Forum Moderators: buckworks
I've searched the archives for info on this without much joy. It appears HumanClick has been purchased by LivePerson and their free trial lasts a grand total of 6 days.
Has anyone had experience of these or any other live support systems and if so, can you tell me what they were like for ease of setup and operation?
Cheers
Cy
Some things I have learned while shopping: they are all negotiable. Absolutely. Call or click on their own live support, ask about pricing (which hardly any of them actually publish), then just keep quiet. The less you say, the more the prices fall.
The other thing to watch for is security. Some of them have known security issues which you will only learn by googling them.
I would not get involved with live support unless someone can be available 18 hours in the day. That's just my opinion. "Leave a message" just doesn't cut it as far as I'm concerned. There have been testimonials here about live support as a great tool to increase sales and I would think that is true. But I also think you have to have a talented, savvy person on the support line to optimize the potential of the live support feature. For sure, they would have to have the ability to type quickly and cleanly. After that, they would have to be what is known in sales as "a closer". All that being said, I'm still shopping.
Cheers
Cy
It does slow load time, even when it's working.
<a href="aim:goim?Screenname=joeblowseller&Message=I_want_to_buy">AOL</a>
<a href="http://edit.yahoo.com/config/send_webmesg?.target=joeblowseller&.src=pg">Yahoo</a>
<a href="http://web.icq.com/whitepages/message_me/1,,,00.icq?uin=106925509&action=message">ICQ</a>
Trillian handles all the IM connections. The small investment has paid off with some big sales. Use it to focus on the sale, otherwise it becomes a big time waster.
clickseva.com
clickchatsold.com
hellohelp.com
It's incredibly useful for our existing customers but has been used less frequently by prospective purchases. Having said that, I think it's a resource that we'd rather be with, than without as it's yet another communication tool that helps gain customers and keep them.
we've got people in both Northern and Southern Hemispheres, so round the clock is pretty easy.
And I thought that covering more time zones has something to do with East-West, not North-South? ;)
I've had this done for several clients, in ASP, PHP, CGI, ect.
You pretty much ask for a chat room with a waiting room (user provides name & other info if necessary), chat queue (in case more than one user shows up), private area (customer service desk - one on one chat room), when a user provides their info and clicks "get support" (or whatever), you will need this to refresh a frame on the business-end computer so that it plays a sound on loop, and that's about it.
Business hours can be your office or call center.
Allow submission of a contact form if a rep doesn't respond within 30-60 seconds. Always give them something to read as they wait (EX: Benefits of your service, ect.)
Total cost can be under $400 for something like this and it's yours with no monthly upkeep besides what you pay for the site and the rep.
HyperGeek.com will have something similar to this for exclusive clients and advertisers.
Always consider more than just the bells and whistles of the added functionality to your site.
What kind of client base do you have?
How is your lead generation?
Is something of this nature NECESSARY to the survival or expansion of your business (and by expansion, I don't mean making a bigger site - I mean, will it make you more money by having this on your site?)
How educated is the rep on the other end of the chat? Last thing you need is someone typing, "OuR prodktz R 3733t3 d00d!"
ect., ect., ect.
I have actually never heard of services like HumanClick
resulting in anything but extraneous, unnecessary costs.
In all fairness, I'm sure the quality of their services are great - since they wouldn't have survived this long if they didn't provide what would be considered a valuable service to their clients. I have also never heard of any technical or support problems concerning these services.
The bottom line here was that they just weren't worth the money since it wasn't really an investment in the businesses, but an additional bill at the end of the month that really had no way of paying for itself.
I would say if you are doing atleast $500/day in sales, it is a must have. However, it might be too expensive to provide support inhouse and you are possibly better off outsourcing this to one of the many companies that specialise in support. Don't worry if you are a small company, there are companies that will take you on. If you can't find any let me know and I'll be happy to recommend some.
Should be enough to see how clients use it and if it is really necessary and worth buying.
I have small experience. I used live2support.com service. Found simple and effective application at very low price. Live help is very helpful if you have reasonable sales or have passions to login everyday and quit with any chat.
One more thing I realize that now I have better idea about my site visitors. Now I know few more areas of my web site where we really need improvement. :)
Cheers
Amit
We used Groopz as a live sales support tool for a while, but we found that it actually scared too many of our customers away. People didn't like to know that their surf patterns were being watched. When we popped up a window to ask if they had any questions, most customers would bolt. The java app was also a bit heavy, which slowed down the page loads.
All in all, I think it's a great idea, it's just that many customers aren't yet ready for that kind of intrusion into their surfing experience. Best thing to do is try it out on your customers and see what they think.
Falcon
