Apologies in advance for the long post. I need all of your opinion of feedback on this. I know us as business people can sometimes have rose tinted views on some things. If I am wrong about something, then I would like to know. If I am not seeing the obvious problems then again I would like to know.
Over the years I have had a number of websites, mainly in the service business, at one time I was managing probably about 12 or so sites of my own. And the service businesses have always made money in one way or another. Nothing to shout about, but comfortable. And I found that little things answering telephones and emails promptly have always helped. You would be shocked at the number of times someone has said to me that we are using your service because your office actually answered the phone. As simple as that sounds. We also found that have Live Chat on our website nearly always helped increas sales. People felt ib control, there was no telephone ques or waiting around. Providing live chat meant that someone always had to be logged into chat.
No, I thought, good or bad, if I had set up a call centre of chat agents dedicated to answering live chats on behalf of other businesses, it may be a good thing. Provided that the service quality was to a high standard, at a reasonable cost, then many businesses would consider paying for such a service. Especially businesses that were mainly operating online.
Now, I looked at all my competition, and I wanted to create a better name, better site, and do things they maybe were not doing so well. For example, most competitors don’t publish their prices. Little things like that. We do.
Anyway, I created chatbee dot co dot uk a managed live chat service. We are operating 24/7 and mainly targeting 3 countries UK/US/Australia. We could be doing a lot better in my opinion. I have also noticed a number of competitors operating in this area fold. Now, I just want to know, would you use such a service. If many businesses use telephone answering companies from time to time, why not live chat? I know I have used telephone answering companies very effectively when it got too busy, or out of office hours. It was a great service to have – and so much cheaper then hiring someone to answer calls. Telephone answering companies have done very well – I know many of them.
The online market place is huge. I thought/think even if we managed to get a tiny proportion of that we would do well.
I don’t know what it is? Are we too expensive? Paying just 79p per chat for 24/7 365 agents is not expensive in my opinion. If you are small business that may just do 10 chats in a day, then it’s dirt cheap, compared to you doing it yourself or even hiring someone one minimum wage.
Is the website rubbish? Even if we said the website was rubbish, I see our competitors with far worse websites. I may be biased, but compared to some of our competitor websites ours is good. And even if we said it’s not to everyone’s taste, it’s something that can be changed.
I am not exactly sure what it is.
However, the reality is it has not gone as well as I had hoped.
I have to be honest about one thing. I have also given it very little time, compared to the amount of time I had invested in other businesses I have started. However, this is the first business that I have had to put my hand up and say I am not so sure. I don’t believe in letting pride get in the way. If something is not going to work, I would rather put my hand up and say, I tried but I failed or it did not work.
Anyway, please let me know your thoughts. I had to read your post 3 times before i got what it is you are offering. Your website whilst may state what it is you do, i'm guessing that because i wasn't in the buying mood, or needed your service it didn't readily jump off the page
Honestly i don't think there is a need for a site to have 24/7 sales staff. Even in today's impatient world of online sales most reasonable people expect a UK based company to have staff around in the region of 8-6. Outside of these hours an easy to find email us tab, which as long as you state your SLA would normally suffice.
I have used these chat services on many occasions and also not been phased by the fact that i'm surfing a particular website out of office hours, looking at their products and their online chat service is offline.
This then begs the question are you creating a solution to a non-existing problem?
Thanks Clive. I think you have a very strong point.
However, I have very real example that happened to me recently - where I didn't get the help when we needed it. We are mainly targeting ecommerce businesses and SAAS businesses that operate 24/7 and their products and services are sold at anytime, and bought anywhere in the world. It is a well known fact that many online purchases fail because of various reasons, and very often because the purchase has a question before the check out, and for whatever reason doesn't find the answer that he or she is looking for.
Recently, I tried to contact a Payment processing company. This company is becoming very successful and has huge amounts of VC backing. Anyway, I tried to call them, and I got their answer machine. I sent an email and got a reply back 2 days later. For me that wasn't good enough. If they had live chat, even if it was in-house, it may solve this problem cost effectively.
Live chat technology works, and the companies that sell just the technology have done well, because there is a need for the technology. By having live chat, you also reduce the volume of phone calls and emails. It therefore also reduces that cost - because people chat instead of phoning in. Chat is far cheaper than phone, and I don't mean just the call cost. The call cost is not an issue.
Anyway, say the chat was just 12 hours, or 8 hours during the office hours. Even if we only were providing chat during those hours, that still doesn't solve our problem.
You may be completely right, and we are trying solve a problem that doesn't exist?
Maybe it would be worth rephrasing this - asking members if they would use a service themselves for their business and secondly would they be put off making a purchase if such a service wasn't offered by a company?
My 2 pennies - its a straight no & no from me - if i couldn't buy on the night due to a query, i'd be happy to wait until next working day to contact the company to resolve the query
Interesting and candid post Ryan. I recently shut down a recruitment site and a shopping channel as they weren't viable, which can certainly be a blow to your pride. Although I thought I had the model right for both sites, I misjudged one and Google hated the other 
I think live chat is a powerful tool in the right environment. My experience with was with The Planet Hosting and talking to their techies. They were US based, so didn't particularly want to phone, and once you got past the techie triage, you were past to an engineer who could deal directly with your situation. Used them a few times, and first class everytime. Even ordered a new server via the live chat.
But with your service, if I have a customer who has a problem, say unable to edit their listing, your chat guys aren't going to be able to help other than point them to an FAQ or help guide. They won't be able to log in to our back end and deal with individual issues, so what else do they offer above a 24/7 call handling service?
We have used a few call handling services and they work very well. If you phone us, you want a response. If our lines are busy, then they bounce to a call centre. They have a script, can answer basic questions, can divert back to us if a line is free, or they will give re-assurance that they will get a call back in minutes. It's simple, works, and with the right operatives and technology, it's seamless and professional.
Until recently we had 24/7 coverage, which in reality meant the handlers would be polite, take a message, and explain they would get a call back during business hours. Analysing the number of calls out of hours and type of queries, it became obvious we wouldn't lose any sales revenue if we moved to a straight forward answer phone out of hours.
As Clive has said, no one has been put off making a purchase because they couldn't talk to us at 23.00 on a Wednesday night. I wouldn't expect Argos sales staff to be available at 23.00 (maybe they are?)
But we are only a low cost product. Maybe it would make more sense if a lead was worth thousands, and you routinely got genuine leads 24/7. But in that case wouldn't it be more efficient to have someone 24/7 who could answer actual questions either via a live chat or answering the phone and potentially close the sale?
Your website looks the part, I just wonder who your target market is? If it's small businesses, do their customers really expect to talk to someone 24/7? Thinking tradespeople, professional services, webdesigners, even e-commerce stores?
Maybe it's a different answer in the USA compared to the UK?
One thing that would put me off is the tag line "...just 99 cents a chat!". That wouldn't give me a warm and cosy feeling that my local geographic market was understood, which would lead to other questions...
Hope that helps.
For this to work successfully, the live chat ops have to know all the answers. There is nothing worse than commencing live chat with an operator who does not know the answers to your questions.....otherwise why ask people to get in touch and ask a question?!
And many have an attitude problem and offer poor quality customer service. Dealt with a few these past few months and all were terrible. It is hit and miss who you might get that can actually help you. And when you bring it to the web owners or managements attention they just don't seem to care.
Thank you both for your honest answers. And Clive, thanks.
See I use Live Chat on other websites a lot. I probably use a lot of services and business. Eg. When I need to contact Netfirms or some other registrar or hosting I will use Live Chat as opposed to phone and email and it get's things done. I also use a lot of SAAS products, and I nearly always use Live Chat. I know you are right, waiting a day to get an answer won't put my off sales. However, I have case studies and more case studies, that I have personally recorded where I did not get the answer to the question that I needed on the website, FAQ, and the next step was to email and wait for an answer. There are so many statistics and data on people deciding to cancel at the checkout at the very last moment. At that moment people don't pick up the phone. It's very true. However, if there is a chat agent there, it is more likely to convert into a sale. The truth is most may not outsource that function. That's what I think.
However, I do have to admit, that the market that I was most hoping to appeal to, SAAS, it's hard to convert them. I almost had a famous, one of those millionaires a lot of people know about almost signed up with his new venture which is becoming slowly famous in the CRM market place. But I found he was most demanding. If I could get that niche then it would have been worth while. However, although they are small companies, they have a lot of money they can throw at things, so doing live chat in house I suppose won't phase them.
Lastly, regarding knowing the answers. I can have my guys know all the answers your in-house people would know, maybe even better, so long as we were given the answers. And although I am not being realistic, we have access to the best co-browsing software so if help was needed, we can easily guide people to fill in forms and help them do small tasks without them even installing any software. And if you want to take it to the next level, I used to be in the IT support business, and proper remote support is easily integrated with live chat. However, that's not what we are about. It was supposed to low mid to low level help. Helping websites and businesses engage with visitors so more convert into sales. It's like when someone spends 5 minutes on a site and still not found anything, and tapping them on shoulder, like someone would do in a department store, can sometimes be very helpful to say "may I help you?"
However, although I may not like it, I have to put my hand up and say you guys are right, and I think my view got maybe too rose tinted and I was wrong. So thank you all for your honest advice. It is appreciated.
I am slowly going to wind things down with the business, almost with immediate effect. I think I kind of got what I needed to hear. Even if this was successful it won't amount to much. And my time is my most precious resource it is best invested elsewhere.
My first real business failure. I will try and learn from it.
Thanks.
No such thing as a business failure just learning curve and experience. Learn from it move on and be better in your next venture. Rem peter jones, branson, sugar all had failures.
We had live chat on our website for quite a while.
It was ok while I was in the office to man it but as we got busier and I was out of the office more, I thought it looked less professional to have live chat showing 'offline' so we removed it.
The best thing for us is call divert, all calls diverted to my mobile, so no matter where I am, they still get the same call response as they would if I was sat in the office.
Emails also come through to my mobile and always get a response within 2 hours.
Would I allow someone else to run my live chat for me? Not a chance!
I have used telephone answering services with operators saying 'I'm sorry the person you need to speak to is unavailable, can I take a message for you?'
I've also been on to sites that have 'Live Chat' operators who leave you feeling suicidal with frustration because they haven't got a clue about the business they are representing.
My mobile phone is my mobile office ... and it doesn't cost me any additional costs.
I'm afraid I wouldn't trust a stranger with no knowledge of our business to be the first point of contact with a potential or regular customer. It takes years to earn a good reputation and seconds to lose it.
“I am with you Trena, mobile phone=mobile office.
In a personalised business like WLC, its reassuring for clients to make early contact with me, the person who will be treating them.”
Thats a great point - i think a lot of smaller businesses the client actually buys in to you the person as much as the product itself.
As mentioned a few times, my former job was an insurance broker, i was much as part of the product as the policy itself - i was the point of contact for all aspects and if people were not confident in me then it didnt matter how cheap a policy we had.
Goes back to the customer service thread, people buy people and that starts with good customer service.
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