[Sigia-l] Live Chat: Pros/ Cons?

[Troy Winfrey]

Hi Lisa and list members,

The answer is, it all depends :) What is your business model like? Off the
top of my head, folks who need a little hand-holding are better targets for
live chat; if you're selling T-shirts or other low-margin, low-consult
products, you might be less successful. You also need a decent amount of
traffic/customer volume for optimal results.

I can tell you that there is significant buzz in the marketing sphere for
the use of live chat. It can offer dramatic ROI by a) limiting call center
volume and b) actually converting complaints into sales, or increasing the
size of a sale before checkout. It's worth testing as you have got to fit it
to your business model, as above, and you need a decently-trained staff to
do it. Even so, many companies have found it a very successful thing.

Sterne talks about this to an extent in Web Metrics, a book I humbly urge
all the list to memorize if they haven't already. It's also an occasional
topic on imediaconnection.com and clickz.com, two other invaluable resources
for anyone in IA. Go to those sites and do a little searching.

The main thing to remember is that it's all about numbers. Insist on
capturing the math and then doing it, and you'll have your answer. If you
squint, the process will look a lot like old-school GOMS HCI stuff.

Troy