Forum Moderators: buckworks
We usually get about 25 - 30 orders a day and we see a slight
increase after adding the chat.
However, we were very suprised to learn that a LOT of people never
bother to use the chat. I mean, its available in big bold fonted link
on all our pages, but these bilnd customers seem to walk right thought it.
Anybody else here had any good experince with Live chat support?
My guess is that people are only going to use it if their problem/question can't be answered on the site. So, the fact that many people don't use it could be a good thing.
Or people may not understand what it is or how it works. Your wording may not be descriptive enough. Try words like "Live Help" , "Live Customer Service", or "Live Assistance".
Do you have a 'customer service' section on your site?
Any other suggestions?
Any other suggestions?
Yeah. Why the heck would I want to chat with you?
(follow me here - I'm not being abrasive, I'm making a point)
Need a questions answered - We're here Live right now - Chat with us!
Something that says what is going on. need technical support, need a good time, Assistance with ordering quantities?
Depends on your widgets and what you think the most common question is that you can target.
As a customer I might not be interested in the weather in your part of world. But if you are offering "Live Help" or "Live Assistance" I might click the button for help with your websites's ordering process and complete the order.
Plus, as Robino originally said, it could be a very good thing. I never want to talk to sales droids unless I abosolutely have to. Most people are the same. It's twice as true if you're dealing with technical users.
What is the target audience of your site? Ours is older and a live chat on our site would be a waste. They hardly know how to use the internet, let alone something as new fangled as live chat.
It may be that the technology is above your customer's heads.
I don't remember the text we used to promote the chat, but I am afraid it was not as specific as what has been suggested in this thread.
Those things scare me and I've been on the web for 10 years. I'm afraid I'll click on something and someone will start asking questions.
How would you feel if someone on your TV started calling to you by name? Next question: if they can speak with you, can they SEE you?
I think they may run off some business
If you could tell us your conversion rate it would help a tad. 30 sales per day from how many visitors?
Another indicator would be how many telephone calls you get from the site, and is a toll-free number on the site?
In my experience if you offer live chat and a toll-free number most will choose the toll-free number. Any telephone number usually performs better than chat for serious buyers.
If you have a good FAQ's page then chat is less necessary.
Live chat adds value whether someone uses it or not. The more ways you offer communication, the better the prospective customer will feel about you, and the more likely they will be to buy :)
It's incompatible with what the user expects from the medium. People who use the web still see it very much as a browsing / reading experience... the idea of having a typed phone call doesn't fit into that concept for all but those who follow the leading edge of web developments.
I imagine most people were also fairly reticent to add to fora circa 1996. In time perhaps, as awareness grows, people will come to expect live chatroom assistance as part of their web experience... at the moment, perhaps it's too early for this to be part of normal user behaviour.
So you may take my above feelings into account to partly answer the original question: some oldfashioned users don't like to chat at all ...
Regards,
R.
One that is very successful is one I placed on an Estate Planning attorney's website. I think it works for him because he already has a relationship with these clients and they use it to ask a quick question or to update their address and such. The system I installed was an ASP script that I've found to be much better than the monthly subscription model because it has a one off fee and you can add as many chat operators as you want.
One client went ahead and subscribed to the Live Person system and then had me implement it on their site. They found within a week that their sales dropped 50%. What were they selling? Pumps to aid men with erectile dysfunction. I tried to explain to them when they asked me to install it that this might put some customers off but they insisted. We removed it shortly after the first week.
And finally a creepy encounter with the Live Person system. I got an email from one of my competitors asking about a guy they were thinking of hiring that had worked for me and they had the Live Person code in their email message. So everytime I clicked on that damn message they knew I was looking at their email. I deleted it rather quickly...
Also a seperate link to a dedicated FAQ section ("why use LiveChat and what is it?") may help educate your users on it's use.
It's no different to getting people to use your forums - you just need to make it easy for them to do so and provide them information about the service.
Perharps the positioning of your LiveChat link is off? If it's at the top of the page, then I would arrive and think, "well I just got here and you think I will need help more than anything....um....".
Consider adding it to the bottom, after the "buy now" button - perhaps in a more subtle method - "Not sure? Click here for some live assistance".
Is it possible to track which pages LiveChat users click through from? If so you could mess around with wording and positioning until you find something that works well.
Scott
Great tips! We'll work on rewording / repositioning the link and watch it's performance.
Guess what?
I always assumed that live help used VOICE (somehow) to communicate. Afterall, it is often called "Chat"
Saks says: "In order for us to help you better, please fill in the fields and click "Connect to chat."
I didn't realize that you TYPE the exchange.
Bet plenty of others think you TALK to the computer and it talks back using the internal speaker (and many types of speakers can work as microphones, too)
Clue me in: are some of these systems voice based? Or are they all text based?
Feel pretty dumb now. And I'm hardly new to the web.
35,000 page views a day and average 2 chats. Most of those chats are not about anything that would ever become an actual order but, rather, general information requests about our niche.
However, I wouldn't ever consider removing it. It is a nice warm fuzzy safety blanket that lets people know there are real people behind the website.
I was looking for web hosting a while ago and on one particular site (rackspace) you could guarantee that after clicking a few pages you would get a popup chat box saying 'how could I help you' etc.. This was very annoying after a while because sometimes I was just looking for information I had already read. I also got the feeling I was being watched while browsing the site. I actually tried to disable java so I could visit the site as I was still interested in the service they provide but didn't want to get interrupted as I browsed!
I agree that having limited response to your chat links is probably a good sign that your website is easy to use and information is easy to get.
I kept it for around 3 months and it was still the same.
I had it removed since I thought that it may not be helpful for the guests.
we are using HumanClick (now LivePerson) for many years now. We are a European based company dealing on a worldwide basis. The chat button is listed on every page. It is used on average about twice a day. NEVER abused so far, but ALWAYS used for the purpose it has been installed: answering a quick technical question, a product specific question, or directing the visitor to a local dealer. It is also used as an inout channel for tech support.
I have never regretted a single day to have it put on the site - especially since we still are the only one to use it in our industry. Customer feedback is very positive as well!
One BIG advantage however is that in my operator console I have a LIVE view of who is on my site! I see the path they take through the site, and I have a LIVE listing from what search phrase or AdWord they come to my site.
However, it get's quite expensive if you want to have more than one operator and additional features. For years I looked for alternatives but LivePerson seemed to dominate the market. Only recently I found possible alternatives in the open source area which I haven#t tested however.
I posted my findings in this thread:[webmasterworld.com ]
Recently tried ( not live person) again but limited it to the tech support side. Few people have used it to get very specific tech support while they were actually using our software.
The recent test was taken off as the chat software seemed to be running on a slow server somewhere and wasn't as polished as expected. Live Person had seemed to offer the most customisation features from the few systems we've tried.
Bottom line is we are re-considering putting a system in place again. However we don't really expect to generate extra sales but rather provide assistance to existing customers. New customers rarely use it.
