BQool, who offer seller tools for Amazon sellers, are the latest company to add live chat support to their website, giving visitors an opportunity to engage directly with one of their support technicians. The chat can be found at the bottom of the web page.
Chat with a technician is available Monday through Friday between 9 AM to 2 AM PST. It is free of charge and is open to any visitors to the site. Email support will still be available.
I was interested in this because I see chat sessions on so many websites nowadays, we even hear from many Tamebay readers who use eBay’s Live Chat, which always seems strange to me – I tend to just pick up the phone if I need to speak to customer support (although back in the days of named account managers I always used used Skype).
Do you like live chat services on websites? Is it a good way to communicate with the companies whose services you use or do you have other preferred methods of communication such as telephone or email? Do you offer Live Chat to your customers on your website?
Peter Kuo, Business Relationship Manager at BQool explains why they chose to add live chat. He says: “We’ve got a great product, and we have great customer service to back that up. The livechat allows our agents to respond quickly to any questions our clients may have.”
5 Responses
We added a live chat function a few weeks back. Impressed so far with the results.
It’s an easy way to engage with multiple buyers and give them accurate information, for example instead of trying to point them to a URL over the phone you just paste it into the chat box, conversions are high as a result.
We also get a copy of the chat transcript by email with the clients details so a follow up email is easy.
The only annoying thing is someone always wants to start a chat when it’s time for a g̶i̶n̶ cuppa.
I have used Chat as a customer, but always find the response really slow. It is useful if you haven’t the time to sit on the phone. However, for smaller companies the phone is answered quickly so that has to be better surely.
As a retailer, the only thing about chat is having to be sat at the desk – we often are in the warehouse or similar. Might be worth a try though – there must be a reason all the big guys are doing it.
The usefulness of live chat (and any other support channels) is whether the person you are contacting is knowledgeable and has the resources to make a difference. If they just copy and paste stock answers (which often have no relevance to the question) this is no good.
One difference that live chat has is that the operator may be having multiple conversations at once, creating conversation delays and sometimes confused responses.
For non-critical issues I would prefer to have decent email support as this allows longer messages and gives both sides more time to lookup information if necessary. Response time is still important with emails and giving the correct information the first time is even more critical due to the conversation delay.
Adding self help features such as knowledgebases and real time information (order tracking and amendment) is also useful as it is available all the time without delay.
were not interested in providing therapy and comfort to the Lunatic and lonely ,