ATG (Nasdaq: ARTG) 
continues to build out its e-commerce platform -- an area into which it has been pouring resources for the last two years -- with the introduction of three separate but related sets of e-functionality.
These include:
- New navigation or search capabilities for users that ATG calls "searchandising";
- a new Live Chat feature that can identify when a shopping cart is about to be abandoned and respond with query to help; and
- new reporting capabilities.
Marrying Merchandising With Search
Searchandising is a concept that blends site merchandising with search, explains Cliff Conneighton, ATG's senior vice president of marketing
. The search feature on many retail sites often produces items unrelated to what a customer is searching for, or worse -- from a retailer's point of view -- fails to produce related items to that search. "What we have introduced is a feature that returns search results based on the customer's interest and merchandisers' strategy," Conneighton told CRM Buyer.
An example would be a request to search for boot cut jeans. "Clearly the customer is not looking for boots but rather jeans," Conneighton explained, which is a distinction most basic retail site search platforms might not make. Searchandising, on the other hand, recognizes the difference, and tailors its search results accordingly. "Then, if there is a promotion related to [jeans], such as a sale on jeans, or belts that go with the jeans, those are shown as well."
Smart Chat and New Reporting
ATG also enhanced functionality on the other end of the purchase -- the order process --- by introducing Live Chat. ATG's Live Chat can recognize when a shopper has abandoned his or her cart and query with immediate, on-the-spot assistance. Also, Conneighton added, because ATG built Live Chat onto its platform, e-tailers can use it to leverage a customer's profile,purchase history and customer care history, to provide tailored offers or answers to pending questions.
The third addition to ATG's e-commerce platform is a set of new reporting capabilities, called ATG Customer Intelligence, which will allow users to extract standard reports and perform ad hoc queries. It is compatible with third party business intelligence tools, allowing data from ATG applications to be incorporated into existing enterprise data marts.
Separately, as part of its customer care application, ATG also enhanced the way Live Chat or SMS mobile device interactions can be routed to the best available agent based on several factors, including message content and source, queue length, customer profiles and agent skills.
The application monitors the interaction and creates supervisor alerts when service level goals are missed -- when an inbound e-mail has not been answered in a timely fashion, for example.
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