services to offer the most comprehensive set of resources for independent insurance agents as a result.
“It’s amazing that I’m able to automate all of this for independent insurers,” says Ted. “For me, the ROI of decision trees is immediate. Introducing standardized decision tree scripts for insurance has allowed the insurers in my network to really thrive. With scripts for guiding conversations, interactive trees to train new agents, and the reporting that comes along with it, agents are able to provide a better customer experience that’s consistent and informative.“
Hard Numbers: Where the Data Fits In
While each insurance agent or organization may have varying experiences, industry knowledge is key in understanding how much this kind of customer service and care matters for insurance. McKinsey recently published an article on how focusing on improving customer experience has a direct effect on growth and profit in the insurance industry:
McKinsey’s global research across industries shows that improving the customer experience can do far more to drive profitable growth than raising advertising spending or lowering prices. Some executives may still see insurance as a low-engagement, disintermediated category, but analytics prove that in an industry where profits are highly concentrated, leading carriers are delivering customer experiences that inspire loyalty and attract new customers frustrated by their experiences with their current carriers.
Here’s a handy chart that helps to summarize how insurers must improve the customer journey:
A typical insurance carrier today delivers customer experiences via separate functions (marketing, distribution, underwriting, claims), using a website, sales call center, service department, and so on, most managed by different executives with different goals and metrics. This structure may have its purposes, but it overlooks the fact that from the customer perspective, the experience is often a single journey.
Real-World Example: Decision Tree for Insurance
Here’s a sample tree, derived from one of the Easy Insurance Scripts trees:
We really can’t emphasize enough how important customer data is — for any company in any industry. Gathering data from customers should be easy for them, and it should lead to accurate information for you. Without collecting key information, you can never truly understand your current and potential customers and their desires. How long do you think your company could survive without good data?
Frictionless Data Gathering
Interactive decision trees simplify the process of collecting information on any web page that customers land on first. Just by prompting customers to click a button in a decision tree, you’re collecting data!
Once you get customers engaged with a decision tree, they’ll be hooked. You can then ask for name and contact information using data entry fields. This data is easily sent to you via email, viewed with Zingtree’s reports, or exported into any database or CRM system. Zingtree can validate this data as well.
Case Study: Zingtree
We use this technique ourselves – the Zingtree “Request a Demo” button on our Contact Us page is an example that asks some questions, and then leads to this form:
Before our potential customers see this form, they have clicked some buttons to answer a few basic questions. And at the end of the process, we get an email with all of their information and can schedule a demo with the right expert. It’s an awesome source of leads for us.
The emails we receive at the end of the process look like this:
XYZ Corp requested a demo
Zingtree session data:
Q: I would like to:
A: Request a Demo
Q: Next:
A: Continue
Q: How will you be using the Zingtree decisions trees you build?
A: External Use
Q: Are you looking to integrate Zingtree with other applications?
A: Yes
Q: Next:
A: Continue
Q: Are you interested in self-hosting Zingtree?
A: No
Q: Next
A: Continue
Q: Finish:
A: Send Demo Request
score: 0
zt_browser_language: en
zt_browser: IE
zt_country: United States
zt_regionName: California
zt_city: San Diego
zt_zip: 92121
zt_ip: 208.87.212.000
zt_isp: Surfer
zt_org: surfer.com
name: Jane
company: Customer
email: jane@xyzcorp.com
contact_number: 8882121000
integrations: Looking to retrieve all data points and button elections in a spreadsheet
send_out: 1
Step 1: Build a Tree, and add a Data Collection Form
Ready to put this technique to use?
First, engage your customers with some questions answered as button clicks in an interactive decision tree, and at the end of the process ask for more info via a form. It’s easy for customers, and they are providing you fantastically helpful data.
What needs are you filling? Depending on the goal, you’ll want to be collecting different customer information. You can even automatically gather customer location, language, region, browser and more.
Step 2: Refine and Distribute Data
Before you send or publish any decision trees with forms, be sure to check your writing. It’s an often overlooked aspect of surveys, questionnaires and other means of data collection, but contributes greatly to the value of the information gathered.
Step 3: Analyze and Verify Collected Information
If you’re collecting certain information such as a customer’s shipping address, email, or phone number, validating that information before putting it to use can save you a lot of time and money. Bad information wastes valuable resources! Our interactive decision trees allow you to validate information using built-in data cleansing.
When all is said and done, Zingtree’s analytics and reports or API will help you collect and analyse key data directly from your customers themselves.
Take a look at the Gallery for a more in-depth look at how data entry forms work in different scenarios. Any questions? Reach out to us anytime.
For businesses with lots of product SKUs, helping customers find the right product is a sure-fire way of increasing sales and conversion rates; Zingtree is a perfect solution. Guided product selection is a new kind of strategy that allows customers to help themselves, self-solve, and locate exactly what they need as quickly as possible.
From picking out the perfect pair of sunglasses to the right kind of bike, to figuring out the ideal package of services, these “product finders” can help customers locate the right product in the easiest way possible.
The Facts: Customers Want Easy Access
Key metrics and figures in the eCommerce world only work to confirm what we know: simple, guided product finders are the wave of the future where customer journey and improving conversion rates are concerned. Let’s take a quick look.
It’s incredibly convenient for buyers to browse your store on mobile in short, quick, sessions during the spare pockets of time they have throughout the day. Online stores should always be optimized for quick shopping experiences that help customers find what they need within the fastest possible route. If they can’t find what they need, they’ll move on.
Customer experience is all about personalization. When you take the time and effort to customize an experience to specific people, they are far more likely to enjoy it and walk away feeling positive. Without any personalization, consumers can quickly jump to the assumption that those products or brand are not for them.
Stat #3: 74% of online shoppers rate product selection as important during the online search process.
That’s right — about 3/4 of all online consumers consider product selection as one of the most important parts of the search and purchase process. When you think about it, it really makes sense; making it as simple as possible to locate the right product is critical to customer satisfaction and loyalty.
What Are Product Finders?
Product finder decision trees are the perfect way to set up customers for success in a personalized, self-solving, mobile-friendly environment. Instead of the traditional eCommerce site boasting pages and pages of products, product finders allow customers to take the lead using well-thought out, pre-programmed guidance.
Nationally-recognized baseball bat manufacturer, Phoenix Bats, is a perfect example of how product finders have a direct impact on happy customers and better conversion rates.
No one product finder should look or feel the same — each eCommerce business’ brand should always shine through. Here are our top 3 tips for creating interactive product locators that are as helpful as they are nice to look at:
1. Create pop-up trees.
Just a few short lines of code can allow you to publish and present decision tree product finders as fun pop-ups! Shown as a button as popping up in a clean overlay window, it’s one of our many publishing options to fit any eCommerce business needs.
2. Customizations are key.
We make it easy to inject some personality a few different ways, custom CSS files being the main one. After having a designer create the perfect file, just add to your decision tree product finder to ramp up the style — take a look at one of our customer’s awesome uses of this. You can also do things like build color buttons, add images and videos, and insert GIFs for something extra informative.
3. Use for support improvements.
Interactive decision trees aren’t just for helping guide customers to the right products, they are also used for helping guide customers to the right answers and solutions. Any FAQ item, tutorial, or troubleshooting article can easily be reformatted as a decision tree, allowing customers to more easily self-solve and stay happy.
You can check out our Gallery of examples for even more inspiration.
