Live Support

Now - so far I haven't told you anything that you probably don't already know. However, if you haven't used a live support software in the past - or you haven't had experience with one of the premium services, then the following should be very interesting!

Cost of Implementing Live Support

Back when I started with HumanClick, I believe that the cost was somewhere around $30 per operator, per month. That was reasonable for the time. A year or two later, they jumped to somewhere around $100 per operator per month! That's where many of the premium hosted live support software are priced today too. That's prohibitive for many website owners - especially if you need several operator accounts.

The free open source programs that are included with many cPanel hosting systems - or freely downloadable from the web are limited in features and still require installation, set-up, frequent patches, etc. They tend to be buggy too. If you have to hire someone to handle all of that technical stuff for you, you might as well just spend your money on a hosted system.

But, wait a minute...

...before I go too far giving you bad news about the costs of adding live support to your website, let's stop right here for a moment.

There are several premium Live Customer Support software programs that do not break the bank! One of my favorites is called ProvideSupport. Provide Support not only sports a ton of great features, it's also a real bargain. For as low as $8.25 per month per operator you can have live support running on an unlimited number of domains and pages!

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This is our Provide Support System
This easy-to-use system allows us to chat together in real-time. You're welcome to click to chat with one of our support staff.

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Not All Live Customer Support Software Is Created Equal!

While every live customer support system has the live chat feature in common, there are many other features that I find even more useful - and I'm tempted to go even further and say that some features can be even MORE important to than live chat!

Here are some of my favorite features. The first part of the list will refer specifically to features that ProvideSupport offers. Then I'll add a few additional features that some of the more expensive programs offer.

1. Real-time visitor monitoring: This feature allows you to place a hidden code on your web pages so that you can monitor your visitor's activities on your site, without them seeing a live help button.

2. Referrer Listings: See which search engine or website referred each visitor.

3. Search Terms and Search Engine Pages: Releated to #2 - You can see the exact search term and even the link to the exact search page the visitor came into your site from.

4. Visitor Monitoring: Monitor each page that your visitor navigates to throughout your site (provided that you have the live support code on each page of yoru site).

5. Geo-Tracking: See a world map with dots placed wherever your visitors are located! This is one of my favorites!

6. Chat Invitations: Initiate a chat invitation for your site visitors.

7. Push Chat Visitors: Ability to "push" visitors your chatting with to other pages on your site, or on the web.

8. Canned responses: Easily created and categorized to make live support a breeze.

9. Operator to operator chat: Operators can see when colleagues are online and chat with them too.

10. Customization: Beautiful collection of live support buttons, chat windows and the ability to use custom graphics.

Those are my 10 favorite features specific to Provide Support. Now - there are also other excellent live help software services that have a few more sophisticated features. Let's look quickly at those too.

Integration with knowledge base and ticket system / Customer visit and chat history data is stored / Co-browsing - Surveys - and several other complex features.

Which Live Support Software is Best for Me?

Well, of course that depends on how complex of a system you need. For my business, we don't need all the complex support / ticket system features of those expensive live help systems, so a high-end service like ProvideSupport is perfect for us. We can use it on every page of ALL of our websites (and we have over 50 of them) for no extra charge. We can monitor the traffic across all of those sites in real-time.

This type of service (on that number of domains) from other companies would easily cost anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000 per month! Yikes! That's why I rave about ProvideSupport for about $8.25 per month per operator, we're covered across ALL of the sites in our network.

One feaure that I do appreciate on some of the other systems that is not available on Provide Support is visitor history. It was nice to see if a particular visitor had been to your site in the past, what they viewed and a transcript of any previous chats. However, that is a feature I'm willing to do without for the huge savings we realize.

Also, one other very small feature that I liked with some of the other tools was the audible alert that would ding-dong when a new visitor would enter your site. Provide Support does have nice audible alerts for various things, but oddly, does not include the entry ding. Again though - a very small complaint.

Another great live computer support service is BoldChat. BoldChat includes many of the high-end features of the very expensive sevices but costs less at around $30 - $80 per operator for a single domain - depending on whether you choose basic, pro or their eCRM version. The basic and pro versions are quite similar to ProvideSupport - but If you require a ticketing system, the Bold Chat eCRM offering is a good choice and less costly than LivePerson, etc.

 

The Verdict?

I'm convinced that just about every type of web site can really benefit from good live support software. Whether you use it primarily for monitoring your web traffic and result of your promotional campaings - or if you need a system specifically for client support and online sales - you will quickly become hooked - it's actually quite addictive!

Those who will benefit most will be close to their computers throughout the day - or have a staff (whether in-house, or out-sourced) available to handle support requests. I have also begun recommending live support software for our retail clients that have bricks and mortar shops, in conjunction with an online store. Live computer support requests are handled much the way that a telephone call would be. In fact, when a customer has a question, the computer will "ring", allowing anyone nearby to accept the support / sales call. What a way to increase daily sales!

Regarding the different live help services, I'l totally sold on ProvideSupport. They offer great online service, just about all the most desired features, the ability to run a single account across unlimited domains, super-low pricing and much more.

They're followed by BoldChat - A good choice for users who need more advanced ticketing and visitor history data. They're a LOT more expensive than ProvideSupport, but much less costly than Live Person and other similar services.

About the Author: Stephen Rinaldi is the founder of BBIworld.Com and the BBI Network. He is author of several popular books and Special Reports, such as Top Web Design Scams and What You Need To Know About Web Hosting and Domain Names , both freely available from BBI Publishing. He is also a frequent contributor of articles on doing business holistically.

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Important Note for Instant Web Page Solution Customers

For highest quality service, please use the Live Help system on the Instant Web Page Solution web site. This allows our support team to more efficiently identify you as a IWPS customer and direct you to the specific resource materials available on the IWPS website.