Do you use Live Chat features on websites?

[Greg Findley]

Hi everyone,

I'm considering adding a live chat feature of some kind to my site, so I can contact prospective clients on my site, incase they have any questions, etc. Just wondering as a general rule, do you use live chat features on websites?

I personally feel that it depends on the nature of the site, as I wouldn't start a live chat on a high sales focused site like a company selling Windows & Conservatories, but if it was a small business or a personal site I think I probably would.

Just interested in opinions on this really
Thanks in advance, Greg

 

[Astaroth]

Yes I do use them but think it is worse to have it and it either rarely be manned or be manned by people who are incappable of answering fairly simple questions that are only slightly more than you would have on an FAQ. My real pet hate is those that disappear if it is offline as I question myself that if it was there before or not.

 

[Fuzzy]

I use them and 9/10 find them helpful, unless of course it's "Amy" from www.bt.com , she's useless

 

[Loansite]

I have it on my site - we've dealt with many queries on chat from site visitors who've then gone on to become customers!

You can co-browse, help them complete forms and bring up pages for them to look at. Anything which makes the customer more likely to interact is a big plus in my book. I don't have it on every page just the more popular ones e.g.

http://www.loansite.co.uk/work-at-home.htm

 

[Fuzzy]

I have it on my site - we've dealt with many queries on chat from site visitors who've then gone on to become customers!

You can co-browse, help them complete forms and bring up pages for them to look at. Anything which makes the customer more likely to interact is a big plus in my book. I don't have it on every page just the more popular ones e.g.

http://www.loansite.co.uk/work-at-home.htm

Russ - sounds like a good move you made - are they expensive to set up ?

 

[Loansite]

Hi Fuzzy.

We use a Liveperson hosted package which works out about £50 a month but there are cheaper ones around. But as I recall we had three free months when we set it up.

 

[Fuzzy]

Thanks Russ, guess another thing to add to our new site then

 

[Greg Findley]

Thanks for your replies everyone
I've been looking at http://livehelp.stardevelop.com/ which is £60 for a single domain licence, has anyone else had experience of this one?

Thanks,
Greg

 

[Fuzzy]

Thanks for your replies everyone
I've been looking at http://livehelp.stardevelop.com/ which is £60 for a single domain licence, has anyone else had experience of this one?

Thanks,
Greg

I haven't but look's good enough

 

[gweb]

I will often use them - but if the wait to hear a response is more than a couple of minutes then that's a bad reflection on the company.

 

[Fill-Your-World]

Personally, I love live chat features, and will always use them if they are available and I have a query. I fully intend to integrate one on my site, so would be very interested to hear reviews too

 

Thanks for your replies everyone
I've been looking at http://livehelp.stardevelop.com/ which is £60 for a single domain licence, has anyone else had experience of this one?

Thanks,
Greg

We used it in the past and had no problems. Now use Kayako LiveResponse as it came bundled with our Helpdesk and integrates with the Helpdesk for logging etc.

 

[maxine]

Yep always use them when available as it beats sitting in a queue listening to pan pipe music or "your call is imporant to us" or struggling to listen to people with very strong accents. Very irritating though when they are not manned like paypals.

 

[LINGsCARS]

Live Chat is fantastic. Mine is fully manned 9am-6pm 100%. I use WhosOn (www.whoson.co.uk, british software run by a guy called Stephen Parker. Excellent support) and I modify the window to include 3 x office webcams, useful documents like price lists and proposal forms people need.

Used professionally (not ignored) and answered as reliably as the telephone, it's a great asset. You can also monitor your website info and stats and see A LOT about your visitors, live, moving around your site.

Once again, I hate the spoofing of names and men as women. The webcams (as well as being fun) mean that customers can see who they are chatting to. All basic stuff, but rarely done. Hope it's OK to post this small pic: If not, it's here www.lingscars.com/images/am/chat.gif

Eg, this is 07.44 this morning. From the top:
AOL user looking at a car
Visitor from New Zealand from a webcrawler page, reading my blog
UK user using Google (try the search see where I come), looking at specific car
Someone working at Egg (they really should be working, hehehe), looking at specific car
Tiscali user, looking at specific car
Someone from a firm of brokers called Weller Russell Laws looking at private deal index page
One returning visitor looking at a specific car.

5 x XP users, 1 x Win 2k, 1 x Mac. The last user is the 113th unique today. (Generally 1500- 2000 per day)

One firefox user. One Safari user. You can see the IE versions.

You should see it when 50 people are online - hours of fun!!!!!

And on the pic below (just as I finished typing i spotted this), there is a returning visitor who has previously chatted, so I know her name, and that she works for L&G. Great, eh?

 

[AndrewHall]

I have used a few recently,and they are only any good if they are manned. Although, I have seen some that ring you up when you are surfing on a site - spooky!! That might work you, if you are not always online.

They are not always manning the live chat, but if you have a surf on Rackspace or WebEfforts you'll see what i mean.

 

[ServWise]

Thanks for your replies everyone
I've been looking at http://livehelp.stardevelop.com/ which is £60 for a single domain licence, has anyone else had experience of this one?

Thanks,
Greg

I wouldn't, I just got my money back (which took me two weeks and three emails to get BTW) because it was so buggy and the beta version of v3 which has been due to come out for some years now (not a great indicator) is more or less a minor upgrade with some VOIP features but no fixes it seems to the important stuff.

God knows when they actually plan to release it though...

I think the fact that they have taken down the forums and don't offer a demo version say it all really, there is very little help or documentation with the product. client side it works quite well but not the other way round and having more than 1 person available starts to cause major problems.

We have just installed Kayako LiveResponse, the windows app is a lot nicer, and it comes with their (almost industry standard) knowledge base software, lots more things can be configured (although this does make it more complicated to install) and they have a forum and regular updates (one already since I've been with them for maybe 2 weeks).

Okay it's twice the price of the stardevelop software but it's much more than twice the software especially when you consider the KB included.

 

[FastFinger]

I think live chat is a great marketing tool in a business. It provides live customer service, and help turn potential customers into real one. Have you tried using a virtual assistant like me to managed your live chat service? Just wonderin...

 

[freelancer]

I always use them for things like hosting in the US (I use hostgator) its cheaper than phone, and you get a quicker answer than email

 

[LINGsCARS]

I think live chat is a great marketing tool in a business. It provides live customer service, and help turn potential customers into real one. Have you tried using a virtual assistant like me to managed your live chat service? Just wonderin...

Fastfinger, my problem would be that you would have to improve the last 5% of your English. The other challenge may be that you are in the wrong time zone, if you are in Asia. That would mean you working through the night to provide daytime assistance. Where are you?

 

[Greg Findley]

Fastfinger, my problem would be that you would have to improve the last 5% of your English

That instantly reminded me of the Chinglish quote

Thanks very much for your feedback everyone, just working my way through some of the demo's for products suggested.

Greg

 

[LINGsCARS]

That instantly reminded me of the Chinglish quote

Greg

Yeah, but that's deliberate

I think language has to be a funny or pretty good. Jut being poor is not acceptable (well, to me).

 

[Greg Findley]

Pardon?

I completely agree

 

[LINGsCARS]

Misss-spellinks aside.

 

[mikemark]

I think it depends on the nature of your web site and what products and services do you offer.
For example...i run such a web site that i can not put live chat on that but some businesses like web hosting, SEO, and services based sites can take more advantage from live chat.

 

[wordperfect]

Hi Greg, I think I fall into the second level, depends on the site.
Being in a different time zone to most UK and US companies means that often when I am working they are sleeping so it is't practicle.
If your biz is local it isn't going to be a worry for you, but otherwise worth thinking about.
I mainly use them when I need an answer NOW, otherwsie probably the vast majority of the time I use Email, even when I know the other party is on line.
Having said that, I DO use SKYPE a lot as a biz tool.

 

[wordperfect]

Hi,
I think Live Chat is also suitable for high sales focused site. Because Live Chat allows to have limitless operators. You can handle your business separately. So it will also as effective as using on small business or a personal site.
I recommend Comm100 Live Chat[/URL] to you. It's free and hosted. No need to download and install. Also has limitless operators.
__________________
Carle
Comm100[/URL][/COLOR]

Hi Carle, from the link in your sig I guess you are part of Live Chat, can you give me some more details? Is it easy to set up etc? Sorry, I don't know how to contact you other than from here. Still learning!

 

If i have a query on a website i will always use it. You have the answer there and then as opposed to emailing / calling

 

[eiscltd]

Same for me.
when i have a problem with a product/service and go onto their website

if the info is not easily available i then use their live chat, at least i am not bounced through x number of "press 1" style automated phone systems and the experience on livechat has been always good so far.

following this discussion I made a quick search on free live chat systems and found www.volusion.com to be rather neat.

only problem I have is there is not a nice pop up alerting you that a new clients is ready to chat and you need to keep an eye on the volusion window as a consequence. maybe it is part of the paid version which I will investigate later.

I even put it on our site. Good idea to get to speak with potential clients, people having some issues with tenders and maybe catching the people that do not fill in the online form. www.winningtenders.eu

hope it helps

 

[Chunkford]

If you want a free solution with all the mod cons that the paid services offer e.g. co-browsing then have a look at http://www.livezilla.net
I've installed and used it on several clients sites, and it works a treat. Have a look the features and i will bet you will be impressed

 

[Martin-S]

We've just added a live chat powered by Click4Assistance to an customer's website. As an estate agent, people looking at properties always have different questions they'd like to ask, or viewings they'd like to book. I think that would be true of a lot of service industries - or high value purchases.

We've added it as a call to action at the bottom of the property details. "Interested in this? Click here to talk to us about it" sort of stuff.

It's proving very popular - mostly, it seems, with people who find it hard to talk on the phone at work.

We're impressed enough to have also added it to our own site and become a reseller of the product. We're even considering putting it into our software as a support tool.

Martin