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Businesses It's funny. Laugh. The Internet

Live Chat Salespeople On Web Sites 279

Posted by timothy from the will-they-find-a-happy-medium dept.
burgburgburg writes "Forbes.com has an interesting article on how one web site is bringing all of the fun of salespeople suddenly appearing and offering to "help" to the web. It seems that Rackspace Managed Hosting tracks you by your IP number when you arrive. After 30 seconds on the site, a Java applet pops up with a photo of a sales person and a live chat offer to assist you in your efforts. According to Rackspace's co-chairman, one-third of users approached via chat engage in conversation with a salesperson, and half of those take the discussion to the next level. Furthermore, according to him, nearly 50% of new customers have originated from the chat feature. They have 6 salespeople watching the site in shifts for 20 hours a day."
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Live Chat Salespeople On Web Sites More

Live Chat Salespeople On Web Sites

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  • Apparently (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 20, 2004 @05:42PM (#8622858)
    If you type a/s/l they terminate the conversation....

    I'm so lonely

    DLF ROCKS!

    • Re:Apparently (Score:5, Informative)

      by yppiz ( 574466 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @07:11PM (#8623394) Homepage
      I'm both ashamed and proud that I had to search to find out what A/S/L means.

      Age / Sex / Location.

      --Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu

      P.S. If I get +5 Informative for this, it's a sign of the coming apocalypse.

    • Yeah, i found out Rackspace had chat things like a few months ago, and immediately went on there to play around with them. You know, to lighten their day up.

      I haven't come to a definite conclusion yet, but i think i got banned. :(

  • Damn, (Score:4, Funny)

    by CitizenJohnJohn ( 640701 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @05:42PM (#8622860)
    that's a long shift.

    • it's not a 20 hour shift (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It's six people who are covering it for 20 hours a day.

    • Slash Dot Effect (Score:5, Funny)

      by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @07:27PM (#8623458) Journal
      All of these nosey geeks show up all of a sudden, taking up all of their valuable chat time.

      Chance of getting a sale has suddenly shifted many decimal points in the wrong direction. The boss comes in after the weekend, and fires everyone who suddenly couldn't get a sale, excuses be damned.

      then the chat server goes up in flames.

    • as seen on their site, they offer:

      Rackspace's announces our new 3-tier DDoS mitigation tool that combines sophisticated intrusion detection with granular traffic analysis and server-level anomaly detection for the ultimate in DDoS protection and system performance.

      I bet they are getting a good load test right about now

  • mass hiring at rackspace (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 20, 2004 @05:42PM (#8622862)
    I think that their 6 sales staff might not be able to cope with a slashdotting :)

  • Just like in a B&M... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Zuke8675309 ( 470025 ) <ty DOT zucker AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday March 20, 2004 @05:43PM (#8622869)
    No thanks, just web browsing.

  • "The next level?" (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 20, 2004 @05:43PM (#8622872)
    "According to Rackspace's co-chairman, one-third of users approached via chat engage in conversation with a salesperson, and half of those take the discussion to the next level."

    What's that, dinner and a movie?
    • Also according to the rackspace sales guy (when i asked him why he thought it was ok to pop up a chat window) that 'many companies are doing this'

      I ended up not picking rackspace just because the sales force was SO overeager, I grew suspect of the company because they were trying to sell me their services so enthusiastically. I did let my super-fanatic-sales-guy know i felt this way...

  • a new first (Score:5, Funny)

    by jeffy124 ( 453342 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @05:44PM (#8622875) Homepage Journal
    this might be the first time an actual person will feel the slashdot effect

  • technical support? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by wo1verin3 ( 473094 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @05:44PM (#8622878) Homepage
    Does anyone know how well this would work in a software technical support environment geared for end users or have any experience with this in a support environment?
    • It sucks. Our company tried it for a few weeks and it was just too much of a pain to deal with.

      It's much easier to handle support issues through email or over the phone.
    • A place that I do some work for is experimenting with using VNC for tech support. Talking to the person is useful, no doubt, but being able to actually see what's going on on their desktop is priceless.

      It works pretty well if both ends are on high-speed net connections.

      • A place that I do some work for is experimenting with using VNC for tech support. Talking to the person is useful, no doubt, but being able to actually see what's going on on their desktop is priceless.

        It works pretty well if both ends are on high-speed net connections.

        EVERY place I've worked for has had VNC for tech support. Is this that new?
      • If you can get on their computer, then you can fix it. The last thing you ever want to do to a user's computer is fix it. You want *them* to fix it, thus giving them at least the slightest bit of clue, and encouraging them to think for a second whether or not they could figure out their next problem themselves, thus causing them to become even more clueful.

        I work in-house tech support, so we don't have a "convince them it's their fault and they need to buy another one" approach, and we have a standing po
    • Comcast does this. (In fact I can't even find their phone number on their support website).

      The Comcast system requires BOTH flash and Java. For me it took quite a bit of work to get that going. (I had disabled Flash because it often uses up 100% cpu under Mozilla, and java wouldn't work because my old Mozilla looked under /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins for java and my new one looked under /opt/mozilla/plugins).

      Once working, the online support person was able to solve my problem easily, then again all I ne

      • Christ, you let a support monkey muck around with your computer? I can feel a comp.risks post coming on...

        • Re:technical support? (Score:2, Informative)

          by timeOday ( 582209 )
          No, I had lost my Comcast password (needed to retrieve email), and the support person reset my Comcast password so I could choose another one. The only thing happening on my computer was running the chat Java applet to talk to the support person. To run the applet I first had to make Java and Flash work, which is on my own computer and unrelated to Comcast tech support. I mentioned it because it shows that chat support can have technical issues.
    • Depends on the business IMO. We have it at my work for Tech support (Web hosting), and it can be great for quick issues. I believe its better than phone in some ways because information like error messages/URLs can be cut and pasted rather than having to describe it. Its quicker than email, and so you get the "instant gratification" factor.
      It's no replacement for phone, but a nice tool.
    • Creative have a java chat applet for technical support (or sales support), and it's acutally a lot easier than trying to get information on the web. "why is Nomad Zen NX so much cheaper than Nomad Zen" sort of questions, for example.

      Although, the advantage of internet shopping is that, no matter how many people are browsing a particular category of amazon.co.uk, at least you're not standing shoulder-to-shoulder with any of them!

      "Could I help you sir?" Dammit, I thought this was an internet site... go aw
    • I've done technical support via instant messaging. It works great if the user needing support knows how to do things like cut and paste, move their mouse, etc, and can follow directions. Otherwise, it's about as bad as phone support...

  • So the plan is.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by WhatAmIDoingHere ( 742870 ) <sexwithanimals@gmail.com> on Saturday March 20, 2004 @05:44PM (#8622879) Homepage
    To use the /. effect to not only take down sites, but people now? Damn, that's cold.

  • Hey, it's how they got my company's business (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 20, 2004 @05:45PM (#8622884)
    I remember being a little disconcerted at the applet popping up....

    But ten minutes later, I picked up the phone to talk further with a sales rep.

  • Polly Want A Cookie (Score:4, Interesting)

    by stuffduff ( 681819 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @05:47PM (#8622897) Journal
    Polly want's a cookie that says I didn't come to the internet site to interface with a human. If I wanted that experience I would have gone to the store itself. If I ask for help; having a human around is really nice; but quite frankly I often find pushy sales assistants a bit annoying, as I'm sure others do.

    Additionally I wonmder if this might actually violate federal wiretapping law in that they are tracking what I am doing on their site without my permission or informed consent.

    • Re:Polly Want A Cookie (Score:4, Funny)

      by AKnightCowboy ( 608632 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @05:49PM (#8622915)
      Additionally I wonmder if this might actually violate federal wiretapping law in that they are tracking what I am doing on their site without my permission or informed consent.

      Uhh, no. You're walking around their site. They can watch whatever you do. You're not one of those nuts that buy into those popups that say "You're broadcasting an IP!!!!" are you?

    • Re:Polly Want A Cookie (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Txiasaeia ( 581598 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @05:51PM (#8622932)
      RTFS(Story). They're not tracking what you're doing, just how long you've been browsing for. If you have pop-ups and javascript disabled, they can't get you, either.

      Besides, if you connect to a web site and download stuff off of it (web page, a picture, etc.) chances are they've got your IP already. It's like wanting to sue Slashdot because they know that you're posting a reply to a story.

    • Um, if you go to THEIR site, they can track you any way they want.

      I however HATE these things. Don't pop shit up on my screen. Ever. If I close it, don't keep trying to chat with me and popping the window up again. Yet another reason to disable java and ONLY enable it when you want to use it. Just wish Mozilla made it easy to disable flash too.
    • Just where is the nearest brick and mortar Rackspace Managed Hosting location to you? It's not BestBuy.com were talking about. Also, its not illegal, anyone can track what you do on their site, its called a server log, and i think a hosting company would know a thing or two about those.
    • Some friends of mine discovered this about a week ago on rackspace.com's site. I of course had to go, and discovered much to my dismay that the window popped up despite Firefox being set to not allow popups. So, before I Adblocked the script (pattern *groopz2* will do it) we all decided to have some fun. We asked, among other things:
      • I was actually looking for metal shelving?
        (Response: try grainger.com [grainger.com].)
        (Response #2: great, give me your credit card # and I will send you some, how many feet?)
      • Can you t

  • I tried that once (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bender Unit 22 ( 216955 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @05:47PM (#8622899) Journal
    I was browsing their site just to check it out and up came the window. I like the concept that you can get in touch with someone right away, but I rather wait until I am ready. No matter what I am buying, I like to gather some information first and then contact the company myself when I have some questions ready regarding their products.

    • Re:I tried that once (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dsanfte ( 443781 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @06:43PM (#8623259) Journal
      Whether you like it or not is irrelevant. The salesperson's job is to help you make up your mind by getting into your face with their sales pitch before you have a chance to make an excuse for yourself to say "no".

      It's their job to make it difficult for you to say no, and convince you that it's in your best interest to say "yes".

      Basic telemarketing. There's a lot of psychology going on here that you wouldn't be aware of if you haven't worked in sales before.

  • Next Level? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Trolling4Dollars ( 627073 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @05:48PM (#8622904) Journal
    According to Rackspace's co-chairman, one-third of users approached via chat engage in conversation with a salesperson, and half of those take the discussion to the next level.

    What level would that be?

    Wanna cyber? ;P

  • Oh great. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CGP314 ( 672613 ) <CGP@ColinGregor y P a lmer.net> on Saturday March 20, 2004 @05:48PM (#8622905) Homepage
    Now I'll have to say `just browsing' on every webpage I visit and in every brick and morter store I visit.

    Thanks a lot.


    -Colin [colingregorypalmer.net]
    • Now I'll have to say `just browsing' on every webpage I visit and in every brick and morter store I visit.

      Actually, all you have to do is enable pop-up windows blocking. Which is a good thing to do anyway.

    • Re:Oh great. (Score:5, Funny)

      by JoeShmoe ( 90109 ) <askjoeshmoe@hotmail.com> on Saturday March 20, 2004 @06:42PM (#8623252)
      No no no...you've got it all wrong. You can just click the close button or disable popups or disable Java. Imagine if only brick and mortar was as easy...

      You walking onto car lot.
      Salesguy runs up going "Hey how are you find folks this day can I interest you in a test drive you know we have zero interest financing..."
      You calmly poke the salesguy in his right shoulder.
      Salesguy vanishes into thin air.

      You walk into the computer store.
      You see a herd of clueless blue shirts galloping your way.
      You calming pull out your indestructable wall and place it between you and the sales people.
      You go about your business as the sales people furiously wail and beat at the wall.

      -JoeShmoe
      .

  • Chat Based Sales (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anti_Climax ( 447121 )
    I don't really think this is such a bad thing.

    Most people are used to seeing the occasional pop-up, so the offer itself isn't too obtrusive. If they aren't interested, clicking "No, Thanks" is a lot easier to do through a browser than say in person to most sales people. Add to that the idea that most people that are on the site are probably not just random passers-by, and you've got a fairly good idea going.

    Now if this was on other sites, I could see it getting out of hand, but that's another thread...
    • Regarding your sig, the comments are approaching TEN million, and the UIDs are approaching 1 million. I'll take a prize, though :)
    • Um, I am NOT used to popups anymore, because I use a browser that doesn't totally suck. When I DO get a popup, like one of these things, I get annoyed. If I want to chat, I'll click on the chat button. Never popup unsolicited - that's just rude.

      • Re:Chat Based Sales (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Examancer2 ( 606336 )

        The arguments against pop-ups are somewhat irrelevant because it would be fairly trivial to modify the software to display the chat windows inside the webpage itself.

        Some simple session handling would allow you to keep a consistant conversation no matter where they navigated on the site.

  • It's less useful than it sounds (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nakito ( 702386 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @05:50PM (#8622918)
    For what I've seen, popup sales help is not particularly impressive. The "first level" of help appears to be essentially automated (basically a chatbot) that burns up several minutes establishing contact with an "Eliza-like" series of questions that you have to answer before you can get any further. Once you get to a real human, the level of support is not much different than what you would find if you searched the FAQ for the site (for all I could tell, it might still have been a bot except that I specifically asked if it was a person and then got a non-automated response). And I found it creepy to be accosted virtually, sort of like being stalked by a popup ad. Until they improve the interface and the substance, I'll pass.

    • Re:It's less useful than it sounds (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Having actually used the Rackspace chat I can tell you its a real person or at least a really good AI. I said he scared me and he apologized. I asked questions, he answered. When he wasn't able to help anymore, he scheduled a follow up call. Worked really well. I was really impressed and will probably be hosting 10 or so servers with them and it's partly because of their little applet. I think it's an awsome idea.

  • Old, old news (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Animaether ( 411575 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @05:50PM (#8622919) Journal
    At SplutterFish we designed a custom system based around IRC which allows users to get live support as well.

    This means that virtually all of our users can connect, usually without any installation required (through a JAVA applet, or HTML-based webchat on port 80 for those behind firewalls) - whilst still offering our users their own flavor of client to use whenever they want - e.g. mIRC.

    Our users are very pleased with the service as they can get instant answers almost around the clock, they can receive transcripts of the conversation on their e-mail address, an FTP server is hooked in so that they can easily upload multiple files or large files, and an IRC back-end shows the details of the upload back to the support people (such as version of software used to author a specific file - in our case: 3ds max scene files).

    I would advise almost any company to start something like this, but you do need to have several people watching - either paid or volunteer / honor-system based. As a 'live support' system is only as good as just how 'live' it is.

    Oh, and yes, it has been driving sales as well :)

  • YMMV (Score:5, Informative)

    by XorNand ( 517466 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @05:50PM (#8622920)

    I imagine that YMMV considerably, depending on your industry. A year ago I was working for a .com that sold automotive accessories online. We experimented with the same service rackspace has, Groopz. We also tried PHP Chat and LivePerson. Groopz was the best, in our experience, do to the right combination of functionality vs. price.

    However, we ended up scrapping the live chat thing all together eventually. We had people who would pop in, ask a random question and then close the chat session. It was very difficult to carry on meaningful conversation that would actually lead to a sale. It's much more difficult for a shopper to do this to a sales guy in person or over the phone because you have their undivided attention.

    • I think that it's relevant in this case that the service is one that you can't find in brick and mortar stores. There are stores for auto parts (e.g. AutoZone), so if someone wants to ask questions, they will go into the store and do it. Not a big market for brick and mortar stores that sell web hosting.
    • but on the phone? undivided attention?
      to quote the Ren & Stimpy horse ->"No sir"

  • Tinfoil hats on.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by JohnTheFisherman ( 225485 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @05:50PM (#8622924)
    It seems that Rackspace Managed Hosting tracks you by your IP number when you arrive.

    I guess I'm safe since I bought that software from the popup ad that keeps my computer from broadcasting an IP. :)

  • Less useful than sales people in stores. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CGP314 ( 672613 ) <CGP@ColinGregor y P a lmer.net> on Saturday March 20, 2004 @05:53PM (#8622946) Homepage
    I had this happen to me on a website where I was already a customer.

    It really startled the hell out of me the first time. Anyway, I was at the site because I was looking through their help files to resolve a problem I was having. Once it became clear that I had already given them money and was looking for help, the guy just vanished.

    So not only did they interupt me when I was fine on my own, they left me with a bad feeling knowing they are clearly more interested in getting new customers than helping old ones.


    -Colin [colingregorypalmer.net]

  • Great.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by azuroff ( 318072 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @05:54PM (#8622952)
    The first thing that popped into mind when reading the post -

    "Soooo, how many licenses would you like to buy today?"

    from the CA commercials with the cardboard salesperson. I'll now have that commercial stuck in my head the rest of the day, you insensitive clod!

  • Cool... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Shirov ( 137794 )
    Actually this is a good thing as long as there is an option to speak with the sales associate. I like the idea of "being able" to ask questions... Now if I start to get bugged every 5 seconds... Well, there are alternate shopping alternatives... ;-)

    --Ryan

  • talk to my 'bot (Score:3, Interesting)

    by frovingslosh ( 582462 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @05:57PM (#8622980)
    What I want to know is how long it will be before we have AI clients that can carry on conversations with these sales people and how long will they be able to keep them talking before the sales monkey figures out they are talking to an AI 'bot that doesn't have the authority or capability to buy anything.

    Of course, the other question is how long before the salespeople are replaced by AI 'bots themselves. But it seems more likely that they will just be outsourced to India.

    • assuming specific domains, AI could possibly answer questions on prices, features and other things. Like instead of a FAQ, an AI could possibly have a database of answers and other information and based upon questions (and the line of questioning) find answers and offer suggestions. But there would be enough quirks that it'd be more of a "feature" of any system.

      Obviously, research in this field is occuring with sponsors like IBM. An AI that does true dialog. But I assume at least 5-10 years for website

  • I use FreeBSD and Mozilla

    Pretty much a java hostile zone

    I know *some* people have gotten it to work but, for once, I'm glad I'm lef tout of this stuff.

    no flash, no java, ah peace

  • Good feature (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mnmn ( 145599 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @06:01PM (#8623009) Homepage
    This feature is really cool, Ive been to sites where one question was VERY quickly answered. Call them and you have to navigate through touch-tone menus and wait till youre forwarded to 'engineers' who actually know what theyre selling. Email them and youll only get a reply bot saying expect another email shortly and hold your breath.

    In fact Ive never had technical questions like how much would a certain microcontrller sample cost, so fast. Its also much lighter on the salesrep than getting calls; any 14 year old can switch between 6 MSN chat windows faster than she can say huh
  • No doubt, these six salespeople will be "thanking" slashdot under their breath. Hopefully, their photo will be real-time, thus providing a glimpse of how websites feel when suffering from slashdot effect.

  • How long until... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by moviepig.com ( 745183 )
    How long until we see an artificial salesagent (i.e., not felt as an interpersonal burden) ...that's secretly operated by a real one? (...like the 18th-century chess-playing machine that actually housed a dwarf...)
  • As if pop up ads were not bad enough, now we have pop-up people....

    Blah.

  • Appreciated the assistance (Score:3, Informative)

    by jackalope ( 99754 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @06:07PM (#8623049)
    A couple of months ago I was shopping for a new hosting facility for some sites I run. (My florida room was running out of space). I visited RackSpace and got 'chatted-up' by this feature. I was a little shocked at first, thinking this was a automatid response system or something. So I misspelled some words and used bad grammar and the person on the other end responded with real answers to my questions.
    The conversation did go to the next level with a voice-to-voice phone call. I ended up doing business with Rackspaces' little sister company, serverbeach and am pleased with the price and the service.
  • This has been around for years. Another fine example of the media being slow.

    LivePerson is one such service - we use it on several of our sites, and I've seen similar programs being used on probably a hundred other sites.

    For regular customer support (a healthcare company, for example) it's very useful. Customers are impressed and on one of those sites, almost every person that starts the conversation (via a "Live Help" link on the navigation) ends up being a customer.

    I've never seen a "chatbot" used for

  • Stat Check (Score:3, Insightful)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Saturday March 20, 2004 @06:13PM (#8623081)
    50% of new customers have originated from the chat feature

    No, 50% of new customers were willing to speak with the rep on the way in. This might help keep people on the path that leads them to becoming a customer, but it doesn't start them on it. They had to get to the site somehow...
  • I asked the poor guy manning the site on what they likely thought would be a slow Saturday "How does it feel to be slashdotted?".

    His reponse was "Great. We love the Linux community."

  • HP web site (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dickens ( 31040 )
    I was on the HP web site to look up some info on a printer I'm buying, and there was a "live chat" option. It was initiated by me, rather than by them, but I must say it was a very efficient means of communication, if a litle slow.

    I preferred the wait to waiting on the phone.

  • i work for the company, that sold Rackspace (Score:5, Informative)

    by puto ( 533470 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @06:20PM (#8623128) Homepage
    I work for the company that writes the software that Rackspace uses.

    We initially wrote the software to use in house to for our sales and support team, but people quickly started to use it and like it.

    That being said I am going to answer a few things that I see popping up here.

    1. Our sales staff are all technical, network engineers, developers you name it. So when you page someone on our site, you get someone knowledgable about networks, internet, webservers, etc, so they can guid you.

    They are many companies that use our tool and similar ones to provide sales and they dont provide quality sales people. So if you have retail store or webstore, you need good sales people.

    2. Our products are cross platform. You hear me. Server side Linux, Windows, Xserve, Solaris. Operator side as well. We develop on OSX then port.

    3. Support staff are always the hardest people to please with tools, and the more you give them to do the less they like it. I rode a support desk for 5 years and I was a stubborn son of a bitch. However with online support you get the benefit of being able to have 2-6 people in a chat, as opposed to one on one on the phone. It actually makes you work more efficiently. And all communication is logged for QA, and you can email the transcript to your CRM system and the customer. It allows for efficiency.

    The biggest gripe I see here on slashdot is that you do not want to be browsing and someone popup. Well here is my opinion on that from a business standpoint and a computer liberal. If I am a business man, and I am paying thousands of dollars for design, hosting, bandwidth, not too mention my products. I want my salespeoople to have every advantage that they can.

    IT makes no sense to build a beautiful venue for window shopping only.

    Our software has increased companies revenues up to 700 percent, allowing for more jobs, pay raises, in the technical industry.

    I personally have to use the software everyday and abouot .0001 percent of the people we contact get bent out of shape. Most are amazed and want to know more.

    As a tech, I think it might be a little intrusive, but then again, if you got your nose pressed against a retail establishment window, someone will come and talk to you. And what is wrong with saying just browsing.

    This type of software adds the human element to an otherwise cold web. Which many people on Slashdot tend to lose because most of us sent behind monitors all day and on high horses.

    www.groopz.com That is the product Rackspace uses. That is our site.

    Puto
  • take the discussion to the next level

    They got to second base?

  • Been There, Developed That (Score:3, Interesting)

    by technomancerX ( 86975 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @06:29PM (#8623181) Homepage
    This is really not a new idea. I was one of the developers of the first system that allowed a service rep to approach a person surfing a web site in 1998 at a firm called SneakerLabs. The system was called iServe and basically allowed a service rep to launch a console that showed where every visitor on a web site was at, and allowed the rep to launch a text chat with a visitor. A visitor could also click a button on the web pages to request help. There were several other products on the market that allowed someone to request help, but iServe was the first to allow a rep to approach a customer.

    Basically the company ended up being acquired by E.piphany. No idea if anything was ever done with the technology after that (I had moved on by that point).

  • requested pop-ups only please (Score:3, Insightful)

    by unger ( 42254 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @06:30PM (#8623188)
    just the other day i was looking for a new web host and a window popped up with a sales person asking me if he could help.

    i was very annoyed.

    i told him that i *was* considering purchasing a host plan, but i decided definitely not to purchase a plan after experienced the unrequested sales pop-up.

    if on the other hand there was button that i could push to open a pop-up for a sales question when *i* wanted chat, now that would be very helpful.

    peace
    • I had a similar experience...
      I was looking at dedicated hosts just yesterday...and I clicked the "find out more" link, expecting to get a nice informative web page, and instead I get this stupid chart window.
      I closed it before the chat even started and looked elsewhere. I hadn't even been able to find a price yet.

      If your product can't stand by itself, but needs a person to sell it to me - taking advantage of the fact that people often find it hard to say no - then I don't want it.
      I want to browse all the
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • but finally a chance to test that copy of elisa you've had for years. Just code up a suitable interface and watch the sales droid go into meltdown...

  • Idiots run commercial websites! (Score:3, Flamebait)

    by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @06:37PM (#8623226) Journal
    And do you know why you currently need live sales people? Because the morons that run commercial web-sites include only bits and pieces of information about the products/services being offered.

    Slightly OT rant:

    I never understood it. The strength of the web is that you can decide how much reading you want to do, but when there's little information provided, you're just screwed. In a physical location you can almost get away with that, because you are holding the product in your hands, and can check it out, or maybe call over the salesperson.

    Although, I must say that is less and less true these days. The sales people usually idiots who only know what they can read on the back of the package (thanks for the help, you moron) and you can't open up a lot of products these days because they are sealed in plastic or something else that can't be opened and resealed non-destructively (I still like good old boxes).

  • Sounds Like a Job For... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bob9113 ( 14996 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @06:40PM (#8623243) Homepage
    ... the potential customer chatterbot:

    Sales Guy: Hi, it looks like you're considering Rackspace for your hosting needs. Can I help you?
    Chatterbot: Would you like to help me with considering Rackspace for your hosting needs?
    Sales Guy: Yes, that's why I'm here, to help you.
    Chatterbot: Why are you here, to help you?
    Sales Guy: No, to help you. To make your shopping experience with Rackspace more enjoyable.
    Chatterbot: How do you feel about shopping experience with Rackspace more enjoyable?
    ...

  • This reminds me (Score:5, Funny)

    by watanabe ( 27967 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @06:43PM (#8623260)
    The first time I saw one of these, I had the following conversation:

    Chat Popup: Hi, My name is John, do you have any questions about our products?

    Me: <pause> Hi, John. What do you do again?

    Chat Popup: I'm just here to help you, and make sure any questions you have are answered. What can I do for you?

    Me: <pause> Interesting... Can you prove you're a human?

    At this point, the chat window closed suddenly. I thought, "damn. pretty good.."

  • Any specials today....? (Score:4, Funny)

    by SmackCrackandPot ( 641205 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @06:46PM (#8623274)
    Reminds me of a hotel stay I once had. Spending the weekend at the swimming pool, I'm walking past the 'massage room', when one of the elegant ladies arriving for work, goes bounding up to her friend at the desk and asks eagerly "Any specials for me?". Recounting this to my parents, they explain exactly what a "special" was. Some time later, I'm going to a restaurant for a meal with friends, and we go up to the food bar. The waitress acts "Would anyone like a special?". I'm lost for words.

  • Tony is screwed... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BuilderBob ( 661749 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @06:52PM (#8623304)

    The Forbes story has a screenshot of an example conversation....

    Guest34725: I'm looking for reliable services with minimal downtime. Can you help?
    Tony: Absolutely! Zero downtime..guaranteed in our Service Level Agreement

    So, either Tony is screwed when the engineers find out, or we can add Rackspace to Cockroaches and Twinkies [fox.com] as the only things that will survive a nuclear war.

    Seriously though. This could lead to quite a few problems, given that it's impossible to verify who's taking part in the conversation.

    Scenario 1: Sales advisor offers a copy of John Grisham's new book (no, I don't know why either) if the customer buys the two Grisham books he's looking at right now. Customer buys the books but doesn't get his free book. Was it a legal contract?

    Sc 2: Female SA asks the customer if he needs any help. Customer asks if she wants to meet up for kinky sex later. SA sues company for sexual harassment (I think 3 /. comments like this have +5 already)

    Sc 3:SA offers underage customer a deal on Sex tapes because he was looking at some when his mom wasn't in the room and he doesn't have a credit card to buy the good stuff. Paedophile?

    Sc 4: Spammers install logging software which detects this popup, redirects to their website. Suddenly all of Amazon's customers are being offered Barnes and Noble special introductory offers. And Penis enlargment.

    Sc 5: Tony (in the Rackspace thing) asks the customer for his telephone number, because, there's no way Guest34725 will give out his mates number. (Pizza for I.C. Wiener) [foxworld.com]

    I'm a Fox whore, I apologise. If it appeases you, I don't watch Fox (channel) if such a thing exists, I live in the UK so I watch BBC or C4 (unless they replace it with snooker, hmm.)

  • We see both a lot of hits to our Live Help [chatmag.com] Software page, and frequent requests to add software to our list of live help software providers. Most live help software is configured by the user to be passive, waiting for a person to request a chat session, rather than actively pushing a session. We preview all software prior to adding it to our list, and personally, I prefer to be the one to initiate a session, rather than having the site push a session.

  • This kind of work (Score:4, Informative)

    by joshmoh ( 708871 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @07:08PM (#8623385)
    My aunt works as a "live chat operator" for a SF bay hosting company. Her salary is based on how many new clients she gets, so there's a lot of pressure to snag new clients through live chat.

    The reason many companies have switched to live chat salespeople (as opposed to phone salespeople) is that instead of having one salesperson with one call, each salesperson can have 5-10 chat windows open at once. Each chat operator has a specialty -- whether virtual hosting, colocation, or dedicated -- so customers interested in a certain plan can be transparently redirected to the proper operator.

    Certainly, you'll get your questions answered through live chat, but since you're talking to a salesperson, they want you to purchase a plan. It's how they get paid.

    Coming soon: Arthur Miller's "Death of a Live Chat Salesperson"
  • I'm a rackspace customer and I've got to say the live chat feature is awesome. I went to rackspace.com once looking into getting an SSL certificate for my server. I chatted with the sales guy for a minute and while he couldnt direct me to a page with more information on the SSL certificates he was able to pull up my account information and give me a phone number to call and an extension to speak with. I did not however purchase the SSL certificate from rackspace as they wanted something like $850/3 years fo

  • Fun... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Eric_Cartman_South_P ( 594330 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @07:22PM (#8623443)
    I just had a chat with them.

    Them: What are you looking for regarding support?

    Me: Cock. Hard cock.

    Them: (Chat session terminated)

    So much fun, I could do that all night.

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