London, 21st January 2010 – Direct Ferries has deployed Tealeaf’s Customer Experience Management software, to give unparalleled insights into how customers are using the company’s website. Tealeaf will enable Europe's leading ferry ticket retailer to replay the website session of any one of its 2 million online visitors each month. This will give Direct Ferries the online visibility necessary to understand ‘why’ customers’ abandon transactions, allowing the company to improve the overall online customer experience.

In the future, Direct Ferries intends to use the insights Tealeaf gives to begin proactively calling customers that drop-off the website during a checkout process in order to try and rescue the sale and recoup the lost revenue. Using Tealeaf, any issues and details of a visitor’s experience can quickly be flagged and forwarded to an outbound sales agent.

Tealeaf will be deployed on the online booking engine at www.directferries.co.uk to help identify issues in the checkout funnel. Direct Ferries receives 90% of its revenue through the site, making it a business critical channel for the company. By alerting Direct Ferries to issues in real-time and offering session replay, Tealeaf will enable quick resolution and aid site optimisation -- ultimately reducing any problems with the site that could have a negative business impact.

Using Tealeaf’s advanced insights into how customers are actually using the website, Direct Ferries will be also able to make informed improvements to the site. By proactively refining the online customer experience, the web development team will be able to make the booking process easier to follow and the site simpler to navigate.

“Any error on the website is potentially a lost customer,” said Anthony Ritchie, IT Director at Direct Ferries. “Before deploying Tealeaf, we could see there were errors on the site in the log files, but we didn’t know exactly what had occurred or what the customer had experienced. Tealeaf allows us to pinpoint these ‘unknowns’ instantly. The ROI from Tealeaf is immediate and vividly apparent – we’re already seeing an incredibly positive impact on our business.”

“Booking a trip or a holiday online can be a complicated process, with long checkout funnels and substantial transaction values. Keeping a customer on the website right till the end is a constant struggle,” said John Lillie, UK Country Manager, Tealeaf. “Understanding how a customer is using a site and being alerted to issues they are facing is an incredibly powerful, qualitative metric that allows action to be taken based on real insights. Tealeaf gives Direct Ferries this ability and allows the company to give its customers the outstanding web experience they expect.”