Slashdot Mirror
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."
If you type a/s/l they terminate the conversation....
I'm so lonely
DLF ROCKS!
that's a long shift.
I think that their 6 sales staff might not be able to cope with a slashdotting :)
No thanks, just web browsing.
"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."
What's that, dinner and a movie?
this might be the first time an actual person will feel the slashdot effect
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Does anyone know how well this would work in a software technical support environment geared for end users or have any experience with this in a support environment?
To use the /. effect to not only take down sites, but people now? Damn, that's cold.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
I remember being a little disconcerted at the applet popping up....
But ten minutes later, I picked up the phone to talk further with a sales rep.
Additionally I wonmder if this might actually violate federal wiretapping law in that they are tracking what I am doing on their site without my permission or informed consent.
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
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.
What level would that be?
Wanna cyber? ;P
Un-news
Now I'll have to say `just browsing' on every webpage I visit and in every brick and morter store I visit.
Thanks a lot.
-Colin
I don't really think this is such a bad thing.
Most people are used to seeing the occasional pop-up, so the offer itself isn't too obtrusive. If they aren't interested, clicking "No, Thanks" is a lot easier to do through a browser than say in person to most sales people. Add to that the idea that most people that are on the site are probably not just random passers-by, and you've got a fairly good idea going.
Now if this was on other sites, I could see it getting out of hand, but that's another thread...
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
For what I've seen, popup sales help is not particularly impressive. The "first level" of help appears to be essentially automated (basically a chatbot) that burns up several minutes establishing contact with an "Eliza-like" series of questions that you have to answer before you can get any further. Once you get to a real human, the level of support is not much different than what you would find if you searched the FAQ for the site (for all I could tell, it might still have been a bot except that I specifically asked if it was a person and then got a non-automated response). And I found it creepy to be accosted virtually, sort of like being stalked by a popup ad. Until they improve the interface and the substance, I'll pass.
At SplutterFish we designed a custom system based around IRC which allows users to get live support as well.
:)
This means that virtually all of our users can connect, usually without any installation required (through a JAVA applet, or HTML-based webchat on port 80 for those behind firewalls) - whilst still offering our users their own flavor of client to use whenever they want - e.g. mIRC.
Our users are very pleased with the service as they can get instant answers almost around the clock, they can receive transcripts of the conversation on their e-mail address, an FTP server is hooked in so that they can easily upload multiple files or large files, and an IRC back-end shows the details of the upload back to the support people (such as version of software used to author a specific file - in our case: 3ds max scene files).
I would advise almost any company to start something like this, but you do need to have several people watching - either paid or volunteer / honor-system based. As a 'live support' system is only as good as just how 'live' it is.
Oh, and yes, it has been driving sales as well
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.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
It seems that Rackspace Managed Hosting tracks you by your IP number when you arrive.
:)
I guess I'm safe since I bought that software from the popup ad that keeps my computer from broadcasting an IP.
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
I had this happen to me on a website where I was already a customer.
It really startled the hell out of me the first time. Anyway, I was at the site because I was looking through their help files to resolve a problem I was having. Once it became clear that I had already given them money and was looking for help, the guy just vanished.
So not only did they interupt me when I was fine on my own, they left me with a bad feeling knowing they are clearly more interested in getting new customers than helping old ones.
-Colin
It's six people who are covering it for 20 hours a day.
The first thing that popped into mind when reading the post -
"Soooo, how many licenses would you like to buy today?"
from the CA commercials with the cardboard salesperson. I'll now have that commercial stuck in my head the rest of the day, you insensitive clod!
Actually this is a good thing as long as there is an option to speak with the sales associate. I like the idea of "being able" to ask questions... Now if I start to get bugged every 5 seconds... Well, there are alternate shopping alternatives... ;-)
--Ryan
Of course, the other question is how long before the salespeople are replaced by AI 'bots themselves. But it seems more likely that they will just be outsourced to India.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
This feature is really cool, Ive been to sites where one question was VERY quickly answered. Call them and you have to navigate through touch-tone menus and wait till youre forwarded to 'engineers' who actually know what theyre selling. Email them and youll only get a reply bot saying expect another email shortly and hold your breath.
In fact Ive never had technical questions like how much would a certain microcontrller sample cost, so fast. Its also much lighter on the salesrep than getting calls; any 14 year old can switch between 6 MSN chat windows faster than she can say huh
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Or figures out how to cross-connect two salespeople from different sites.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
How long until we see an artificial salesagent (i.e., not felt as an interpersonal burden) ...that's secretly operated by a real one? (...like the 18th-century chess-playing machine that actually housed a dwarf...)
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
A couple of months ago I was shopping for a new hosting facility for some sites I run. (My florida room was running out of space). I visited RackSpace and got 'chatted-up' by this feature. I was a little shocked at first, thinking this was a automatid response system or something. So I misspelled some words and used bad grammar and the person on the other end responded with real answers to my questions.
The conversation did go to the next level with a voice-to-voice phone call. I ended up doing business with Rackspaces' little sister company, serverbeach and am pleased with the price and the service.
50% of new customers have originated from the chat feature
No, 50% of new customers were willing to speak with the rep on the way in. This might help keep people on the path that leads them to becoming a customer, but it doesn't start them on it. They had to get to the site somehow...
I was on the HP web site to look up some info on a printer I'm buying, and there was a "live chat" option. It was initiated by me, rather than by them, but I must say it was a very efficient means of communication, if a litle slow.
I preferred the wait to waiting on the phone.
I work for the company that writes the software that Rackspace uses.
.0001 percent of the people we contact get bent out of shape. Most are amazed and want to know more.
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
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
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
First off, Rackspace didn't fund, or start RackShack. Do you know why they changed their name? Legal pressure from Rackspace. Nothing was ever done, but it was suggested strongly that they change their name
Secondly, I know for a fact that RackSpace does care about their customers, so long as the customers aren't pricks. My friend works there, and I have been to their workplace a number of times. They are polite and, in general, more than willing to go out of their way for customers. However, there are people that call up screaming and cursing, and for some reason, they get less support than other more reasonable people.
Third, a small hosting company may be the way to go. Rackspace is not for everyone, and are rather expensive. You can get the same hardware for half the cost at EV1 or similar, but RackSpace is more concerned with keeping people just happy enough to pay the extra cost.
You should probably take my comments with a grain of salt, since I do know the company and a number of people that work there. On the other hand, you might want to believe me more simply because of these facts. Whatever
--If I said something interesting it probably wasn't correct
Basically the company ended up being acquired by E.piphany. No idea if anything was ever done with the technology after that (I had moved on by that point).
.technomancer
just the other day i was looking for a new web host and a window popped up with a sales person asking me if he could help.
i was very annoyed.
i told him that i *was* considering purchasing a host plan, but i decided definitely not to purchase a plan after experienced the unrequested sales pop-up.
if on the other hand there was button that i could push to open a pop-up for a sales question when *i* wanted chat, now that would be very helpful.
peace
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).
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
... the potential customer chatterbot:
Sales Guy: Hi, it looks like you're considering Rackspace for your hosting needs. Can I help you?
Chatterbot: Would you like to help me with considering Rackspace for your hosting needs?
Sales Guy: Yes, that's why I'm here, to help you.
Chatterbot: Why are you here, to help you?
Sales Guy: No, to help you. To make your shopping experience with Rackspace more enjoyable.
Chatterbot: How do you feel about shopping experience with Rackspace more enjoyable?
...
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
The first time I saw one of these, I had the following conversation:
Chat Popup: Hi, My name is John, do you have any questions about our products?
Me: <pause> Hi, John. What do you do again?
Chat Popup: I'm just here to help you, and make sure any questions you have are answered. What can I do for you?
Me: <pause> Interesting... Can you prove you're a human?
At this point, the chat window closed suddenly. I thought, "damn. pretty good.."
Reminds me of a hotel stay I once had. Spending the weekend at the swimming pool, I'm walking past the 'massage room', when one of the elegant ladies arriving for work, goes bounding up to her friend at the desk and asks eagerly "Any specials for me?". Recounting this to my parents, they explain exactly what a "special" was. Some time later, I'm going to a restaurant for a meal with friends, and we go up to the food bar. The waitress acts "Would anyone like a special?". I'm lost for words.
The Forbes story has a screenshot of an example conversation....
Guest34725: I'm looking for reliable services with minimal downtime. Can you help?
Tony: Absolutely! Zero downtime..guaranteed in our Service Level Agreement
So, either Tony is screwed when the engineers find out, or we can add Rackspace to Cockroaches and Twinkies as the only things that will survive a nuclear war.
Seriously though. This could lead to quite a few problems, given that it's impossible to verify who's taking part in the conversation.
Scenario 1: Sales advisor offers a copy of John Grisham's new book (no, I don't know why either) if the customer buys the two Grisham books he's looking at right now. Customer buys the books but doesn't get his free book. Was it a legal contract?
Sc 2: Female SA asks the customer if he needs any help. Customer asks if she wants to meet up for kinky sex later. SA sues company for sexual harassment (I think 3 /. comments like this have +5 already)
Sc 3:SA offers underage customer a deal on Sex tapes because he was looking at some when his mom wasn't in the room and he doesn't have a credit card to buy the good stuff. Paedophile?
Sc 4: Spammers install logging software which detects this popup, redirects to their website. Suddenly all of Amazon's customers are being offered Barnes and Noble special introductory offers. And Penis enlargment.
Sc 5: Tony (in the Rackspace thing) asks the customer for his telephone number, because, there's no way Guest34725 will give out his mates number. (Pizza for I.C. Wiener)
I'm a Fox whore, I apologise. If it appeases you, I don't watch Fox (channel) if such a thing exists, I live in the UK so I watch BBC or C4 (unless they replace it with snooker, hmm.)
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"
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
I'm a rackspace customer and I've got to say the live chat feature is awesome. I went to rackspace.com once looking into getting an SSL certificate for my server. I chatted with the sales guy for a minute and while he couldnt direct me to a page with more information on the SSL certificates he was able to pull up my account information and give me a phone number to call and an extension to speak with. I did not however purchase the SSL certificate from rackspace as they wanted something like $850/3 years for a 40 bit cert while Instantssl.com was able to provide me with a 128bit cert for 3 years for only $150, albeit without the "fanatical" support that rackspace offers. In my opinion Rackspace has done a tremendous job of supporting our server and while their prices for add-ons like the above mentioned SSL certificate are high the overall support is superb.
The one thing I would like to rant about is the fact that when we signed up for rackspace managed hosting and configured our server we were given the option for AMD or Intel. Being an AMD guy I choose the AMD option. Upon logging into our server for the first time I was unplesantly suprised to find that the processor was infact an AMD duron. This was not apparent when signing up for the service.
I've been seeing advertisements on TechTV for a place called serverbeach.com which offers dedicated hosting for only $99/mo as opposed to rackspace's $400/mo (for our server configuration at least) but since we're happy with rackspace i dont think ill be making a switch any time soon. Has anyone else had any experience with serverbeach? Sounds reasonable for something like a dedicated game server.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
Them: What are you looking for regarding support?
Me: Cock. Hard cock.
Them: (Chat session terminated)
So much fun, I could do that all night.
Chance of getting a sale has suddenly shifted many decimal points in the wrong direction. The boss comes in after the weekend, and fires everyone who suddenly couldn't get a sale, excuses be damned.
then the chat server goes up in flames.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
(This article was posted this morning so no one will read my comment but, just on the off chance ...)
I had this pop up about three months ago when I was looking at their sight and the sales guy pops on,
offers to give me some help, answer any questions, etc. and when I asked him a question he promptly said "Oh...I am multi-tasking." 10 minutes later - after I went on surfing somewhere else (tabbed browsing rocks) he shows up again to "assist me"... when I commented that his pop up was a bit intrusive he tried to give me a spiel about how "its no more intrusive than shopping in a mall and having a salesperson come up to you" I called bullshit by saying " Yeah but this is my house and usually salesman don't just pop into my bedroom to ask if they can help AND even if I was at a mall the salesperson sure as hell wouldn't offer help and then immediately withdraw it with some ridiculous claim of handling other customers simultaneously. (like multi-tasking.)
So, as you can imagine, he closed the chat room!
Grrr!
Pissed me rtf off and I made sure all of my clients, associates and co-workers knew about his comments. Needless to say it was not a sale capturing moment for them.