Allowing Customers to Contact a Real Person via MSN or AOL?? [Archive]

MarkPearson

8th November 2005, 21:34

I had planned to to allow our customers / potential customers many different ways to contact us

See below:

Now I wanted to add an opinion on for customers to be able to instant message a member of our sales team

AOL - an instant messanger account called rosesbydesign

MSN - a MSN messenger account called rosesbydesign

HOWEVER, a few people (in business) think this is a bad idea because it looks amature.

WHATS YOUR THOUGHTS?

It is good for customers to be able to speak to a live REAL person, but is it a good idea for my business?

CONTACT US

For general enquiries, to place a telephone order, for internet sales enquiries, customer service, administration & accounts:

UK Callers Phone: 0208 254 9708
Overseas Callers Phone: +44 208 254 9708 (plus your country exit code)
Skype (Internet Phone): 0207 871 1414
Instant Messenger: AOL: rosesbydesign MSN: rosesbydesign
Email: service@rosesbydesign.com
Post: RosesByDesign,
100 Woodcote Road,
London, SM6 0LY, UK

Hours: Monday - Saturday 10:00am to 6:00pm (GMT)

http://www.rosesbydesign.com/contact.php

Magsite

8th November 2005, 21:52

Nope - I think it works well - Your site is great by the way!

MarkPearson

8th November 2005, 22:10

thanks lisa,

thats what I thought, surely the more ways people (potential customers can contact you) THE BETTER

Nearly everyone I know uses AOL IM or MSN messenger, so why not allow them to use this medium to communicate, ask questions etc..

I will see what others say....

gary

9th November 2005, 08:39

I don't see why you shouldn't try it - it's probably a bit of a hassle though if you have to approve each person who wants to chat to you. If you want to offer something like this, why not just use a live chat service?

MichaelG

9th November 2005, 09:17

There is nothing wrong with using IM services. In fact - its a very nice thing to have and I for one will contact you through it. But I also understand the fears surrounding the use IM service.

We implement a solution that might be of use to you similar to the "live chat" service you see on some websites - but a little more advance.

Goto: http://demo.sales-n-stats.com/demo/

Use this KEY: a794840824335bad-5077b8d840000000-306b8164b0d18cb9

Click on Live HELP

Ozzy

9th November 2005, 13:48

We use MSN here but we don't promote it as we have LiveHelp on the website for people to contact us through that.
However, regular customers myself and Becki here have MSN which we give to those to use if it comes up in conversation.

MarkPearson

9th November 2005, 13:53

So do you think adding on our contact page this section:

Instant Messenger: rosesbydesign@hotmail.com

The whole reason why I am asking, is because someone said 'oh, no it make your site / business look bad'

Thoughts?

Rob Holmes

9th November 2005, 14:22

We offer non-official support via msn - why not just experiment - see if you get orderes on it or not?

I ordered ink cartridges via whistleinks msn and it was dead easy so I don't see why I wouldn't use it for flowers.

Rob

bitsnstuff

9th November 2005, 14:24

I was chatting on MSN to one person on my contacts list the other day and another person from my list came on and joined in the conversation, if that happened with your customers, I don't think it would look too good.

It is however, a great idea to give lots of contact methods.

Kate :lol:

Ozzy

9th November 2005, 19:37

In my personal opinion I do not think it looks professional to have MSN as a contact method on your website, even though as I mentioned above it is "unofficially" provided by my company as an option! It is not mentioned on my website, its only mentioned during a telephone conversation to a client if the opportunity comes up.

ink4-u

9th November 2005, 21:19

HI, i was talking to Mark and said that i thought it looked unprofessional / amateur to have that on his site. I thought this because his site is great! Top quality and looked very professional, a site that i would order from! Then you go to the contact page and you see MSN and AOL. And you think, well if this was a good business wouldn't they have live chat? or a ticket system? Yes, the ticket system does do your head in because you want a response now, but you know it is used by professional businesses.

There is also the security related issue, how do you know who you are speaking to? i know it is the same as normal support really! But you do have to watch you dont get caught out giving someone else's details out because you could break the law and not even realise it.

i did suggest an 0870 number to cover the normal number, i use this myself so i can provide a better standard of support. But i am aware that people don't like calling these so 0845? they are better they cost the same as local call and just look more professional. Customers think i have seen them numbers on CURRYS, DIXONS, AOL, so this must be a good business to as they have one of them.

Cheers Jay 8)

thegateways

10th November 2005, 02:11

Inviting people on yahoo and MSN looks professional, while ICQ I personally don't like.

SillyJokes

10th November 2005, 06:24

I'm not sure about the messenging live chat thing. It means you have to be at their beck and call and could distract you from other things you are doing unless you have someone on customers services full time who can sit there chatting to customers.

People shop 24/7 can you offer a service for this time? Even just late into the evenings - you are't going to be able to man it for so many hours.

Everytime I have ever seen it on a site is has been marked as closed anyway which just makes you think, oh, that's rubbish then.

What is best for your business is to get people to understand your website and have confidence in it and then buy online with the minimum contact with you. This reduces costs and increases the number of people you can help each day. I don't think you would make that many more sales by being available to chat to 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

However I have never seen before and after sales figures for a site that implimented live chat.

Rob Holmes

10th November 2005, 07:20

I don't think you would make that many more sales by being available to chat to 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

From my experience this is very true.

Rob

graham

10th November 2005, 07:31

You can use your work email address as an MSN Messenger ID by going to www.passport.com

Avoids the unprofessionalism of using @hotmail.com etc.

MorethanWords

10th November 2005, 08:17

I personally don't think it looks very professional and will certainly be dubious about accepting invitations in the future. I recieved a very pressured sales pitch from accepting an invite from someone on here.

You could end up with a lot of time wasters when most people accept that business have regular opening hours. If you want to offer a way of contacting out of opening hours, why not offer an SMS support service? This is something that is becoming increasingly popular.

Let us know - it has been great watching your business idea grow and your website looks really good too!

KateCB

28th May 2006, 18:13

We used Skpe, but again it relies on your customer having skype installed too....MSN etc I think does look a little unprofessional, but then again many people have it ready installed; we tried live help, but it can be quirky and we lost/dropped calls which is even more unprofessional, it is expensive, AND ever tried answering the phone whilst trying to IM? The people calling on the IM system have no way of knowing what you are doing at the other end, and to have someone dedicated to answering IM's isn't feasible for a lot of businesses - live help generally is a great way to interact with your customers, but as I say we found it quirky, expensive and difficult to manage without dedicated staff....

Kate
http://www.martialdesign.co.uk
The ORIGINAL online martial arts store

MinuWeb

28th May 2006, 19:25

wow, you are really digging up some old threads today !!

:)

ianonline

30th March 2007, 18:08

Why not give "Meebo Me" a look. Then people with AOL Messenger and Yahoo Messenger (as well as MSN) can talk to you via your website. I haven't posted enough yet to put up the address but it's very easy to find. Just search for "Meebo".

ianonline

30th March 2007, 18:14

Thought I would increase my number of posts so I can give web addresses(!), and thus I suggest that your contact form goes above the email addresses. Email links do encourage Spam to you, and an email form does not require the customer to login.

If you've got a good Spam filter, leave the email addresses on as well so that people can email and have a record of the email sent in their email account.

Oh and I don't know if you do, but small businessess should avoid using auto-replies unless you actually can't access your email. With email functions on most mobile phones now, you should be able to reply anytime.

Mark Bateman

30th March 2007, 18:27

falconinternetlimited

30th March 2007, 20:18

I suppose it depends on what your business is.

As an ISP an MSN contact route goes down very well with customers because it is instant.
We have also recently introduced live chat (which we integrated into our site using coffeecup - one-off $34 license fee) for people who don't want MSN.
Having said that we also have email, Freephone, VoIP, web forms etc as a mechanism for contacting us.

I my opinion - giving customers as many options can only be a good thing as it means you are "open" for business.

Rupert

Future Freak

30th March 2007, 20:43

I needed a tech answer the other day, couldn't find it on their site in the FAQ's - so I double clicked my suppliers msn technical contact - typed a question and got the answer back with 60 seconds. All good IMO.

bwglaw

30th March 2007, 21:10

if you are going to accept orders via MSN etc then you will need to adjust your terms/conditions accordingly given that you supply to the consumer and MSN is not a secure means of passing over sensitive data.

Jonathan

aquamarina

31st March 2007, 20:54

why don't you install a chat program? they are free and easy to intall.

Jayne

31st March 2007, 22:04

This posting is from Nov 05. I don't think Mark owns Rosesbydesign any more?

Eagle

31st March 2007, 23:25

I don't think IM is unprofessional but my past experience is that all I get are 12 year-old skoolkidz using it. "Conversations" have gone something like this...

=============
Hey dude.
Err, hello - how can I assist?
Dude, yo logos are da bomb. I looked at your work and I wuz like whoah! Can I get sumfin like yours coz their gr8 man.
[sigh] Are you interested in me undertaking a logo project for you?
Yeah, man. :) :cool:
Can you email me your design brief to me at...
Can we do it here?
Well, there's a lot of questions I have to ask you.
How much you charge dude?
£____ on average.

[... very long pause]

Man, I just saved up $15 can you do it for that?
Sorry, no.
How about if ya jus gimme da logo and I put link to you on my website - it's gonna be big man like ebay and bigger.

...*click*
=============
I gave up IM years ago and, due to the sheer volume of timewasters like the above will probably never go back. :)

falconinternetlimited

1st April 2007, 07:44

Eagle

Great post! LOL. :-)

Rupert

Mike.LA

2nd April 2007, 15:41

Infact this is very successful.. Let me tell you how.

We are in this business for more than 5 years now and our research tells us that 94% to 97% of the new website visitors leave within the first two minutes, and completely forget about it the very next day. This diminishes the whole concept of setting the business online.

This prompted us to develop our THREE PRONG strategy:

1. Our Greeters greet the website visitors on your website and engage them in a conversation.

2. The Greeters help the visitor stay on the website, by providing help, support, and facilitates navigation.

3. Our greeters execute sales pitches which generate leads / sales for you.

We are currently serving lots of big websites and are receiving very good feedback from these companies.

Feel free to pm me for more information. :)