Success Stories : Bell Canada

Bell Canada was quickly shifting its business from a product focus to a market focus. To achieve its goal of creating a comprehensive electronic channel with the ability to handle transactions and allow direct communications with corporate, small business and residential customers, Bell needed a solution that would allow French and English speaking customers a way to learn about their products and services quickly and easily. Bell Canada indicated that of over 50 million customer sales and service transactions during 1998, roughly 20% were coming through the web and voice-response channels. Its research showed that the percentage of high-value customers of those who chose to interact with the Bell Canada via the Internet was three times higher than non-interactive channel customers.

Our task was to develop a comprehensive site that would enable Bell Canada to better communicate with its customers, learn about preferences and interests and lead them through a secure electronic transaction. We created the Bell Virtual Store, a catalog-based transaction system that allows for management promotion and online sale of Bell Canada products and services. Our design of a site with easy to use and convenient features like the shopping basket, the order summary and the secure and rapid credit card payment option made shopping online easy for even the most novice computer user. Transactions can be charged directly to credit cards or, for some services, can be added to the next customer bill. Products are maintained remotely and product pricing and description can be modified in real time. The online catalog provides different product descriptions for each of Bell Canada's four markets ã residential, small office, home office and large business.

We also developed a customer profiling system. By capturing user data and preferences, the site targets one-to-one marketing promotions to get the right offer to the right customer at the appropriate time.