Live Chat Salespeople On Web Sites

burgburgburg writes "Forbes.com has an interesting article on how one web site is bringing all of the fun of salespeople suddenly appearing and offering to "help" to the web. It seems that Rackspace Managed Hosting tracks you by your IP number when you arrive. After 30 seconds on the site, a Java applet pops up with a photo of a sales person and a live chat offer to assist you in your efforts. According to Rackspace's co-chairman, one-third of users approached via chat engage in conversation with a salesperson, and half of those take the discussion to the next level. Furthermore, according to him, nearly 50% of new customers have originated from the chat feature. They have 6 salespeople watching the site in shifts for 20 hours a day."

Comments

Idiots run commercial websites!

[evilviper]

And do you know why you currently need live sales people? Because the morons that run commercial web-sites include only bits and pieces of information about the products/services being offered.

Slightly OT rant:

I never understood it. The strength of the web is that you can decide how much reading you want to do, but when there's little information provided, you're just screwed. In a physical location you can almost get away with that, because you are holding the product in your hands, and can check it out, or maybe call over the salesperson.

Although, I must say that is less and less true these days. The sales people usually idiots who only know what they can read on the back of the package (thanks for the help, you moron) and you can't open up a lot of products these days because they are sealed in plastic or something else that can't be opened and resealed non-destructively (I still like good old boxes).