Live Support Blog

As businesses continue to deploy new strategies to get a bigger piece of the online market share, it is becoming increasingly important to use the latest marketing innovations in the most effective manner. Live Chat (aka Live Customer Support) Software is one such innovation of the recent e-commerce boom that enables businesses to engage their online visitors into a chat and provides a cost effective platform for proactive sales and support. Using Live Chat Support on a website can be a boon if used effectively and in a manner that is visitor friendly. Businesses should keep in mind the following tips while deploying live chat support on their website:

1. Use a Hosted and a Reliable Live Support Vendor. Choosing a cheap or a source code solution will eventually get you into trouble for lack of support or bugs. Choose a vendor with a proven track record, reliable support and a big client base. Most such vendors will he happy to offer you a week’s trial and help in setting up the chat system on your website. Paying a small monthly fee is worth the features, support and reliability you get you need to use chat effectively.

2. Place the live chat button at a prominent location on the web page. Be consistent with where you place the live chat button on your website. This ensures that returning and new visitors can locate it as easily as they can locate the navigation on every page of your website. Additionally, you may want to place live chat button or text at key “conversion” hotspots such as the conversion or sign up page of your website. This will not only improve visitor confidence, but also increase conversions.

3. Customize the chat window with the theme of your website. Matching the chat window and chat button to your site’s theme can ensure that a visitor does not terminate a chat on grounds of suspicion of adware or an unwanted popup. Vendors such as LivePerson and Velaro help you to blend the live chat seamlessly into your website’s theme.

4. Prepare the profile of your visitors before training your agents. Its important to understand the demographic information of your visitors, what time they come in and what is the best way to talk to them. There’s not hard and fast rule for every chat that comes in, and an agent must be trained to understanbd the needs of every visitor individually rather than relying on canned messages.

5. Man the website 24/7 with live support agents. Nothing can be more destructive for your website than having live chat closed on your website. Use live chat support only if you have adequate resources to man your website 24/7, or at least at the time when you get 80% of the traffic. By placing live chat on a website, a business shows commitment to the visitor they are available 24/7 for help. Just ask yourself how you fell when you are looking for support and the live chat window forwards you to a contact form! If you do not have resources to setup agents inhouse, there are cost effective chat call centers such as Livesalesman.com in India who provide cost effective agents 24/7 specifically trained for chat and customized to your specific business needs.

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About the Author:

This article is written by the editor of Livechatdir.com, a part of Math2Math Infosys, specializing in e-business development and search engine marketing solutions. For more information, please visit http://www.math2math.net

LivePerson Inc. (LPSN), the market leader in live customer support solutions, boasting of the most rock solid and feature packed hosted solution has recently launched Live Call feature that enables a website visitor to request a call back with a click of a button.

Interestingly, Live Call seamlessly integrates into the existing agent interface of LivePerson Contact Center, the customer support tool that supports Knowledgebase, E-Mail and Live chat. This latest addition enables a Live Person contact center customer to call back visitors right from within Live Person without having the visitor to hold on the phone waiting for an operator.

Live Call has most customer support critical features, and we list out some of the most important ones here with the benefits they offer:

1. Seamless integration with existing Live Chat, E-Mail and Knowledgebase: Every single customer support instance, whether it is a live call, e-mail or chat is assigned a ticket number and is an example of true integration of all customer support channels. Benefit: Its easier for SMB and Enterprise users to effectively integrate all channels of customer support, thereby increasing customer satisfaction and increase productivity.

2. Voice calls are queued and routed similar to chat calls: Agents with specific abilities can be assigned to take voice or chat calls or both. Voice calls are automatically queued and transferred to the next available agent. The visitor in the mean time can track the approximate time in which he can expect a call from the agent. Benefit: Call Centers save on toll free bills. Visitors are not sitting on the phone waiting for an operator to answer as they know in how much time they will be expecting a call.

3. Live Call is easy to deploy: As a hosted solution, it takes minutes to deploy the Live Person Contact Center. The agent interface is similar to the existing live chat client with an additional dial pad. The agent can set the status ON/OFF individually for both Live Chat and Live Call. Incoming calls are easily identified as chat or voice calls with explicit information. Benefit: Minimal agent training is required.

LivePerson Inc. recently introduced an innovative feature - A ding is played on the visitor’s end whenever a chat is initiated. This is a nice feature - that alerts your visitors that a chat can be initiated and that they do not take the invitation for granted. If used properly, this can result in more chats and hence conversions. Good Work LivePerson!

Welcome to Live Chat Support Blog. We will be happy to assist you in your search for the perfect live chat software. Please post and share your thoughts.