as the topic states, does this make a big difference with your hosting business?.
providing info and support to your cust. as such in real time.

does it generate more sales,
does it give customers more satisfaction that theyre getting quick answers on the spot etc.

any info appreciated.

im wondering if i should buy one of the popular chat live systems.

Since we introduced live chat support, we've had great success and from what I've seen, our customers are extremely happy

A lot of times it's still necessary to ask the customer to submit a ticket, hence why we took our chat off completely. It's good for sales though.

It's not all that great. :/ I prefer using a ticket based system.

I prefer live chat if i was hosting, BUT i noticed most companys say they have live but 24/7 no one is their its jus their to get members :p

I second grim_reaper, many are not actually live.

However for many people, a web site is a very mission-critical application, therefore hearing "24/7 support" is a great boon to your business.

People want to know that in the worst case scenario, someone will be there, though it is more revenue-intensive on your side to manage the costs of doing so. Also, big-ticket corporation clients will not want a ticket, they will want someone live. If you don't have a phone line, live chat is a compensating factor.

cheers all.. atm, im contemplating whether to get star develop's live messenger or not hehe.

cheers all.. atm, im contemplating whether to get star develop's live messenger or not hehe.

Go for it! It's alot of money, but It can pay off.

We used to have Live Help up 22 hours per day, but there was a tendency for certain customers to abuse it. They would be soaking up hours of support time for insignificant issues, and taking time away from actual support tickets that were more urgent.

It has been my experience that the best customers are more respectful. Yes, there was an increase in sales as a result of having Live Help on all the time, but it attracted the types of customers I really do not want.

Starting out, I would suggest offering it because you will need any customers you can get. Once you are more established and determine which demographic you want to target, you can reconsider.

We are planning to offer again it soon, but not in the traditional way. :)

for technical support i always prefer email or better support website/ticket. why? because with support ticket you and your client will have log of conversation (i use cerberus helpdesk for technical support).

with conversation log, i think it will help both webhost and client incase the same problem happens again. because both can look at previous conversation and find how to solve it.

the problem with chat that i found is, clients have some probability to ask the same question again and again or asking simple technical question which already answered if they want to look at my knowledge base.

any way.. for sales i'm start using yahoo messenger for sales chat. it does attract prospectus client to come and talk with you, some times the client will try to do some negotiation which i think is good as they have some interest on our services.

so does live chat generate more sales? well i think yes.

We have a few clients that use the live-chat instead of telephoning - mostly overseas customers - but in the main people either call to discuss things, or create a ticket (for support)

I suppose it depends what you're selling and to whom.

for technical support i always prefer email or better support website/ticket. why? because with support ticket you and your client will have log of conversation (i use cerberus helpdesk for technical support).

with conversation log, i think it will help both webhost and client incase the same problem happens again. because both can look at previous conversation and find how to solve it.

the problem with chat that i found is, clients have some probability to ask the same question again and again or asking simple technical question which already answered if they want to look at my knowledge base.

any way.. for sales i'm start using yahoo messenger for sales chat. it does attract prospectus client to come and talk with you, some times the client will try to do some negotiation which i think is good as they have some interest on our services.

so does live chat generate more sales? well i think yes.
Not sure what chat program you've used but you get 'transcripts' with the ones I've used.

In our case, yes we get mostly the same questions through live chat though I'm more than happy to answer them and it does help generate more sales.

We use Stardevolp Livehelp and must Say it is the best we have used

We have also gained a few Extra customers Because of it due to the fact that we also use it as a sales tool for new customers when they are looking at the site and offer them Help to choose Etc

We also use a ticket system for general Support However for Urgent Support our customers know that they can contact us via livehelp and get a quicker response than via Ticket System

Well thats my opinion

Tony

If, you can afford a dedicated person for live support then only go for it or otherwise go for Ticket Based support system as it make no sense that you invest in a software which always shows you offline!

We are providing Live chat system for sales and ticket based system for tech/other support and my customers love it.

It's definately gogo...

does it give customers more satisfaction that theyre getting quick answers on the spot etc.



As a customer, I can say it is great... most of the time I don't have a real "support" question, but rather just a question that someone can answer in a couple of minutes. Stuff like, can you look at this url and tell me if it will work (or if they have seen any issues).

I know when to use support vs. chat though... maybe some won't, but if it seems a fairly detailed support question, you might want to tell them to put in a support ticket. Also, having people on the chat who can actually help, is a big plus. I recently went to a company with support chat and the people really were not support. It was terrible.

Exactly, some issues require a few minutes of researching. Its easier and quicker for the host to solve the problem if they don't have someone on chat harassing them every few seconds... "whats wrong? is it because of... is it fixed yet... why not... oh, and by-the-way, I had another question about some 3rd party software that I want you to fix even though its not your responsibility..."

Support tickets are more efficient. You can prioritize them and deal with the more urgent ones first, and you can finish each one more quickly because you are not being constantly interrupted.

Live Help is ok if you have a major support infrastructure in place and can designate certain people to deal with Live Help and only Live Help, but again, that is not as efficient. To truly reap the benefits of live help it is best to have it on 24/7.

Of course, the BEST way to provide support is to make it so that your customers don't need it. Keep everything up and running and stay on top of it all the time.

how can you make ony presales people request a chat ? not current customers ?

how can you make ony presales people request a chat ? not current customers ?

Label it as such. But I don't think it is a good idea, unless your support is tops... I purchased an upgrade to acronis true backup and support had not contacted me in a couple of days, after I put in the support ticket. To say the least, I went back to the site and harrassed online chat (pre-sale) until I got the situation fixed.

I would have respected pre-sale chat only rule if support would have answered within the 48 hours they claim on the site.

If, you can afford a dedicated person for live support then only go for it or otherwise go for Ticket Based support system as it make no sense that you invest in a software which always shows you offline!

It's definately gogo...

thansk for all the reponses!.

yep i agree... though i tend to be online freqently, so suppose it will benefit in a sense. ill probably be using this primarily for "sales relation enquiries" only. or possibly for urgent technical issues (cust 100% of time wont likely care lol :blush: ).

as for the ticket support sys.. like Everity made a good point.. without too many interruptions, enables you to priortise each ticket accordingly.. from a technical standpoint.

theres two sides to this.. from a customer point... its good to ask questions abt sales etc (for the impatient) to get answers on the spot.. therefore will boost cust confidence in your service. likely waiting for an email response, they would off found some other host.

And from tech support view.... it can/may take up alot of time & resource. ie. asking of insignificant questions etc..

- Though... i have a another quesiton.. in a scenario of them asking a 'unrelated quesiton'... how does one go abouts avoiding this without being "rude"?.. silent treament?.

so to conclude my thread.. after some difficulty research finding *free* ticket sys.. im deciding to invest and purchase the "Kayako E-support suite".

As for live chat support.. im leaning towards "Star Develop's Live Messenger". its one off payment thing and not happy abt others as such paying per month for a service i most likely make use of (at this stage anyways).

although hosting business is tough, im doing this for a hobby or make few bucks here and there... in the long run, i suppose it will benefit me well :D

Though... i have a another quesiton.. in a scenario of them asking a 'unrelated quesiton'... how does one go abouts avoiding this without being "rude"?.. silent treament?.


Lol, its impossible to avoid without being rude. You can try silent treatment, but its best just to be honest: "I'm sorry, but I can only deal with one issue at a time." If they try to make small talk you can be polite, but firm. "I'm sorry, I would love to chat about your cats and how they are just like little people, but I have other customers waiting in the queue and I really need to get back to providing technical support."

Good luck. :)

If you haven't already, check out www.providesupport.com We use it for our Live Chat, and it's become an invaluable tool for our sales. I agree though for support, it's best to have a ticketing system. Explain to customers that the chat system is for sales issues and quick/easy support issues. Anything more complicated, you can simply refer them to the ticketing system.

I've seen alot of criticism here for LiveChat as a support medium. Let me weigh in here.

We started doing LiveChat 2 years ago, using LivePerson. We currently do 2000+ support chats a month. While LiveChat certainly requires more manpower than Ticket Support, it is nothing compared to what is required for phone support. A single operators can do 3 chats simultaneously. If you were a typical hosting company with for example 1000 customers, you'd need no more than 1 person dedicated to handling chat, per shift. Of course, he'd have enough free time to do many more things. If you had 4000 customers, you'd probably need 2 people per shift (peak time) and 1 person in non-peak hours, but they could also handle tickets (along with the rest of your team)

Taking care of an issue on LiveChat effectively takes the same amount of time, that it would take for you to solve an issue via ticket. Infact, I think it takes less as the Customer is there to provide the operator with any information he or she needs, instantly. However, Live Chat means the issue needs to be handled right there (not so for tickets). So live chat simply requires you to have enough man power to deal with issues, real-time. It doesn't multiply the time spent by your team. Any good livechat software has a queue system, so when you have a major spike in support requests (i think the most i've seen at my company was 30 simultaneous requests, usually due to some major problem.. still not many considering the size of our client base), your live chats would be queued with an approximate waiting time given to clients.

One important requirement for LiveChat however is that you have an L3 sys admin available at all times, if you really want to provide effective LiveChat support (that can solve most issues, Live). While L1/L2 operators can handle support chats most of the times, they can always refer back to an L3 sysadmin for more complex issues. the L3 admin doesn't have to become involved in the chat (but shadow it), and can easily handle other issues at the same time.

Another crucial thing in LiveChat is the software, a good support system like LivePerson can allow operators to easily handle a significant work load. It can also covert chats into tickets, and allow operators to get back to customers at a later time.

That is my 2 cents on LiveChat. We've had great success with it, and our customers are extremely happy

I Think it is. Since many clients would feel much more easy with click on live chat and talk to some one at real time instead post ticket and wait for answer that may come or not....Or else call some international phone ## and hope for some answer (without consider the cost of this call...)