Live Chat or Ticket

[HostBill]

As for livechat i personally think that it is great for presales/sales questions - making good impression on customers. For psychological reasons its better not to use it as technical support - simply becouse people will expect to have answers and problems solved immediately, which sometimes is simply impossible. If sb ever worked on such thing knows what im talking about.
"hello anybody there?....how to do this? guide me! now! hello?!"

For bigger companies its ok, in place where support is divided into layers - sb dont know how to solve problem than it goes to higher, more experienced layer of support

 

[arbet]

Well having a live support chat in your website would be great. In this way, it could help you so that the queries of the customers won't pile up. And just like all the other customers, they would want an immediate answer to their problems/questions.

 

[zippyhosts]

i suggest you to try Kayako ticket system and chat

 

[Exciter]

Could your live chat service be outsourced to someone else? Are there companies that not only do this for technical issues but for sales as well?

I suppose you could hire an employee to take care of that as well, if you can afford to do so.

 

[Taylor-e2]

The ticket system is a definite must, and regarding the live chat, it just depends on weather you feel it would benefit you and your clients more although it is not a requirement.

 

[Virtuous_Host]

Most of the large web sites don't have 24/7 sales and usually it's just one man doing it any way. If you are online alot, it shouldn't be a problem.

 

[ultimahosts]

I think it is better to have live chat rather than not, as it creates trust, even though when it is some hours offline.

 

[AbbieRose]

The one real drawback I have found is that some people just want to chat. I have been held up a couple of hours or more by people who have a genuine question but getting to it through the chit chat is a nightmare. So I'm now learning the pros and cons of this I'm afraid.

 

[d2hamanda]

Hi,

I personally think that to be effective support service you must provide live chat as well as ticket system.

 

[sequencehosting]

When I was a one man show back in the day, I had live help, but then I was online 18+ hours a day also. Even today, while I have regular staff that man the live help, I still load up my the live help program any time I'm at a computer.

As Steve mentioned, many companies have the chat PROMPT, and we use it too. If a user is 5 minutes on the site, then we prompt to see if we can answer any questions. I don't like the sites that wait 10 seconds, that annoys me, but if you're 5 minutes on the site, likely you're doing some checking and maybe someone can help make it easier.

Live chat does have it's purpose for certain markets, and is a great tool for upselling and prompting purpose, but if you're going to have a button saying ONLINE, be sure you have the time/resources to actaully be online. Don't just have it say ONLINE, then "no representitve available" - I think that's one of the things that annoy me the most. People pretending to be online, and nobody really there!

Thanks, that was some great advice. Although I'm in the process of changing live chat software when it was working I would also be online if at a computer. If you spend all day on the computer you may as well stay on live chat as it may gain you more customers.

 

[rajendra.parmar]

Dear Friend

Live chat is use to resolve the online technical problems.

and Ticket is use to resolve your problem, by any engg.

 

[arbet]

Most of the large web sites don't have 24/7 sales and usually it's just one man doing it any way. If you are online alot, it shouldn't be a problem.

Agree on this. :agree:

 

[nightshadpro]

If you're a one-man band, then support tickets are the best way to go. If you offer live chat, and are consistently not available, that makes a worse impression than just sticking with tickets.

 

[lcwmedia]

I am a one man show

And I cannot be online long enough for it to be worth while. I work during the day. So having a ticket system that sends me a email alert is a lot more effective. I can immediatly start working on the problem from work, from my phone or tell them when I can look into it.
Fortunatly, my hosting does not have that many problems, so I blessed that way. A ticket system is the best. I use the one in my ClientExec software and it just works for me.

People are turned off when they always see OFFLINE.

 

[sequencehosting]

People are turned off when they always see OFFLINE.

That's true. I think it's better to not have live chat rather than not using it much.

Zopim is a very good live chat platform because there is an option to remove it when you're not online.

Jack

 

[Fizzadar]

For support, ticket because it keeps details written, which is far more useful.

 

[supportfacility]

Live chat is good to improve sales. It creates trust and clients can get their queries resolved through chat immediately. I think you should put live chat on the website however you won't be using it much. Whenever you will be online try to request chat to visitors.

 

[RapidSwitch]

I think using a ticketing system would let you be more efficient as you will be able to manage your work load better. From experience I would recommend using the ticket system only.

 

[sktanmoy]

I think live chat is more effective.

 

[HostBB]

Ticket System looks like a cheaper solution .We use that and try to keep someone replying tickets 7/24