Live chat

[kaniini]

So, a few questions:

Do you guys think offering live chat on a hosting company site is worth it?  Are the conversions enough to justify paying a few people to man it?

Is there any live chat system that connects to either XMPP or IRC, so that we do not have to use proprietary software just to run the live chat, or is this something else I get to belt out in a weekend?

 

[Jade]

I think offering live chat within a hosting company is an absolute must. Your customers like the feeling of having someone there 24x7 if their facing technical problems.

 

[Slownode]

I think some form of live chat is important, from manned IRC to private chats on the website. It doesn't really matter what, as long as there is something.

 

[BlackoutIsHere]

I think live chat makes sense if it fits your product/price-range. Honestly just having a really good ticket response time might be just as good.

 

[Jade]

I think live chat makes sense if it fits your product/price-range. Honestly just having a really good ticket response time might be just as good.

That's true, although a potential client would love to see a big green "LIVE CHAT ONLINE" button

 

[MannDude]

Only if you can staff it, then do it. If you or your staff is not online, then have the 'Chat offline' button be a transparent 1px X 1px image or have it not display on your site at all. Nothing looks worse than viewing your site 5 different times on different days and always seeing 'OFFLINE'.

Be warned that Live Chat means most customers will ignore skip opening a ticket and just hit you up via Live Chat.

Customers appreciate good help that can be done over live chat. If you've got to tell them 10 minutes after opening a chat with a staff member to then open a ticket, they're going to be pissed. So make sure those staffing your chat has access to do things.

 

[WebSearchingPro]

I usually use Live Chat as an indicator of their customer service. Sometimes I click it to see if they are offline or online at the time. If they say they are 24/7 and its offline several days in a row at different times, then ... that just makes me sad.

But as MannDude says, you should have it invisible when its "offline" so no one tries to interact with it or realize that no ones there. There is nothing worse than needing help and seeing the offline message. For MannDude's second concern you could have a good notice *BEFORE* starting the chat its for sales/small issues/questions, for issues with their accounts they need to send in a ticket for security purposes and track-ability.

 

[kaniini]

I think I will just add a web chat applet for our already existing IRC channel, which has quite a bit of people enthusiastic about the service.  It seems easier.

 

[HalfEatenPie]

I know BlueVM has their IRC channel as their live chat system.  From my experience I personally would not do that as many people will come complaining and state "I submitted a ticket two days ago" (and later support would come in and say "You just submitted it right now...").  I personally would find it more frustrating than anything really.  

 

[Jeffrey]

Live Chat is a MUST!  It doesn't matter what the live chat software is, you always have to be there for your clients.  

 

[perennate]

I've never seen a provider where the live chat was remotely useful. Either no one was in the live chat, or the live chat was completely unhelpful (unable to resolve any problems, probably unable to do anything at all so what's the point?). Anyway I don't see a way to make it useful, support tickets work well; but providers who have a live chat that's useless just make it harded for themselves and their clients.

IRC is nice because anyone can communicate with each other.

 

[Damian]

We don't do help over live chat because it makes it extremely difficult to track issues that we're having. How do you guys that do tech support over live chat know when you have the same issue over and over again?

 

[BlackoutIsHere]

IRC is nice because anyone can communicate with each other.

Yeah I find it great for getting community tips even before you actually contact the helpdesk. 

 

[Aldryic C'boas]

We run a community IRC; most simple questions/problems are resolved by the helpful folks hanging around in there before a client even needs to open a ticket.

As far as on-site live chat.... eh, we've done similar before, and it's _always_ far more headache than it's worth. You'll end up with the one guy absolutely insisting that his "why so lag" caused by a shitty emulator is priority, and tie up far too much of your time while legitimate problems have to wait.

 

[serverian]

Live Sales Chat with a guy who can give you instant quotes: YES

Live Support Chat with a useless guy telling everyone to open ticket: NO

 

[MartinD]

Live Sales Chat with a guy who can give you instant quotes: YES

Live Support Chat with a useless guy telling everyone to open ticket: NO

This. Sales and customer service is fine (i.e. questions about products, how do you get XYZ ordered etc). Technical support, no. It doesn't work. Period.

 

[Magiobiwan]

BlueVM has a Community IRC channel which is for UNOFFICIAL support, however staff members do idle/hang out in it. Anything that involves access to their servers or customer info MUST have a ticket for confirmation. I think that a live chat system for a LEB host is impractical. Employees would spend a lot of time waiting for not a lot of money. And, be serious customers. It's a CHEAP SERVER. While we may strive to have insanely fast support response times, it won't happen all the time. We too are humans. We do take vacations, we do need sleep (esp. when we run out of coffee), and we do need to do stuff OTHER than tickets all day long. That's my $2 (calculating for inflation. $0.02 is sort of nothing).

 

[BlackoutIsHere]

a lot of time waiting for not a lot of money

This sucks worse then anything ever D: 

 

[jcaleb]

I prefer host have wiki so i can search for answers to my issues. then next preference is good ticket response time in case i cant find answer.

 

[shawn_ky]

Forums, tickets and wikis... Live chat for LE? I don't expect it. I'd rather pay less and wait for ticket response.