netmeg - 5:12 pm on Mar 26, 2007 (gmt 0)

We get 2 or 3 phone orders for every completed internet order. Somedays its 4 to 1.

For one of my top clients at the moment, this is about the same ratio. It's moving over slowly, but he deals heavily in some markets where people are still more used to picking up the phone.

Rather than decreasing our catalog mailings, we've increased them - a year ago we were mailing 5,000 per month, now it's up to 50,000, and we're shooting for 100,00 by the end of the year. The catalogs increase BOTH the phone and the web orders.

We've just put in a call center to take off hour calls - both for customer service and for order taking.

We don't particularly want to move people over exclusively to the web - this is a B2B site, with a lot of repeat business, and we feel the relationship is important.

That said, one of the sales people told me just Friday that he had a large client (a public utility) who knows very well she can get special pricing by calling him up and placing her orders over the phone, but still prefers to do them all online, on her own time and whenever it's convenient for her.

To that end, we're focusing on making it easier for clients to do that, to re-order, and trying to cut down the number of calls that are for things other than new orders or customer service issues (such as problems with the website, or questions about how to order)