Customer support live chat recommendations?

Client wants to offer live chat for customer support

[sonjay]

A client wants to offer live chat on his web site for customer support. It seems appropriate for his site, which sells very technical products and people might often not know exactly which product they want. (The products are so technical that I don't have any idea what any of them are for or what they do!)

There are about a gazillion chat services out there, ranging from free to very expensive, and the features they offer vary wildly. The client will have the chat support available during business hours and absolutely wants the ability to "switch buttons" so that after hours it says "Chat not available." (Ideally, he could set the hours somewhere and the button would switch automatically.) He doesn't want ads from third parties to appear in the chat window. He would like the ability to have built-in "canned responses" for the really common questions that get asked over and over, but can live without it. He would be willing to pay up to about $40/month for the service.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a good hosted chat service that would meet these needs? Particularly if you've had personal experience with one or more. I can find plenty of 'em on the Web; I'd like to hear about your experiences.

[Dpeper]

I built my own for one client its fairly easy. No monthly fees, no advertising.

[wayzel]

Two to look at are Liveperson and BoldChat. BoldChat is the cheaper of the two, right around $40 for the "Pro" version with all the bells and whistles. I implemented Boldchat a few days ago and it can do what you are looking for.

[sonjay]

Dpeper, more power to you, but I'd prefer to not go that route. Support would fall to me anytime something doesn't work right -- and I just don't need that.

wayzel, BoldChat was one I was looking at. How was it to set up and get it going? Does it work as advertised? Any problems or hitches?

[eWhisper]

Boldchat takes minutes to set up and get running. However, if you want the more sophisticated services, the initial few dollars quickly jumps to the price of the other chat programs - so don't be fooled by the cheap looking price unless you don't want those other features.

Liveperson is great, but the priciest of them all.

[wayzel]

I considered both LivePerson and Boldchat. They are both relatively painless to implement, but Liveperson's charges were hard to justify, so I went with Boldchat. I've only had it for a week but it works as advertised so far.

Some differences: Liveperson has SSL support so you can take credit card orders via chat. BoldChat does not yet (but coming soon.)
Liveperson allows you to set up automated scripts to automatically invite people to chat if they do certain things on your site that trigger your rules, for example looking at more than 7 pages in the catalog section, etc. With Boldchat, you can see in real-time what visitors are doing, but you have to invite them manually. No big deal though, anyway, unless you are a 24 x 7 operation, you only want people to be invited if you are ther ready to chat with them.

Similarities: you can push pages, see referrers, chat with multiple visitors simultaneously, create canned responses to save time, see when the other side is typing, etc.

[Joop]

You should also have a look at Crafty Syntax. This has been developed by Eric Gerdes and is free, apart from the fact that Eric has developed this in his free time and needs donations to keep going. You can install it yourself - I did it so it must be straightforward and you can push URLs and images.

It might not be as sophisticated as you need at this stage, but it's heading in the right direction, and even if it's not for you, others on this forum might find it useful.

[clarkanderson]

You can have a live operator service available on your site who would greet every one before they leave. The operators can greet visitors on the website, help them during their decision making process and increase sales and provide customer service. Having a WebGreeter on your site will assist your visitors by taking requests for information, providing answers, and even help them navigate your site.

Regards,

CLARK
LiveAdmins LLC

[blaze]

One of the problems with BoldChat is that it uses javascript popups which are blocked by popup blockers so chat initiation doesn't work.

[Raymond]

Dpeper: Were you able to create the "Push page" function? I made a chat script of my own, but i just can't get the pushing right.

[sonjay]

Heh heh.... blaze, you just pushed me toward BoldChat! I don't like sites that initiate chat (in fact I hate them) and I don't want to encourage my clients to do that. ;)

Does anyone know if any of the common popup blockers cause problems with a user-initiated chat? I know that Mozilla's popup blocker doesn't; I can cause a popup to happen by clicking a link, I just don't get uninitiated ones.

[lusagalo]

Hello,
My experience with live support is pretty good.

I am just having a Boldchat and it works pretty well. Itīs a great way to demonstrate your site is alive and with support behind even though not so many people try to chat.

But, those who chat, normally buy something. I think I am not exagerating by telling that at least 75% of the people chatting finally do places an order.

Well, maybe some really busy websites wont say the same.
But, in a niche market which needs expertise, live support can make the point.

GOOD LUCK!

LUIS.

[clarkanderson]

Since WebGreeter is a jave applet, therefore most pop-up blocker do not block the window. So far they have not received any negative feedback relating to this issue.

Regards,

CLARK
LiveAdmins LLC

[eWhisper]

I don't like java applet chats. They take a moment to load, and many people just don't want to wait. Other people don't have java enabled.

Usually pop up blockers allow a window to open when you make a click, and my pop up blockers don't stop bold chat from opening.

I think its also worth noting that clarkanderson either works for, or promotes WebGreeter as the tagline under his name he keeps adding is the website for that software.

[Faith]

Click, Chat, Sold is very good and the customers also seem to have no problems with it, it's cheaper than Live Person but offers very similar benefits.

[sonjay]

Thanks for the info and tips, everyone. You've given me some good info to chew on.

[blaze]

Well sonjay you should let us know which one you went with and why..

[Philosopher]

I've been using one called PHP Live for a while now. It starts at 20/mo. for the basic and goes to 60 for the top of the line plan. It may be what you're looking for.

[sonjay]

I went with BoldChat ... well, I recommended it to the client, and he went along with my recommendation. Just this morning, I placed the code and uploaded it on one test page, and he had his staff person who will be monitoring it play around with it to make sure she knows how to use it. A couple hours later he e-mailed back and said, "Take it live. This is SO cool!"

So we'll see how it goes. This is day one of their live chat support......

[danieljean]

sonjay- please tell us how it goes!