Live chat for your website

[postpack]

Hi,
I have come accross this recently http://www.providesupport.com/
and am thinking about trying it out on my website at http://www.postpack.co.uk to give an extra level of customer support - Would appreciate any comments if anyone out there has or is using this and what they think - Is it actually helpful to customers or is it just a gimmick? - I really can't decide whether to bother with it or if it is the next big thing.
Also have seen this http://www.sitepal.com/avatars/?source=gawava02&kw=website+avatars&creative=589007289
Does this look professional or is it a bit too 'Cheesy American' for UK based websites. Again would appreciate some comments & feedback.

 

[Tempest]

I t hink the talking avatar thing could be a good thing.... or not.


It could be seen as friendly to those who visit your site who may have a disability preventing them from using your site to it's fullest advantage.
It could also be useful for explaining areas of your site where there is a lot of confusing information but simple verble instructions will suffice. 'To learn more about our pricing sturcture read the information provided below, or if you are ready to place your order, click continue.'

The down sides could be that it is seen as an annoyance and if you have to do the recording yourself (?) it may not have the same impact.

It's all about benefit outweighing the cost.

Do the benefits you and your customers will receive outweigh the costs of purchase and implementation?

 

[postpack]

No, the live chat is $99 per year for one user (small business) or $198 per year for 3 users. It's not a lot of money but the cost is not really the issue. It's whether or not it will be of benefit to anyone. If it means securing more business and customers then it's worth more. If it's of no use and just going to create more work then it's not woth 50 pence!:|

 

[Tempest]

For the live chat there's the need to train people to use it. Are you or your team confident with live telephone sales etc. etc. Personally, if I had to contact a supplier, I'd rater do it via phone. The one thing I have considered using recently is the instant chat via text (like instant messaging). Instant answer no jabber, if you get my meaning....

 

[RedEvo]

We use Provide Support on our site.

We've also installed it for a few clients most notably a new online music shop that has recently gone live. The staff took to it like a duck to water and customers are using it also.

Using the Provide Support console you get all kinds of interesting live information about visitors

d

 

[superman]

We setup a live chat via Chat4Support which is a free option, the real time information of where customers were in the site and what pages they visited was very useful. We found that some of our customers started using it for support requests as well, which is very good for recording the whole conversation and printing it off for our records.

Unfortunatley we are now having a problem with our copy and are unable to log in to it, the support team are working on it at the moment but we don't feel like we can moan to much as it is free. We have also taken it off our website until it is all resolved which is a bit annoying.

To be honest I would pay for it but as there are lots of companies who offer this, we're not sure which one to go with. If Chat4Support get our problems resolved I think we will give them another chance and look at switching at a later date.

Overall, I think they are a good idea if only for existing customers support, not many new customers actually seem to use it, they perfer to sign up for our 30 Days Free demo.

 

[livechatdir]

If you really want to give extra level of customer support, I would suggest you to go for liveperson. Though a bit expensive, nothing can beat the liveperson when it comes to provide integrated and holistic live help to your customers and prospects.

We are using it on our site M2Mhost.com. Its robust interface, rich features, flawless working is truly great.

 

[AdamW]

I've just moved to LivePerson from PHP Live! Support. I use a Mac day to day and although I have XP on it I don't have it on all the time and don't want to just to run the client software for other companies.

LivePerson has a Mac client, which although isn't fantastic does the job alot better and a browser window.. which I would always forget was open, would close down browser etc, and then forget to open up the chat again.

I have also found Live Supports support apalling. I purcahsed the windows client, whicih doesn't work but have yet to receive a response about what to do to make it work or about my refund! That was a month ago now.

However I'm not sure I can jusitfy the cost of LivePerson.. they will need to vastly improve the Mac client (things like growl notifications) for me to continue past my 15 day money back period! It also needs 3 bits of code on every page for it tofunction fully!

Adam

 

[AdamW]

And have just found out that the deal the sales agent did for me yesterday was a con

I told them it was too expensive for what I needed so he said he would talk to his supervisor. He gave me a discount code which they give to their resellers. Excellent I thought. Only today when I'm talking to support do I find out it is actually a reduced package they have given me which means I can do only the very very basics with it. It's their express package which I can't find anything about on the site and which I find very strange that it would be that one they give to resellers. Normally resellers get the bells and whistles at a vastly reduced price.

My inital fantastic impression has just shot downhill. And I'm certainly not paying what they want for the Pro package.

Oh well...

 

[David White]

The real question for this kind of option for your website like you say is if it is of a benefit to your customers but you must also consider the benefit for you as if you track customer details and emails for marketing then this kind of option might mean people just logging on to ask questions and this way if they do not have to enter details into your site to ask then you wil never know who they was?:|

 

[Mike Seddon]

I've just started to try Chat4support after reading one of the earlier posts.

It's already giving me some interesting stats. It's actually fun as well as informative to watch people as they arrive on your site.

At the moment, I'm just trying it the page for my Adwords Course.

You can see how it looks by heading over.

I'll let you know how it performs.

Of course you coould just visit my page and see it for yourself. We could even have a chat!

http://www.kksmarts.com/adwordstraining/adwordsspecialoffer.asp

Cheers
Mike

 

[Mike Seddon]

Well I promised to give my thoughts on this the Chat4support product.

Up until today I was very impressed. It's a great tool for watching the traffic on your site.

I know I have logs etc that will tell me the same information but it's interesting sometimes to watch people in real time as they arrive and where they go.

The service has been available all the time I've needed it so far with the only exception being today! It's down and so is their site. Still everyone has downtime occassionaly so we'll see how quickly it comes back.

Cheers
Mike

 

[tax-sorted]

i want to have live chat on my new site so am really interested in this post. If any one wants to send me a PM to let me know what they can do I would be interested

 

[Mike Seddon]

Update:

They are back up, so only a few hours downtime. If it's a one off then fine.

So, if anyone is interested to see what it looks like from the customer perspective, drop by my site below. You can also click on the chat window when you get there and see how it works for yourself.

Website Promotion

Cheers

Mike