Submitted by: Alan Jones
I know, I know I can hear your comments now: What s this guy up to? Doesn t he realize that talking like this is just biting the hand that feeds him? I thought about that. But after some thought I realized that as good as live chat is, no matter how much live chat improves the branding of a company, or the great loyalty live chat instills in a customer there are businesses that shouldn t use it.
In my wanderings around chat rooms on the Internet, I came across a few businesses that had a bad experience or two with live chat services. I will leave it up to you to decide the truth of these complaints. Well, maybe not entirely, I m sure I will have to throw my two cents in along the way.
What if found was some comments on a forum called Site Referenced with this question as its topic: Live chat services: do we love em or hate em? Although a bit dated the responses are still topical today.
Here is a brief summary of the original question: I have a Live Chat service on my site, but my customers rarely use it. What are your experiences? If the shopper doesn’t need to use the live chat function, is there any value in just knowing it’s available?
The responses were interesting. For example: I think yes, subconsciously visitors like the notion that they could reach someone if it was necessary. That it might help with barriers to trusting the site enough to buy stuff. True (Jim)
There you are, in black and white; if you aren t going to use live chat, don t bother having it. Or this: We have live chat and we use it a lot. And its easy to put on all the pages too.We get a lot of use out of ours because we’ve got 2-3 people in there all morning and as many as 10-15 sometimes at night. But the thing is that if there is not anyone in the chat room then it s a waste – people go inside and find it empty and then they leave. But the thing is that once you get 50-60 regular chatters where you know everyone by first name, where they live, how many kids they have, what they do, etc… in other words when you’ve got a lot of friends in the chat room its totally cool.
(me again) This is exactly what I was driving at with my title for this blog. I have gone to web sites offering live chat only to discover that when you call in nobody is home. For me, this is more agitating then going to a site without live chat.
Bottom line, if you are going to use live chat and do not have someone available to interact with the customer sends a very negative message to the customer.
About the Author: Alan Jones currently manages the Marketing Operations of Provide Live Help
providelivehelp.com
, the developers of a State of the Art live chat
Source:
isnare.com
Permanent Link:
isnare.com/?aid=780278&ca=Recreation
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