Tealeaf Introduces New CEM Capabilities

Have you ever wasted precious time trying to buy a product online only to find out that it's no longer available when you reach the checkout page? We all have. With the popularity of social media constantly on the rise, bad customer interactions will become more and more costly for companies. Customers who fail to accomplish their shopping goals because of a company's business or technology shortcomings will post their frustration on Facebook, Twitter, and personal blogs. With Tealeaf 8, the recently-launched customer behavior analysis software, companies will be able to "understand customers' struggles as they experience them, then quantify them, understand them, react to them, and take action upon them," says Geoff Galat, Tealeaf Vice President of World Wide Marketing.

Founded in 1999, the San Francisco-based company provides its more than 400 customers with online customer experience management (CEM) solutions. The company's CEM solutions include a Customer Behavior Analysis Suite and a Customer Service Optimization Suite. The company dubs itself the leader in customer behavior analysis, according to the April 19 press release.

"Over the last couple of years e-commerce has become the critical channel for most businesses," says Galat. "[Sometimes customers] get confused or they're shown information they weren't expecting. Companies need to be able to deal with this as it's happening. What Tealeaf focuses on is perfecting the online experience by removing the obstacles to customer success."

According to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive and sponsored by Tealeaf, the need for businesses to make their Websites more reliable continues to increase. Included in the survey's findings are:

• 48 percent of U.S. online adults say they are conducting more online transactions than a year ago because of the current economic climate; and,
• 8 of 10 users reported they had experienced some sort of problem when attempting to conduct business online.
• 32 percent of those who experience issues when conducting transactions online would simply take their business elsewhere (to either an online or offline competitor) or abandon the transaction entirely.

It's a no-brainer that companies should attempt to understand why customers succeed or fail at making purchases online. But why should companies choose the new Tealeaf 8 solution?

According to the press release the new product includes three essential features:

• Customer Struggle Scores - a measurement of site experience in real-time that identifies patterns of behavior signifying customer struggle
• An Early Warning System - an algorithmic discovery to automatically surface the highest-impact customer facing issues and display them in a new, real-time Top Movers & Drivers dashboard.
• An Analysis Workbench for ebusiness - the workbench enables deep analysis of customer experience issues and their sources - including their business impact - as well as advanced segmentation via a new intuitive, drag-and-drop Dimensional Report Builder designed specifically for ebusiness analysts.

Gartner research director and analyst Bill Gassman commends the upgrade.

"They've made things easier to use," he observes. "Some of the [previous] functionality was a bit obscure. It required more help from the vendor."

He also contends that Tealeaf 8's ability to identify patterns sets the product apart from its competition.

"If you look at the whole package they are quite unique. There are a couple [of other products] that have replay capability but what Tealeaf is doing with pattern matching is unique."

"We capture every customer, every interaction, every time," says Galat. "We're seeing what the user enters in their browser and what the site returns back as a response to what they entered. That's really important because at the end of the day we all might go to the same site to try and buy the same item but our experiences are fundamentally different."

Tealeaf 8 will be commercially available in the second quarter of 2010, as part of the Tealeaf Customer Behavior Analysis Suite.

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