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A Guide to Implementing Live Chat
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A guide to Implementing Live Chat
Publication date: 12/11
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Executive summary
As a tool for interacting with customers, chat has been around for
at least a decade, used largely for simple customer service and
sales support applications. But a few brave pioneers in recent
years have tried something new—chat-based tech support. At
first, the experiments were limited to support for low-end consumer
products, where chat promised significant cost savings. But lately,
a growing number of companies have tested chat as a way to deliver
support for high-end and enterprise products.
And to almost everyone’s surprise, customers seem to like the new
chat support services a lot. “We thought business users would think
our chat service was just a toy,” one support manager said.
"Instead, we can hardly keep up with the demand. Everyone was
shocked."
To be sure, there are also plenty of stories about failed chat
initiatives, unexpected results (good and bad), and urban myths
about metrics and costs. Chat penetration among support
organizations is still sketchy and even fewer companies have more
than a year or two of actual chat experience, so there’s not a lot
of hard data about what to expect.
To help clarify some of the most common implementation issues for
this emerging support channel, the ASP surveyed software and
technology-based companies about their experiece with live chat
(as distinguished from less-common automated chat tools). We
collected data from 118 respondents, and we also asked an
open-ended question about “what advice they would give a colleague
who’s thinking about implementing chat.”
Topics include:
- The Business Case
- Customer Interaction
- Growth Rates
- Metrics
- Success Strategies: Check Point Software
- Success Strategies: EMC
- Technology
- A Peek at the Future
Copies of the survey are free to ASP members in the
members-only area.
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