Forum Moderators: phranque
This is regarding a live chat like liveperson.
I want to hear some feedback from webmasters who own websites where they sell a good amount of products and use online help like liveperson as one of the means of sales. Below are some questions we want some feedback on.
1. Did you notice a boost in sales with online help?
2. Did you notice a large increase in tracking and technical questions? To the point where it ties you up and does more harm then good?
3. Does it seem to help retain loyal customers who come back and use the live help to buy stuff?
4. We would also use if we seen a customer leaving the site and they had stuff in their cart. How does that usually go over, do you generate extra sales?
We want to use Liveperson chat, however we do not want to exhaust our staff if it does not create a lot of extra sales and customer satisfaction. We would use during the daytime to help relief our phone and email. I want to hear the goods and bads based on personal experience.
I don't sell products, rather a subscription to an online software and use a live chat extensively. I love it, and so do my customers. I have the chat "outside" the program on the general website for non-customer questions, and "inside" the program for tech support.
My answers below:
1. Did you notice a boost in sales with online help?
Not a noticable increase in sales
2. Did you notice a large increase in tracking and technical questions? To the point where it ties you up and does more harm then good?
lots of tech support questions, but always good to help customers.
3. Does it seem to help retain loyal customers who come back and use the live help to buy stuff?
ABSOLUTELY esssential for creating loyalty
4. We would also use if we seen a customer leaving the site and they had stuff in their cart. How does that usually go over, do you generate extra sales?
I can also "suggest" a chat, but that has rarely worked for me. I think it annoys the people to see a popup inviting them to chat.
1. For a pure ecommerce site, selling tangible goods
Mostly used to ask when stuff would arrive after it had been ordered, even though that information had already been given multiple times including in an email! That was a waste of time. Very occasional queries about items for sale but it would be hard to say it was make or break in relation to any sale.
Client opted to disconinue it as it became more of a nuisance than anything else.
3. For a site selling courses delivered by email
Again not a huge success, but mainly for logistical reasons - most of the people who purchased the courses turned out to be in a different time zone, which was not really the intended market initially, but became the most important one as things evolved. Since the cost of providing support out of normal business hours was not likely to be offset by sales, it was again dicontinued. In any case the effect on sales was judged to be marginal at best.
3. A site promoting a trade-type exhibition to both the public and to potential exhibitors
This one worked. Several stands were sold to exhibitors because they could get a quick response to their questions. They tended to use the facility, and be impressed at its availablity, and there were relatively few "waste of time" calls from potential attendees (it was a pay at the door, not a pre-booking gig for them).
On initiating chat sessions - I RUN from sites that do this, in the same way as I RUN from stores with overly pushy assistants. Except that online it is freakier somehow as you cannot even see a person.
We use Liveperson:
>>> 1. Did you notice a boost in sales with online help?
We have found a 5% increase in sales due to having the chat. We get around 80% of those orders through either the chat window or the customer ordering online. The rst call and mention they chatted.
>>> 2. Did you notice a large increase in tracking and technical questions? To the point where it ties you up and does more harm then good?
We find that it takes away from the emails with those questions. So if we go 25 email for status now we get 15 emails and 10 chats.
>>> 3. Does it seem to help retain loyal customers who come back and use the live help to buy stuff?
We find these customers to be our most loyal. The widgets we sell can be confusing to the the nature of the product so customers like the ability to have realtime questions answered.
>>> 4. We would also use if we seen a customer leaving the site and they had stuff in their cart. How does that usually go over, do you generate extra sales?
We have not fully integrated the chat into our cart yet.
>>> We want to use Liveperson chat, however we do not want to exhaust our staff if it does not create a lot of extra sales and customer satisfaction. We would use during the daytime to help relief our phone and email. I want to hear the goods and bads based on personal experience.
Couple of other points:
Live person will give you realtime stats on how the visitor found you (i.e. an email, google aol, etc..) with the keywords used.
One negative is you can go 3 hours without a chat then have 10 line up at once.
Another issue is remember who you are dealing with. Alot of people still have dialup or are very slow typers so a chat can be time consuming. Our reps ussally handle 3 or 4 at a time without much issue.
