Ilkka Vertanen - Ilkka Vertanen

4 Tips to Choose the Best Chatbot Platform

Countless companies have sprouted from the benefits chatbots promise. It's easy to see why. Chatbots give brands an unprecedented opportunity to answer customer questions at scale. But how do you evaluate if a chatbot vendor is right for your needs?

Three Principles Of A Successful Live Chat Operation

Three Principles Of A Successful Live Chat Operation [2020 Edition]

Welcome to 2020. I believe this year we finally achieve two notable milestones: live chat ceases to exist as a something separate from the grander schema of things, and B2B companies finally embrace live chat. As the third trend, there will be chaos.

Three Principles Of A Successful Live Chat Operation

Three Principles Of A Successful Live Chat Operation [2019 Edition]

In 2019, keep your eyes open for chatbots leading the charge when companies implement and scale live chat operations, in addition to chatbot+human cooperation establishing itself as the standard for live chat customer service.

Sales

Improving Sales Performance Is Like Hitting The Gym

After reading an article about how CEO of Björn Borg runs his company like a CrossFit box, I started thinking how similar factors in both sales and sports help you improve performance and win.

Chatbots

It's a Human... It's a Chatbot... It doesn't matter

At the end of 2018, I noticed a shift in people's expectations regarding live chats. It started to feel like general expectation was to receive assistance from an AI rather than a customer service representative. Now, I know if my observation is true or not.

Chatbots

It's a Human... It's a Chatbot... It's a...

While shopping online, have you receive help from retailers' customer support team via live chat? If so, do you know if that helper was a real person or a chatbot?

Chatbots

How To Get Started With Chatbots [Guest blog]

In my guest blog for giosg.com, I share a three-step process to a successful chatbot launch. I hope that by sharing this helps you to carry out a successful chatbot project as well.

Sales

5 Tools That Pass Google’s Co-Founder’s Toothbrush Test And Help You Sell More

I list five tools that are not designed for sales but still help you sell more. For me, they also pass the toothbrush test ("Is this something you will use once or twice per day, and does it make your life better?”). And yes, every day includes weekends as well.

Three Principles Of A Successful Live Chat Operation

Three Principles Of A Successful Live Chat Operation [2018 Edition]

Last year, I started a blog series about three principles of a successful live chat operation. Now, as a year has gone by, I thought a ”minor" update on the blog that started the series would be in order. So what has changed in a year? One word answer: chatbots.

Social Selling

I’m In Sales, Therefore I Blog

With this blog, I share why I started blogging and how it has helped me to improve my sales performance.

Prospecting

Three Tips For Targeting Sales Calls During Summer Holidays

In sales, you are expected to deliver results continuously, including times when a considerable share of the potential buyers is on a well-deserved vacation. So as a top performer in sales, how do you identify whom to reach out and whom to leave alone for now?

Successful Live Chat: Quality

How to Improve the Quality of a Live Chat Operation

I give concrete examples of how one can improve the quality of live chat operation, in other words, make that metaphorical formula one car go faster. Referring to my previous blog, I give examples for improving both agent experience and customer experience.

Successful Live Chat: Quality

Live Chat Is Like Formula 1: Quality Matters, Speed Is Of The Essence!

I approach quality from two viewpoints: Quality experienced by (potential) customers and by live chat agents. I draw an analogy to Formula One; Employee experience is fuel for the formula one car, but customer experience is the speed that wins the race.

Chatbots

The Story of My Chatbot: Meet Ilkka-bot

The idea was to use chatbot like newsletter while, of course, taking advantage of all capabilities this new medium offers. So now I have a chatbot that educates people about live chat, sales chat, and chatbots. Fun.

Successful Live Chat: Direction

Customer Service Chat: Use Cases & Best Practices

To build upon the examples provided in the blog post about Direction, I now describe how to use a proactive live chat to reduce calls to call centre, minimise errors in submitted forms, and fight shopping cart abandonment.

Successful Live Chat: Direction

Sales Chat: Use Cases & Best Practices

In this blog, I describe how to use live chat to generate sales leads, convert users of a free plan into paying customers, and increase average order value.

Social Selling

Social Selling Mastery #20 - 'Machine vs Man' - Guest host: Ilkka Vertanen

I visited Sani Leino’s amazing podcast Social Selling Mastery. We discussed the role artificial intelligence is taking in sales, chatbot related challenges, differences between Finland and the UK in sales, and social selling.

Successful Live Chat: Direction

The Most Important Principle Of A Successful Live Chat Operation: Direction

In my earlier blog, I covered three principles for successful live chat operation: Direction, Quality, and Quantity. As you might know, these are same principles as to building a winning sales organisation. In this blog, I discuss in detail the most important one of these principles: Direction.

Sales chat

Why You Should Implement A Proactive Sales Chat

roactive live chat is a chat conversation initiated (automatically or manually) by the company rather than a website visitor. Instead of waiting for a visitor to begin chatting (by clicking on a chat icon and sending a message), messages are sent out to greet website visitors inviting them to chat.

Three Principles Of A Successful Live Chat Operation

Three Principles For A Successful Live Chat Operation In 2017

After reading this post, you hopefully have a general understanding of what is required for a successful live chat operation in 2017. As you might guess, chatbots, artificial intelligence, and rest of the buzzwords are part of a winning setup.

Events

What's Hot in the UK's Online Retail?

During the autumn, there has been (at least) two major e-commerce events in London: first E-Commerce Expo at the end of September and in October Internet Retailing Conference. I think it's now a time to give an update on what is hot topics in the UK's e-commerce space.

Conversion Rate Optimisation

How To Use Intelligent Targeting In Banking Industry

In the banking industry, conversion marketing combined with intelligent targeting allows you to pick the right tool for converting each potential visitor.

Events

Trends from DMEXCO 2016 changing the world

I attended DMEXCO, one of the top events in digital marketing, earlier this month in Cologne, Germany. DMEXCO is huge: it has over 1000 exhibitors and over dozen stages providing engaging keynotes and speeches non-stop. In this blog, I have included the main topics from the event.

Events

DMEXCO 2016, after day 2

DMEXCO 2016 is now over. Here is my short recap of the second day. Unlike yesterday, this day was mostly for getting to know some of the 1000 exhibitors. Here are my top three observations from the day.

Events

DMEXCO 2016, after day 1

The first day of DMEXCO (one of the industry's top events in 2016) is now over. For my part, this day was full of thought-provoking keynotes, debates, and speeches. Here are my observations from the expo so far.