Don’t Be Fooled: 5 Reasons Why Live Chat on Mobile Devices is a Bad Idea
Thanks to products like the iPhone, Blackberry, and Google’s G1 Android-based phone, SMS communications and mobile email continue to be primary functions of a mobile device, rather than secondary functions. I’ve had an iPhone, Blackberry, and Palm Treo and, while call quality was a factor in my purchases, the main value these phones offered was easy access to other forms of communication. So it may seem like a natural progression for business-oriented live chat software to be compatible with mobile phones.
I disagree. I don’t think conducting live chat on a mobile device will help businesses with sales and customer support. In fact, I think it can harm them. Here’s why:
- IM and SMS communication has given the world a new form of communication that is based on abbreviations and shortened phrases. How comfortable would you be as a consumer if the operator on the other end of the chat inevitably used this informal, casual type of language to communicate? Not very.
- While 3G and Wi-Fi are becoming more readily available, how much are you willing to bet your sales on them? In my experience, Wi-Fi is hit or miss and often not available (or very strong) in most of the places I travel to – except my home, where I have a laptop with a full sized keyboard and 802.11n speed connection. 3G is still not as fast as Wi-Fi, meaning lag time between the customer message and the agent response. Does your customer know they are communicating with you over 3G on your iPhone? Is that the best representation of your business?
- Historically, the number one complaint against live chat is the quality of the communication from the agent. If you are on your Blackberry – in any situation – is that the best environment for you to provide the quality of customer service that will differentiate you from competitors and close sales online?
- One chat at a time. The biggest value chat can provide your team is the ability to have multiple chats at a time, reducing the cost of each interaction and increasing productivity. How many chats can you fit on your iPhone interface, while keeping the font size readable? Realistically not more than one. The easy argument back is that one is more than zero, but if you are providing an abbreviated, slow, semi-professional response to your customer, they might disagree. Can you help them navigate the website easily? Are you getting information about the visitor that improves that quality of the interaction and your ability to help them find the right product quickly?
- Scalability. One agent answering one chat on one phone device is not the definition of scalability, therefore the very small increment of value that a mobile device could have offered is even further diminished by the fact that it doesn’t scale well.
Chat provides so many benefits as a business tool. And while the prospect of seeing business live chat go mobile is exciting, when you really analyze what live chat is supposed to do to improve your business online, it quickly loses its shine. There is no doubt that more and more consumers as well as businesses are using mobile devices and that software for these devices continues to become more robust. I enjoy playing a variety of games on my iPhone, checking in on Facebook and Twitter, and being able to get up-to-the moment email alerts (and responding when necessary). For asynchronous communications like email, SMS, and social networking, mobile devices are great. For real time communications, a phone is still better as a phone and chat is better left to people sitting at real keyboards typing 40+ words per minute, with access to canned messages, real time visitor analytics, cooperative browsing technology, and customer history.
October 15th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
I am a one man show and want to give the perception of a larger firm. How about sending a text message when a chat is started so I know to go to my PC to respond or use GOTOMYPC, sign on and respond.
October 25th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
While the points made in this article are all valid in their way, the other side of the coin should be looked at a bit more closely. As you mentioned, “one is more than zero”. Anyone experienced in sales knows that conversion rates are more than percentages. The fact is that some of the customers are qualified and they are THE customer that will be a conversion. Missing one chat from a qualified customer is disastrous.
Small companies adding chat to their website experience the added customer response from someone knowing that a live individual is there to help them with questions.
Now if the individual handling chat for a smaller company has to step away from his office, or home office, he loses the possible contacts from any chats that would have been initiated at that time. Of course, he could farm out the chat, at some expense and an assured drop in quality of the knowledge and experience of the chat. However, if Bold were to design an app or web-based system so that chats could still be monitored from a mobile device, it could make THE difference between THE customer being contacted or not.
Perhaps the larger corporations with call centers are the bread and butter, but if the smaller companies are the bread and butter of Bold’s customer base, I would suggest innovation allowing at least a possibility of occasional use of mobile devices to monitor and reply to chats and click-to-calls. This flexibility becomes more and more important, and the innovation of Bold has been keeping it at the front so far.