I never have any such facility in my site. My live chat goes on only in yahoo messenger or MSN messenger. Most of the times it would be because of the innocence of my clients and I teach them each time a new thing. But I get frustrated if the same doubt is asked by all my clients. You need a great patience to handle clients.

Purely sales issues. But I am going to offer technical support.

I personally don't like ticket based support. I'd love instant help, hence I will be offering the same shortly.

Exactly. Its good only till Level 1, anything above gets messy

we use live chat for sales and support

Yes, we provide 24/7 live chat support.

Depending on that actual issue, quite a few issues can be handled with live chat as its normally a simple setting that is off or needs changed. However more complex issues will have to agree are better suited for helpdesk as some things do take more time to diagnose.

Live chat for sales and billing are a must I believe, its like going into a store and not being able to find anybody around to answer your question same thing applies for online.

Depending on your market, will determine if you offer it and what hours. Might not be suitable for budget hosts as the costs to offer it might exceed profit margins.

I provide live chat for everything. I also have never encountered any problems to fix that took more than 5 minutes in live chat.

Here's the thing, and this is just friendly advice.

If you are hosting a party at your house and you strive to make your guest as comfortable as possible, why would they want to leave?

This is true with webhosting as well.

Even though at times you may feel as though many issues take longer than necessary or involve a lot of backtracking with live chat support, obviously the customer wanted the option because they opted not to call in or email.

There is nothing wrong with informing a customer that their issue may be able to be resolved in a much more timely manner due to the nature of their issue if they were to choose another route of communication, but if so, you need to help that customer as much as possible and make sure they NEVER get the impression that the agent dealing with them at the time is just trying to push them off on someone else.

If possible, have the live chat agent create the ticket themselves for the customer.

Not only will the customer appreciate this, but in most cases, the agent will take time to make note of important details.

All of this should be supported by a detailed ticket system, anyway, and each agent should be encouraged to review each customer's entire history before troubleshooting as well as leave thorough notes for the next agent to review.

What do you not like about support when you have to call in for it, such as for a software issue or for a phone bill issue?

What do you like about the support you've received?

That your own experiences as a customer and create a comfortable environment that ensures the customer your support staff are thoroughly resolving their issue in a timely manner with as little expense and sacrifice to the customer as possible and you will do nothing but excel.

Hello ,

We do provide Live chat technical support ( Level 1 , Level 2 Issue ) and as far as the performance concerned our admins are doing at their best.Live chat technical support is always a key of success and to prove that you have an IMPRESSIVE SUPPORT with the great satisfied clients , If you are looking for Live chat support please contact us.

LiveChat is to time-comsuming in my opinion.

Given the choice between the phone and livechat, as far as real-time support goes, I'll take the chat any day of the week and twice on sunday. Good chat software makes multi-tasking a ton easier, and you can very easily avoid those awkward moments of silence where the customer is just dying to chit-chat with you about the weather in your neck of the woods. If the issue can't be resolved in a chat just open a ticket for the client and let them know it's being looked into. Some clients will always want to go with the real-time option, over emailing/ticket systems. Chat is a great way to let them know someone is awake behind the wheel and that they aren't sending tickets to /dev/null.

We provide live chat on a daily basis, typically for sales and pre-sales inquiries. We do have a department feature which does allow clients to select Technical Support, which are issues that are typically easy resolved which just involves a variable that needs changing here or there. Live Chat, I agree - lets users know that your company does have a 24x7 presence, and is not like virdave stated, watching tickets be blasted to oblivion at /dev/null ;-)

Alot of Companies use it but is it utilized as much as it can/should? No.

I don't know if it will become an Obsolete Feature or an asset to businesses by 2011.

I think live chat is important for a serious company.

Well Live chat is very useful if you do it correctly you ofc need staff that can do it 24 hours a day 7 days a week, and what applications you going to use live chat for, there was discussion where they say that it can only be used for sale enquires and may lvl 1 help.

John

I definently don't think its over rated.Cliets like having it that they can talk with us live. If its a level 2 support ticket or anything I have to open there account to look at the problem we ask them to make a ticket.