A First Look at Genesys Web Engagement

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Genesys Web Engagement tracks the online activity of your customers, because sometimes it's hard for them to figure out how to get what they want.

With the information we give you, you can often help them find their way:

As you can see, we provide many types of engagement. Let's look at an example of assisted service.

I need to buy a new HDTV, and I've heard of a website called acmetv.genesys.com that is supposed to have some great deals this week. It's time to go shopping!

This company uses a technology called Genesys Web Engagement to see where their customers have been on their website. They can tell which pages I have visited and how long I have been at each one.

When I first get to their website, as the page loads, it processes a JavaScript snippet. This snippet sets up browser tier widgets and agents that send events to the Web Engagement software.

HDTV-A

I have a particular model in mind, the HDTV-A, so I find the page for that model and start reading the reviews.

It turns out that this model isn't as popular as I thought it would be, because people just don't like the image quality. At this point, the vendor could have offered to engage with me. But I probably need to get more information before I am ready to be helped, so they wait for a while.

Product search

I have done a product search and found two models that I'm interested in. They both have a good price, but one is higher resolution and a lot larger. Here they are:

HDTV-B

HDTV-C

Comparison

I like both models, but I am spending some time looking at the pages for each one to narrow my choice down to just one.

This is another point where the company could engage with me, but maybe all of their agents are busy right now.

Anyway, I finally decide that I really like the HDTV-C, and the price is reasonable enough that I am ready to buy!

Time to engage!

I have started filling out the online form, but I am getting stuck for some reason—there is a field that I just can't get to work. And I am also slowing down a bit because maybe I don't really want to spend quite so much money right now...

Well, do you remember the JavaScript snippet? And the events it's been sending?

Acmetv.genesys.com has been paying attention, so they know I'm interested in the HDTV-C. And they know that some customers are abandoning after initially selecting this model. So after spending a couple of minutes on the shopping cart page, I suddenly receive a chat request!

I'm pretty glad to get some help at this point, so I respond to the request. After a brief conversation, I decide that I really do want to buy the HDTV-C. The agent helps me fill out the field I had trouble with—and my new TV will be delivered tomorrow!

That was easy!

Behind the scenes

As we mentioned, Web Engagement captures events from the customer's browser. In the simplest scenarios, you can use our built-in events, which give you information about things like how long a customer has been browsing and what pages they have visited.

When the Web Engagement server receives events from the browser, it uses them as input to rules. One of the most asked-for of these rules waits until a person has been on the site or on a specific page for a certain amount of time and then decides what to do at that point.

In this case, acmetv.genesys.com knows that if I have been on the shopping cart page for more than 2 minutes, they should probably send me some help. Pretty simple!

All of this technology is based on what we call the Simple Engagement Model.

But sometimes you need to be a bit more sophisticated. As in determining whether to tell me about the HDTV-B and the HDTV-C. For that kind of situation, you can set up your own events, called Business Events. If acmetv.genesys.com was getting a lot of abandons after people gave up on the HDTV-A, and they noticed that a lot of people who did buy were going for the HDTV-C, they could have used custom business events to help determine how to engage the customers who were about to abandon.

Or they might set up special events that determine whether someone is comparing two models, so they can help them decide.

We refer to this as the Advanced Engagement Model.

Simple Engagement Model

If you only need System Events, there are two main things you need to do:

• Set up categories for your pages. For example, maybe the HDTV-C is only one of several models that have been leading to abandoned transactions. You can set up a category for all of these models, rather than hard-coding a specific URL.
• Choose the template of the rule that suits your business needs.

Advanced Engagement Model

If you need your own custom events, you also have to create Business Events in the Domain-Specific Language (DSL) files.

Getting started

Before setting up categories, or rules, or business events, acmetv.genesys.com had to install Web Engagement. They also had to do some customization that required help from people with skills in JavaScript and jQuery (although you may not need jQuery for your installation).

Want to learn more?

For a more in-depth look at Web Engagement, read the Product Overview.