Running a hostig service with Live chat operators can drastically improve business and productivity, apart from the servers, one of the main section of hosting is the support system that is being offered by the providers.
Ticket based system is also very good, but i founf out that clients prefer to go on live chat where they can speak to someone instantly than waiting for 10minutes or more for reply or resolution.

If you have the support infrastructure in place for Live Help and you're not showing an image that says ONLINE even though nobody picks up, Live Help is a very good tool! We use it daily to assist customers and to help close sales. We've had Live Chat on our site since probably '98 and it's been a staple of our business as a result.

If you have the power to go with live support that is great. As you said there are people who don't want to wait 10 minutes. Also it's more "human" then the email.

I personally don't think Live Chat is a good means of support. It's great for sales, don't get me wrong. You can answer pre-sales questions quick and close a sale in no time. But.. when it comes to actual technical support for your clients, Live Chat and Phone are not the best tools to use at all. In support tickets your clients are able to copy and paste actual error messages and other information that is helpful and not easily repeated over the phone.

And although your clients can copy and paste things in Live Chat, it still not good for support, as many support requests require you to investigate more to find the problem, and this leads to your clients in Live Chat waiting for your response (usually more than 10 mins..) as I've seen with so many hosts. Then, you're probably going to be asked to open a ticket to the support department anyways. So, in short...

Live Chat For Pre-Sales =

Live Chat For Support =

We use Live Chat for sales assistance only. I believe support needs to be via ticket system or similar due to it's complexity.

Both are very important for a quality host whose aim is to grow because you never know what a customer likes, live chat or ticket system. So, a host should have both.

Live chat is important for people to get instant support and definitely brings good reputation to hosting company.

I think live chat is good for sales as you can catch a client who is looking at your site. A fast phone or ticket helpdesk is good for support instead I think

I'd have to agree with this. If one of our customers are in serious need of technical help then chat is no better than a 10 minute wait. The ideal solution would be calling in to a support hotline. Our customers are given the opportunity to call our technicians assigned to their business. I feel as though it's a better opportunity to put our customers at ease. Speaking with someone as they work is better than anything.

Have to agree what some of the other guys have said.

Pre-Sales Live Chat is a great way to bring in additional sales, it allows you to close the deal and understand your prospect customer more efficiently and quickly.

Post-Sales/Technical Support probably more trickier to manage via Live Chat. There are some technical problems/questions which may not be immediately on hand which you may need to have a look into.

Both live chat as well as ticket are important in providing assistance to the clients. For prospective clients Live chat is a better option, so that they can get a clear idea of the hosting that they require, and can clear their queries face to face with the operator.
Considering the after sales support issues, Tickets are very good tool to describe the issue in a descriptive manner.

I would only recommend offering live chat if you can offer true 24/7 coverage - it looks a bit unprofessional if the livechat shows as offline

In pretty much every case other than sales, I've found live chat to be absolutely useless. Most of the time, as XeHSean alludes to, there's nobody there, but in other cases when there is a response it's "please submit a ticket". So, for sales, yes, for support no.

Well, if you see most successful hosts of current days you will notice that they all offer 24/7 live chat support, so it is very important because most of the customers do not want to wait for ticket responses as they need instant solutions and that's where live chat is very handy.

I think there should be both: live chat and ticket based support. Sometimes you need a quick assistance and sometimes there are no emergency..