The data is in. It''s now overwhelmingly clear that if the purpose of your site is to separate your visitors from their money, you need to add real-time chat to your Web site for pre-sales support, and you need to do it now. What data? I''m having trouble getting to the root of all the statistics I see posted on sites that want to sell you their chat solutions, quite honestly, but the more reputable statistics seem to include:
- 62% of shoppers never complete their purchases due to a lack of real-time customer service according to a survey of 25 top e-commerce sites (Anderson Consulting)
- 90% of online shoppers prefer human interaction, and about half of those shoppers make frequent visits to a site before making a purchase (Jupiter Communications)
- 40% of survey respondents said that they would be more comfortable with online purchasing if there was more human contact (Jupiter Communications)
You''ll notice that these numbers come from "shoppers" not "buyers," and shopping cart abandonment rates still hover around 75%. I''d feel more comfortable with numbers showing what the abandonment rate or closure is for people who do use real-time chat on a site, but no one seems to have those numbers. (If you do have those numbers, please let me know via the e-mail link above, and I''ll publish them in a follow-up article).
Real-time chat vs. Real-time messaging
There are companies that offer real-time messaging, rather than real-time chat as a customer service option. The difference is that with real-time chat, the customer has a conversation with a person via text messaging. With real-time messaging, the customer sends a single query, which is answered by a natural-language processing (or semantic filtering) system, A.K.A artificial intelligence. If the customer has follow-up questions, they''re answered out of context of any previous messages. I found a couple of companies that offer this product, and had wholly unsatisfactory results with the questions I posed on their sites (about their own products, mind you). Some of the results were so bad, I don''t have the heart to name the companies because I really don''t want to ruin any careers. One company''s "virtual support person," a woman who looked to me like she''d been plucked from a "hot girls" site, even changed dumb expressions when waiting for your question and responding (virtually helpful). All in all, this solution was a step back for enhancing the personal touch on a Web site and I''d avoid it until it matures. (If you''d like to send me examples of sites doing this well, I''ll happily review them and post the results in the follow-up article, but I might not be so gracious as to leave the company name out.)
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Getting Started with Real-Time Chat
Setting up real-time customer service chat on your site is not as complicated as you fear. There are basically three models of adding real-time chat via customer support to your site. In order from least complicated to most complicated, they are:
- Hire a chat-enabled customer service center to handle things and take your calls. Payment options are either by the minute of support offered or by the agent, if you want a dedicated rep for the site.
- Select a chat solution where the software is hosted by the solution provider. All you generally need to do is download the chat tool (or use one on their site), insert some HTML into your pages, and you''re ready to go. Pricing models range from free to free-for-first-agent to pay by the agent, to paying by the minute. In any case you need your own customer service staff.
- Buy the software and host it on your own site. This is the old-fashioned model of software support. This is the best solution if you want to tie your chat tool into your customer relationship management (CRM) tool or phone switch.
Features
All the tools listed in the Resources section on the next page include the chat tool that the customer uses. Some offer URL push, so that your customer service rep can push a URL out to the customer''s computer. Some include the ability to track a customer as he clicks around your site, so you can offer assistance when you think he needs it. Only one of the products listed below requires a customer download (just an applet), but still a bit of a turn-off, to my mind.
