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Mind the store
It's one thing to build a network of online retail brands -- as everyone
seems to be doing this week -- but it's quite another to give consumers an
appropriate shopping experience. As Jonathan Medved, general partner at
Israel Seed Partners, quips, "Why build a store and then leave it unmanned?"
Jonathan has invested in an interesting company, NewChannel, that provides
the service of watching what Web site visitors are doing, identifying the
most likely sales prospects, then popping up a window that lets the
potential customer enter an online text chat with a customer service rep.
Privacy issues notwithstanding, it's an important effort to convert surfers
to buyers.
Similarly, PeopleSupport, which just closed a $6 million funding round from
Idealab and Times Mirror, provides services that give consumers easy access
to live help during and after the sale. The recently public Primus (Nasdaq
PKSI) provides similar services, as well as a full suite of knowledge
management solutions.
The online customer service market is huge and growing, and already includes
established brands such as Siebel, Acuity, and many others. For the
foreseeable future, there will be plenty of business to go around.
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