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

I tried that once

[Bender Unit 22]

I was browsing their site just to check it out and up came the window. I like the concept that you can get in touch with someone right away, but I rather wait until I am ready. No matter what I am buying, I like to gather some information first and then contact the company myself when I have some questions ready regarding their products.

YMMV

[XorNand]

I imagine that YMMV considerably, depending on your industry. A year ago I was working for a .com that sold automotive accessories online. We experimented with the same service rackspace has, Groopz. We also tried PHP Chat and LivePerson. Groopz was the best, in our experience, do to the right combination of functionality vs. price.

However, we ended up scrapping the live chat thing all together eventually. We had people who would pop in, ask a random question and then close the chat session. It was very difficult to carry on meaningful conversation that would actually lead to a sale. It's much more difficult for a shopper to do this to a sales guy in person or over the phone because you have their undivided attention.

i work for the company, that sold Rackspace

[puto]

I work for the company that writes the software that Rackspace uses.

We initially wrote the software to use in house to for our sales and support team, but people quickly started to use it and like it.

That being said I am going to answer a few things that I see popping up here.

1. Our sales staff are all technical, network engineers, developers you name it. So when you page someone on our site, you get someone knowledgable about networks, internet, webservers, etc, so they can guid you.

They are many companies that use our tool and similar ones to provide sales and they dont provide quality sales people. So if you have retail store or webstore, you need good sales people.

2. Our products are cross platform. You hear me. Server side Linux, Windows, Xserve, Solaris. Operator side as well. We develop on OSX then port.

3. Support staff are always the hardest people to please with tools, and the more you give them to do the less they like it. I rode a support desk for 5 years and I was a stubborn son of a bitch. However with online support you get the benefit of being able to have 2-6 people in a chat, as opposed to one on one on the phone. It actually makes you work more efficiently. And all communication is logged for QA, and you can email the transcript to your CRM system and the customer. It allows for efficiency.

The biggest gripe I see here on slashdot is that you do not want to be browsing and someone popup. Well here is my opinion on that from a business standpoint and a computer liberal. If I am a business man, and I am paying thousands of dollars for design, hosting, bandwidth, not too mention my products. I want my salespeoople to have every advantage that they can.

IT makes no sense to build a beautiful venue for window shopping only.

Our software has increased companies revenues up to 700 percent, allowing for more jobs, pay raises, in the technical industry.

I personally have to use the software everyday and abouot .0001 percent of the people we contact get bent out of shape. Most are amazed and want to know more.

As a tech, I think it might be a little intrusive, but then again, if you got your nose pressed against a retail establishment window, someone will come and talk to you. And what is wrong with saying just browsing.

This type of software adds the human element to an otherwise cold web. Which many people on Slashdot tend to lose because most of us sent behind monitors all day and on high horses.

www.groopz.com That is the product Rackspace uses. That is our site.

Puto

This kind of work

[joshmoh]

My aunt works as a "live chat operator" for a SF bay hosting company. Her salary is based on how many new clients she gets, so there's a lot of pressure to snag new clients through live chat.

The reason many companies have switched to live chat salespeople (as opposed to phone salespeople) is that instead of having one salesperson with one call, each salesperson can have 5-10 chat windows open at once. Each chat operator has a specialty -- whether virtual hosting, colocation, or dedicated -- so customers interested in a certain plan can be transparently redirected to the proper operator.

Certainly, you'll get your questions answered through live chat, but since you're talking to a salesperson, they want you to purchase a plan. It's how they get paid.

Coming soon: Arthur Miller's "Death of a Live Chat Salesperson"

Re:Apparently

[yppiz]

I'm both ashamed and proud that I had to search to find out what A/S/L means.

Age / Sex / Location.

--Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu

P.S. If I get +5 Informative for this, it's a sign of the coming apocalypse.