The basic concept of the Live Help system is this: a system that allows consumers to interact with a company directly and immediately. With such a 24 hour, personalised program in place, sales and revenue are boosted significantly. Although Live Help is ripe with age, the system has been floating around the web for a number of years without making a notable appearance.

Building Up

It is live. No more excuses for lost sales, even for non-ecommerce organizations and because it is text-based, there are archives. Actually, two of the most prominent benefits to the system are implemented using these archives. Firstly, companies can track their employees’ communication skills and improve on them. Secondly, these offer an opportunity to build on the company’s knowledge base. This branches out into the employee’s knowledge, as they will soon develop skills in dealing with queries and add on to their on-the-go knowledge, which will lead to faster performance.  The other branch leads to the company itself. These archives indicate current consumer trends and interests, so the company can base their offering on exactly what the consumer wants.

Losing leads cannot feature with this system in place. Placing the Live Help option on your lead page will already keep consumers focused on your website. All because this is a generation that does not like making a telephone call, but they do like instant gratification - a lot.

Is this not a call centre?

Although Live Help systems are quite similar to call centres, they are not equal in any form. It is generally acceptable to state that people are not fond of call centres. The pan flute music, holding for an eternity to speak to an available representative, having a list of options to choose from – of which none exactly match your query and finally, not fully understanding what your representative is saying, thanks to a bad line. However, this system can easily be integrated with the call centre workflow. The set of basic skills are the same and with an average customer to employee ratio of at 10:1 productivity increases rather than fluctuates. Employees can even push the page that a client needs to their computer screen, almost as if the interaction was face-to-face.

Open Source and Cloud-based

Some of the open source Live Chat hosts include Crafty Syntax and Livezilla, which also offer the benefits of geo-tracking clients. These systems are easily customised; you can choose whether or not your employees are available 24/7 or just for certain periods of the day. The system allows you to design the aesthetics to suit your brand, blending into your corporate identity by fully incorporating the system into your website or cms. A feature that comes in handy is the real-time visitor monitoring, which in turn aids in the identification of user habits – with the benefit of an additional security filter.

View this video from Crafty Syntax for a demontration

Another interesting Live Help system is LivePerson. The site claims to ‘help the Internet deliver on its promise of making our day-to-day lives easier and better by supplying real-time access to the world’s experts and their knowledge’. LivePerson is a destination where anyone can have access to a variety of experts across a wide field of subjects.

LivePerson also caters to businesses. They present LiveEngage, which is a cloud-based Live Help system for organizations. They make use of Predictive Intelligent Targeting to assist the business in understanding their consumers, other than simply knowing their habits. The interaction with consumers is rich, personalised and outcome-driven. No agents work on behalf of your organization, LiveEngage is incorporated into the business’s existing workflow with the purpose of reducing the work load. This proved the perfect opportunity of getting all the right information about this system; from the horse’s mouth. When starting the chat, you are given a reference number along with the name of the agent assisting you.

This type of structure, clearly putting your client needs first, adds a somewhat intangible value to your company. It fulfils needs while setting a high standard with regards to competitors. Especially if you are in ecommerce, your absolutely must have this. The only danger of a Live Help system is that your employees give robotic responses to clients, so a manner of training ought to be provided before introducing the system in your company’s workflow.

Sound Idea Digital has intergrated a live chat on TAL's website. Their technical support team is using it to answer questions online.