Ideal Shopping Direct Deploys Tealeaf To Bring Visibility To Web Channel

TV shopping retailer brings in customer experience management technology to improve website conversions and uncover user behaviour insights

London, 12 October 2010 - Ideal Shopping Direct has deployed Tealeaf® Customer Experience Management software on its primary websites, www.idealworld.tv, & www.createandcraft.tv to help eliminate issues, understand customer 'struggle' and recover lost revenue. Ideal Shopping is also using Tealeaf to provide visibility into customer issues to its outbound call centre, allowing them to reach out to customers that abandon purchases and help complete the sale. In just the first eight weeks of using Tealeaf to support outbound revenue-recovery calling, the conversion rate of these calls had reached 40%.

Ideal Shopping has been primarily focused on selling through its four main (Ideal World, Ideal Extra, Ideal & More & Create and Craft TV) channels. However, with the growth in popularity of online shopping, the company has recently sought to increase its online operations, providing TV viewers with an alternative buying channel to the call centre and also reaching new audiences that were not TV shoppers. Tealeaf CX Solutions™ gives Ideal Shopping real-time visibility into what each and every customer is doing on the website, allowing the company to make informed changes and optimizations to the site.

More recently, following a systems upgrade, Tealeaf was able to provide invaluable real-time information used to identify issues, highlight potential transactional drop-out points and assist in the upgrade process to minimise customer impact, and measure KPI's during and after the transitional period.

"For a company used to the tangible medium of television based shopping, the lack of visibility to online customers was only too obvious", said Mike Hancox, CEO at Ideal Shopping Direct. "The web is a strategically significant channel for us, and Tealeaf allows us to approach the web channel with a sophisticated outlook, rather than merely guessing at problems, issues and their potential solutions. Additionally, by using Tealeaf in our call centre, we are able to recoup otherwise unrecoverable lost revenues and improve the experience our customers have when interacting with our brand."

Since deploying Tealeaf earlier this year, the company has been able to identify and resolve both pre-existing and new issues on the website that were adversely affecting thousands of customers every day. In addition, Tealeaf now alerts the Ideal Shopping outbound call centre team to customers who have started checking out, but who have not completed their transaction. The team then uses the information Tealeaf provides about the customer to proactively get in touch with customers within three hours to see if they need any assistance completing their purchase.

"As Ideal Shopping focuses more time and energy on its online strategy, Tealeaf provides the necessary tools to make its website a reliable and effective channel for helping customers complete transactions, thereby contributing to the bottom line", said John Lillie, Tealeaf vice president of UK and Southern Europe "Innovations like the outbound calling programme will allow Ideal Shopping to put customer experience at the heart of its business and reap the rewards as a result."

About Tealeaf

Tealeaf provides online customer experience management solutions and is the unchallenged leader in customer behaviour analysis. Tealeaf's CEM solutions include both a customer behaviour analysis suite and customer service optimization suite. For organizations that are making customer experience a top priority, these solutions provide unprecedented enterprise-wide visibility into every visitor's unique online interactions for ongoing analysis and web site optimization. Online executive stakeholders from ebusiness and IT to customer service and compliance are leveraging Tealeaf to build a customer experience management competency across the organization. Founded in 1999, Tealeaf is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and is privately held. For more information, visit www.tealeaf.com.

About Ideal Shopping Direct

Ideal Shopping Direct is one of the UK's leading home shopping retailers, selling via its TV channels and the internet. Its main channel, Ideal World, is broadcast on the rapidly expanding Freeview platform as well as on Sky, Virgin Media and Freesat. It has three other channels on Sky, 'Ideal Extra', 'Ideal & More' and 'Create and Craft'. 'Ideal Extra' and 'Create and Craft' are also on Freeview.

'Ideal World' offers a broad selection of general merchandise with six product categories, led by Home, Leisure and Craft along with Fashion, Health & Beauty and Jewellery. 'Ideal Extra' focuses on Gardening and related outdoor product, Home and Leisure including selected Ideal World repeats. 'Ideal & More' repeats selected shows of Ideal World. 'Create and Craft' is a niche channel selling craft products.

Ideal's transactional websites www.idealworld.tv and www.createandcraft.tv carry a live web stream of the TV broadcasts and offer a wide selection of products sold on TV as well as web only deals. www.gardenbargains.com offers a range of gardening products. For more information see www.idealshoppingdirect.co.uk

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