Live Help

[Whistle Ink]

Hello!

I'm in the process of setting up live help on website.

For you business owners - Has anyone implemented this where they sell products online? How useful has it been?

For online shoppers - would you use it? how would respond to a chat request or message from a site?

Cheers

Paresh :)

[Coding Monkey]

I used it in talking to Rackspace. Found it quite handy, and a lot more convenient for me at the time than talking on the phone or e-mail.

Just make sure you're available a lot, as it's not the most attractive thing to go onto a website before 5pm and find that their live help isn't available.

[Ozzy]

We use it on our websites and although in the past it wasn't really used, it actually gets used by our customers a hell of a lot - and is very handy for us as it doesnt take up the phone lines - and as the customers are using it I would assume they also find it very handy.
It also has a handy tool that lets you view in real time what visitors are on your site and on what page :)

[Whistle Ink]

A couple of people I have been talking to think customers might be put off by the fact that they might be watched. (This might be from because thye know what this software does)

I guess it's best to leave them alone and only speak when you're spoken to! #

Do you guys send a pop up asking for help? I would like to know browers thoughts on my site, any improvments they might like to see etc.

[sysops]

We've used it on a number of sites, and the experience has been mixed. On the whole, it has been very successful on sites selling products/services of a very technical nature, where prospective customers are likely to have a lot of pre-sales questions. It has been less useful on sites selling more mainstream products.

[Whistle Ink]

sysops - when you say experience has been mixed d you mean alot of people browsing but no one taking up on chat, or when you send a pop up dfor chat and majority decline?

[sysops]

I mean mixed in terms of value for money - increasing sales conversion.

The majority of popup invitations are declined in most cases anyway - I'm personally not convinced of the usefulness of the push salesman approach.

I'll give you a couple of examples. One installation was for an engineering company that supplies machined parts to various industry sectors. This was very useful on the whole, resulting in more enquiries and more sales. Popup invitations weren't necessary - people clicked the Live Help button all by themselves.

Another was for a company selling a variety of personalised gift products. This was not at all successful, most popups were declined, and there was no measurable benefit.

[Ozzy]

We never send a pop-up, we wait for the user to request help. I have only once made initiated the popup offering help ... never again! The guy freaked and thought his computer had been hacked :D
Now we just have it sitting there as part of the header for people to use it if they want. Please feel free to take a look if interested using the link in my sig.

[HC-Martin]

Hey Ozzy - Your live help is offline...lol!!!!

[Ozzy]

Well spotted - you passed teh test with flying colours :)
Is online now, oops :redface:

[Whistle Ink]

I guess it can do any harm having it providing as Tom says making sure there is someone available.

Interestingly, all the times I went on the Live Help website, they were offline!!

[Toon]

I added this to my site years ago and have never looked back. It gets used daily.

[Taabish]

Who is everyone using for this?

[Whistle Ink]

I'm using Live Help (http://livehelp.stardevelop.com/)

[Toon]

Boldchat - they have free and paid for versions. I find the free one is more than capable of doing what I need it to do and have used it for years.

[livechatdir]

Yeah, we have using liveperson for quite a little while. It is working well for our site m2mhost.com. It is an integrated application that has a facility of live chat, live call, ticket support, and knowledgebase all in one. What we basically like about it is this - it has everything for every type of customer. It's integrated application has made tracking of customers extremely simple. We have also seen considerable improvement in conversion rate and the level of satisfaction of our customers.

It's technical staff is quite helpful in installation of its software and takes the responsibility of handling nitty gritties of the service. you too can have a look at it on how it works at our site.

[AdamW]

My experience with live person so far is here (http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=276215#post276215)

Getting less impressed!

[boho]

I find live chat quite useful sometimes when I'm shopping on sites and want to quickly find out some information but unfortunately most places that seem to display live chat on their websites either are always offline or insist on popping up the push windows which I find highly irritating, it's the equivalent of shop sales people following you around the store continually asking if you need help - NO if I need help I will ask for it! Live chat is great if it's online and up to the customer to make use of it if they want it.

[AdamW]

I find live chat quite useful sometimes when I'm shopping on sites and want to quickly find out some information but unfortunately most places that seem to display live chat on their websites either are always offline or insist on popping up the push windows which I find highly irritating, it's the equivalent of shop sales people following you around the store continually asking if you need help - NO if I need help I will ask for it! Live chat is great if it's online and up to the customer to make use of it if they want it.

Agreed.. I never use the push windows. Nor do I use the push functions when chatting as it just opens a huge broswer window :)

[Trikke Uk]

is it costly to put onto site? or hard

[AdamW]

Well there are free ones and paid for ones. If you pay for it and choose a hosted option then it is just a case of putting the code in right place and making sure the images fit your site so not too dificult.

Give me a shout if you have any problems, I'll be happy to lend a hand!

[Decalz]

Where can this be obtained for free. I think Id like to try a free version for a few months even if its quite basic before deciding to shell out any cash.

[boho]

http://www.volusion.com/livechat_software.asp
http://www.websitealive.com/


also a list of others on here http://www.programurl.com/software/free-live-chat-software.htm

[Decalz]

Cheers matey, just set up volusion, will see how it goes...

[Blush]

I use crafty syntax, but to be honest no one really bothers with it. I removed it form my homepage too as it was being hosted by me and using loads of bandwidth.It gave very interesting info though! One of my competitors kept appearing also which was very interesting. Their site showed up as their domain name which was strange.
I never used the pop ups as I would find that very off putting if it happened to me. I now only have it on my contact page and willprobably ditch it I think.I might try it again next month.
I do get a lot of sales now through my 0800 number though, that was worth it. A lot of potential customers like to speak to someone and to know their order will be dealy with someone in person and will be posted out quickly.
I remember sitting one sat eveing, hair still wet as I was getting ready to go out, when a pensioner rang.she wanted to buy for her granddaughter and had never shopped online before.I had to take her through it step by step.:)

[Cornish Steve]

I've gone off this concept of late. Only last week, someone mentioned to me how he had been browsing the website of his wireless phone company. Suddenly, a chat window appeared, which is not that unusual. The company rep, though, mentioned how this guy had considered (i.e., clicked on for details) Package A before considering Package B and started extolling the virtues of the more-expensive Package A. In other words, the agent had been watching a visitor navigate the site before appearing with a chat window. This was quite unnerving and, in my opinion, rather over the top.

In other words, if you plan to offer Live Help, use it diligently and don't give the impression you are looking over everyone's shoulder.

[Carl-CSNM]

We use Live Chat for sales and it's very useful. We can also "push" the chat window to website visitors and track what they are doing. I've never used the "push" function though.

[Shoptistic.com]

I agree with Carl. We also use Live Chat for prospective customers/support and it works very well.

Also, people know you are there just in case they need immediate assistance.

We never 'push' either...