Has anyone ever seen/tried live chat service provided by websites of companies?
I think it would be a great idea if conducted properly. The idea is that companies can chat with its customers or potential customers LIVE - so it's like Q&A but you can ask the company directly and quickly. This could be a great communication tool for those customers who are too busy to read all the FAQs or they simply have a new question that is not posted yet. The positive side is that customers won't be hesitant to ask a question that can benefit both customer and the company quickly and with no fuss.
Telstra is doing this (maybe to have a back up for their call centre's frequent faults) and many other companies are providing live chat services on their websites.
What do you think about installing a live chat service on a website? Would love to get as many opinions as possible from you..
Thanks for reading!
I think live chat services are great ideas. I dealt with an online customer service representative a few years ago because i had trouble with my computer. She guided me step by step through the processes and eventually fixed my problem.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure for the company that would have been cheaper to operate than receiving a phone call, and of course it was cheaper for me as i didn't have to make a phone call. So in terms of lowering operating costs on a large scale basis i think this method holds a lot of merit.
Especially now when businesses operate globally and many products we buy come from overseas, getting help from somewhere half way round the globe is more quick and effective and isn't as troublesome as it used to be.
Hey David, thanks for the comment. I also found live chat to be less stressing than making phone call.
ReplyDeleteLast month I had to make a phone call to Bigpond to fix my internet connection and it was so technical that I have no idea what the Bigpond rep was talking about. Anyway, I made it through but the lady seemed a bit annoyed - I can tell by the way she spoke to me.
While, using live chat facility they can guide the customers easily without showing any emotion. So that could be another plus for live chat.
Certainly beats sitting "on hold" for hours on end. And I suspect that they are able to deal with multiple customers at the one time via chat, as opposed to telephone support which can only be one-at-a-time.
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