Retailers need WebSphere CEA

There have been so many times lately that I have been realizing that websites need the WebSphere CEA features and functions. Recently my wife was shopping online and trying to send me links and describe over instant messaging what she was seeing. It was painful and we finally decided we would hold off until later that evening. We forgot that night and looked again at it a day later. That was a sale that was almost lost. Actually, to be honest, the sale was lost...but had we had peer to peer cobrowsing on that site we may have purchased it that first day.

I have also had the experience many times when buying gifts where I knew nothing about the subject matter and had to call a company or visit their store. Whether it was custom jewelry I bought my wife for mother's day or shopping for something for my own mother, there are times I just need more information than I can find online.

After talking to a major US retail company the past couple of days it became evident that our CEA functions when shown were much more amazing. This is why I made the video above, to show this typical experience I have when shopping for something and I need help. But the ability to shop with a friend brings a whole new experience to online shopping and could help drive another boost to online commerce sites. Below I have shown a video describing how that interaction might work.

There are other major areas when seeing something online would be useful when on the phone. For example, last year it was apparent our credit card info was stolen and had to call into Chase and describe the transactions that were invalid. We could have saved time if I could have shown them which transactions through a couple of clicks rather than describing them. But security is a constraint...can you show your customer information without security? How about without a plugin? The CEA FEP does this with security, using the application's current security model. There is no plugin, its all Javascript. It requires some new thinking - but not necessarily new code. :-) We'll talk more about secure cobrowsing soon...