CommitChange.com currently works with nonprofits looking to raise funds via crowd fundraising, event ticketing, or other means. Based on each non-profit's needs, CommitChange.com builds them a customized suite of tools to manage their campaign and achieve their fundraising goals, all from a single platform.
The company currently services more than 300 nonprofits across the United States, recently released its first monthly subscription tier for its core fundraising suite, and had more than 9,000 donors use the CommitChange.com platform for their charitable giving in 2014.
Founded in 2013, CommitChange.com started using Olark while it was still in 'startup mode' in 2014. At that time their site consisted of only three pages as they worked to produce additional helpful content. Jason Nicosia, Chief Marketing Officer at CommitChange.com, says even in those early days, Olark helped them proactively reach out to visitors and get the conversation started."It's like when someone walks into a store and the owner is there to greet them. You want to let them know you're there to help," said Nicosia. "When you're just starting out, customer support is actually a huge part of closing sales. So your most important task shouldn't be hunting and pitching customers - it should be just being there to answer customer questions. You'll never have a better opportunity to capture a customer than when they're on your site and browsing, so why not start a conversation with them."
Nicosia estimates that about 60 to 70 percent of the chats that happen on CommitChange.com are proactive chats (chats that are initiated by the CommitChange.com team reaching out to a visitor on their site). Nicosia is the primary person monitoring chat, but everyone at CommitChange.com, from the CEO down, takes a turn on chat during the month. Nicosia says those on chat know to make interactions personal and rarely, if ever, use automated messages.
"Our top priority is answering customer's questions so we can get them interested in and started on our free plan," says Nicosia. "We know we can always follow-up later and talk about a paid plan. Even in the early stages of building, we converted about 20 paying customers from leads that came in through Olark. Those conversations typically took less than five minutes to show people how to create a free profile."
Nicosia says the ability to see where a visitor is located often gets them even more interested in CommitChange.com. "If I see someone is chatting from New York City, I'll ask them something specific about the city, or reference a recent trip there. Targeting donors by geography is huge for non-profits, so there are times when the customer I'm talking to wants to know more about how we geo-target. Even customers who find it creepy will often stick around to finish a chat."
Beyond closing sales, live chat also gives CommitChange.com an important look at their customer mindset. With each employee taking a turn on chat, everyone in the organization is able to see how new features are being received and affecting their customer's business. That insight and feedback is then often incorporated into new features as they're being rolled out.
CommitChange.com continues to grow, aiming to have more than 1,000 non-profits on its platform by mid-2015. As its customer base grows, so to will its chat team. Nicosia plans to have another staff member join him on chat full time very soon. In the meantime, the team plans to continue reaching out to visitors on its site and follow its successful proactive chat strategy.
Do you initiate the chat with your customers? If not, what's holding you back?
