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!
I think that their 6 sales staff might not be able to cope with a slashdotting :)
"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.
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
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
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
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!
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