Add Live OnDemand Chat to your website

Kate Richards, 10-14-2008

Live Chat is a great way to let customers connect with you at different stages of the sales process.

Pre-sales: Answer any questions customers have prior to placing an order on your website. Alleviate concerns and provide incentives to buy now. Goal: Increase conversion rates.

During sale: Answer questions about up-sell items and present special offers. Goal: Increase upsell rates

Post-sales: Customer support. Goal: Reduce refunds, Improve retention rates

Robot vs Human

If your goal is to increase conversion rates and you're low on staff, one solution you may want to look at is employing a robot chat. Robot chat is a system designed to appear to the end-user as if they're chatting with a live person, where in fact, all responses are pre-programmed to match common questions customers may ask.

The industry leader in robot chat (also known as "automated sales agent") is IntelliChat.

IntelliChat is low-cost, easy to setup and in our tests, proven to increase conversion rates by an average of 5 to 10%

Human chat, on the other hand, allows your staff members to personally converse with end-users as they visit your website in real-time. Pros: Answer any question with a personal touch, learn more about your customers. Cons: Need staff members readily available during normal business hours.

How it works

Integrating live chat into your website takes a few short minutes. You will be provided with Javascript code to install on the pages where you'd like to make live chat available.

The system can be configured to proactively engage the user if they spend more than X seconds on a page without taking action, or wait until users click the chat button to initiate a dialog.

LivePerson

Over the years, we had a chance to test a variety of chat systems. Javascript based, ActiveX, downloadable, Ajax and basic html chat widgets.

Out of all the systems we tested, LivePerson is the clear winner in features, compatibility and stability.

LivePerson works well whether you have a single chat agent or 200 agents. Compatible with all browsers and offers an impressive set of back-end reports, SLAs, skillsets, built-in knowledge base, analytics and co-browsing.

Another really cool feature of LivePerson is that it lets you see visitors to your website in real time. Where they came from, what page they are currently browsing and what they're clicking on. This is a goldmine to marketers.

LivePerson is tightly integrated with the SoftwareProjects Shopping Cart. You can see a demo of the system here or contact your SoftwareProjects account manager to setup a test drive on your website.

Cost

LivePerson starts at $99/monthly per agent. Volume discounts are available. No setup fees.

As part of the setup process, your SoftwareProjects account manager will configure the system and train your staff members on how to use the chat system, view reports, setup skill levels etc.

Dawn Rossi, 10-29-2008

When implementing IntelliChat exit popup, make sure it doesn't come up when your customer is clicking to purchase your product or signup.

The exit popup should only come up when the customer is about to leave the page.

To avoid IntelliChat from popping up when your customer is clicking forward in the sales process, make sure you use a Javascript function to submit the button and not a type=submit tag

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