Experience with Human Click?

[tedster]

One of my clients is keen on the idea of having live personal service available, ala Human Click or some similar functionality.

I never tried anything like this, so I don't know how to advise. Does anyone have any experience here? Know of any studies?

[Marcia]

tedster, I haven't but I've thought about it. I just got an email today about a similar free service, LiveHelper, that has both text and voice real-time chat. I just now put a question out about both of these on the crafter's email list (I know some use HumanClick). I asked whether people are using it, and also whether it affects load time. If I get responses, I'll report back with them.

[seth_wilde]

I use humanclick on a site, overall I'm pretty happy with it. The load time used to be pretty bad, but they have gotten quite a bit better about this. Customers seem to be impressed with it and I was suprised how many people actually use it. Right now it's still free, however they are going to start charging for it (I'm not sure but I was thinking it was in January).

[rcjordan]

I can only relay secondhand information garnered from an email exchange with another travel & tourism webmaster about a year ago. His observations were like those Seth just reported.

[tedster]

Thanks everyone.

Sounds like it's worth an experiment, since the client likes the idea -- and they probably can offer 14 hours a day coverage or more very easily.

[chiyo]

Human Click is working for us. Dosent seem to slow the page loadings. However it has just been taken over/merged. They did say that the free version will always be available and at present the free version is adequate. My experience with mergers/takeovers has not been kind for customers. So we will see what we will see. Setting up is a breeze. Certainly worth a test for others.

[henki]

We jumped on Human Clicks from the start in January. It works great for us.
The only problems have been with Netscape users, that some time have problems with the java scripts.

There is another free customer chat from www.livehelper.com that promise more. Have not tested it though.

Paid services or software are supplied by www.liveperson.com and www.heyinc.com

[Marcia]

Here's the email response I got:

"I have been quite pleased with human click. i get about 3 people a week that will use it as it is intended. it does provide some stats too. I am looking into this one as well, make sure they look at this...www.smoothsale.com
It's just like human click, but with a interesting sales twist."

Note: this is not generally a heavy traffic site, he aims toward branding and major trade magazine advertising. He did have an online press release a couple of weeks ago, and his traffic and sales skyrocketed.

[Marcia]

Here's the reponse from a crafter:

"Marcia - I have been using Human Click for since it first came out and I love it! Also, my customers seem to like it - quite a lot of them use it to ask me questions or to email me when I'm offline- I especially like being able to see who is visiting when the doorbell rings - when I'm out in the studio, I can hear it and it is soothing to know people are at least visiting my home page - HC has a nice site for visitor statistics too. It doesn't seem to be a cause for slow loading.

I thought Live Helper would be wonderful because of the voice contact but upon going to their site and trying to use their demo, I don't think they are ready!!!! - I spent over 2 hours and locked up my computer 3 times trying to make contact and frankly I'm not willing to put in any more time on them even tho I would love to have the voice capability.

Hope this helps."