Ilkka Vertanen - Ilkka Vertanen

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.

e-Commerce

E-Commerce and Product Placement - Match Made in Heaven!

Amazon streams a cooking show through its Prime Video Streaming Platform while selling featured items online with just one click. This is amazingly genius!

Conversion Rate Optimisation

How to solve customer challenges with personalisation

My guest blog for Paytrail about using personalisation to solve issues customers face when shopping online.

Conversion Rate Optimisation

Miten ratkaista asiakkaiden haasteet personoinnin avulla?

My guest blog for Paytrail [in Finnish] about using personalisation to solve issues customers face when shopping online.

Conversion Rate Optimisation

How chatbots fit into conversion marketing?

Since Facebook’s F8 conference in April, chatbots have been all rage. Everybody from mainstream news to tech and business blogs are talking about them. So, let’s add an educated guess about chatbots’ role in conversion marketing in the mix.

Events

Online Retail Trends From IRX16

I attended Internet Retailing Expo in Birmingham at the end of April. After having conversations with new and old acquaintances, I made a couple of observations about what is trending among UK’s online retailers.