Is a "live chat" solution pay off.

[happierr]

Right now, I am on borrowed money (ei not alot of cash on hand) and I am looking to get clients.

Do you think that a live chat pays off in turning visitors into clients? Is it worth 18 bucks a month?

I was looking at http://www.salesrep.com/

Is this the cheapest/poweful solution?

Thanks

[silverfreak]

I would say yes, it is well worth the extra cash. People like to be able to reach somebody to talk with obviously and with live chat right there you're making it that much easier. I haven't delt with salesrep.com before but I have had luck with:

phplive
click chat sold

The previous place I worked at used both, and both were pretty simple to use and set up. Can't give you a quote on the price though. :)

[Chicken]

I'd agree. Looking at a web site isn't the same as knowing that there's someone there on the site to help you if you have a question. Quick answers to questions will result in more sales, I think that's a given. You'll end up putting a bit more work into it (meaning directing people, answering questions that might be on the site, etc.), but if you can catch someone on the site, you probably stand a better chance of selling them right then and there.

[sprintserve]

I guess the problem is manning it. More often than not, I see the offline icon ....

[DeadWatch]

Watch out, Live Chat's can kill!

I've been doing a lot of reasearch on different hosting providers (well, more dedicated server providers) and had about 50 tabs open across 10 windows, and someone hit me with a Live Chat and POP! Every window disapeered. Straw that broke the camel's back, eh?

Also, other thing, check out http://www.craftysyntax.com/CSLH/ ... It's the best Live Support package i've seen that's TOTALLY FREE! Open Source and Free Software are beautiful things. I'm going to set this up later today, so if anyone wants help installing or wants to play with it (once I get it set up), let me know.

[Chicken]

Originally posted by sprintserve:

I guess the problem is manning it. More often than not, I see the offline icon ....
Good point, and honestly I'd rather see no image than an "offline" image. Also, you may be rushed if you have more than one person asking you questions, and that may come across. Chatting is only good when people chat, which is why I don't use chat programs. It's annoying to sit there and wait for messages to appear while people type or handle others.

[DeadWatch]

What I figured I'd do is something obscure for the offline message. Though I guess I'll end up learning PHP+GTK to have a 'native app' to link up with, since I seem to be bad at closing my browser windows :) That would be my problem... it'd say there was someone online, but i'd really be passed out in the chair!

[niyogi]

CSLH seems to be a bandwidth hog in my opinion.

As for the value that Live Chat can provide, we've found that it can make or break the deal. Some customers want to "be sure" before making a purchase decision. Having somebody live to speak with before making the decision is extremely effective in these cases.

Roj

[DeadWatch]

Yeah, I can understand that one. If i don't get a reply within 2 hours, after hours, i get peturbed. So the fac that my current provider has basically abandoned me really ticks me off...

[tailzie]

If you haven't looked at http://www.boldchat.com, you should check out their features. I use them atm for free and I put them on multiple websites. They let you use a little tag so you know where its from. With the free option, you can't switch out the online/offline option... so I just made my own script that I can turn it on/off with javascript. I'm not sure if they allow that, but they haven't complained thus far.

I agree that its better to have something that say "contact us" instead of "live chat offline"... but I do understand if its in the middle of the night and I'm up again looking at websites. But its good idea to be there atleast during business hours, it does make an impression, so make sure its a good one, not a bad one.

[seekinsoul]

You could try Help Center Live (http://www.helpcenterlive.com/). It seem pretty good, logs all the chats, referrers, and all that happy stuff. IMHO, I'd say it's a nice piece of PHP scripting.

[niyogi]

We recommend HCL to many of our clients as well as use it on our own website. Very effective. :)

Roj

[DeadWatch]

Ahh! Thanks! Either they don't list themselves in sourceforge.net or I missed them. That looks very nice!

[Webbase]

Originally posted by DeadWatch:
Also, other thing, check out http://www.craftysyntax.com/CSLH/ ... It's the best Live Support package i've seen that's TOTALLY FREE! Open Source and Free Software are beautiful things.

I found it to have problems with long chat sessions and to be abit rough around the edges.

I suggest: http://www.helpcenterlive.com/

Free or $30 with the Windows client (must have in my opinion) works great, hides away on my computer until someone want's to chat.

As for sales, doesn't really do much for us. It seems to be of more use to existing customers. Perhaps it's a culture thing I dunno..

[Rincewind]

I don't have live chat in my presales. But several customers have requested chatting via MS, AOL and Yahoo Messenger prior to purchasing. This has worked well and all of them have converted to sales. The problem is that they continue to use the chat service for support rather than posting an email or support ticket. Do any of you with live chat have simmilar problems?

[vito]

Originally posted by sprintserve:

I guess the problem is manning it. More often than not, I see the offline icon .... Extremely important point to consider.

I'm online many hours a day so it's no problem manning Live Chat. I bought and installed Chattist (I don't think they're around anymore) last year. But to be honest, I ended up keeping it in the Offline status most of the time simply because when I'm working throughout the day, I find it a real intrusion having something popup where I have to immediately interrupt the task I'm performing to cater to the chat. Some can multi-task better than others, I suppose.

I ended up getting comments from visitors that they were put off by the Offline status they saw everytime they visited the site. I have since converted the Offline image to an "Email Us" button. So instead of having to go to a contact page, they get a popup mailer right away.

And because I'm always online, they end up getting a reply within minutes anyways, which always floors them. :D

So back to the point, be sure you can adequately man the system. Otherwise it will end up working against you, making it seem that nobody is ever around.

Vito

[happierr]

Vito, great point, don't bring up the fact that you are "Offline" . If you happen to be online, your pic could say so... But a lot of offline would be bad...

[vito]

Actually, sprintserve made the point first, but I'm happy to take credit for it. :D

:banana:

Vito

[happierr]

sprintserve yOu rock!

[Revise Media]

Originally posted by DeadWatch:
Also, other thing, check out http://www.craftysyntax.com/CSLH/ ... It's the best Live Support package i've seen that's TOTALLY FREE! Open Source and Free Software are beautiful things. I'm going to set this up later today, so if anyone wants help installing or wants to play with it (once I get it set up), let me know.

While shopping for a live chat program to use, I gave this package a try and was severly disappointed. It unquestionably had some great features, but the visitor chat window took over a minute to load on my home DSL connection. In that time, the potential client will be miles away. I ended up going with boldchat (thanks to this thread), but I'm not entirely sure if I'll continue with it. I'll post more on this when I've had more time to evaluate it.

[amidala0628]

Originally posted by happierr:


Do you think that a live chat pays off in turning visitors into clients? Is it worth 18 bucks a month?

I was looking at http://www.salesrep.com/

Is this the cheapest/poweful solution?

Thanks

Having a live chat option for your visitors is a good way of generating leads for your services. Other than being in touch with your visitors real time, you get to make them aware of another form of contact to you can be in case they sign up.

It is true that if you have this option, most people would chat with you rather than send an email or create a ticket. But it does make your customers feel that you are also committed to serving them to the fullest and making sure that they are satisfied with your product by being AVAILABLE to them for issues. Sometimes, email support does not fit this 100% as there are times when emails are answered after a few hours of being sent-- in essence, customers will have to wait for an answer unlike with chat, they are like already connected to a real person who can immediately attend to their issues. Of course, it will not serve its purpose if you are offline - so if you say 24/7 live chat support, you definitely be online for 24/7 with a "real person" answering chats.

Another benefit of live chat is if you also offer toll free phone support. Most people would [still] rather chat with you that call. That saves you long distance / phone call fees.

We've used PHPlive, liveperson and boldchat. Of the three, we've had very good responses and experience with liveperson. Our customers seem to think so too as they would sign up for liveperson rather than with PHPLive. There are even some who switched from PHPLive to Liveperson (despite the high cost!)

Just sharing

:D