I love pizza more than nearly every other food.  So, when I’m forced to go to Chuck E. Cheese’s knowing the pizza is terrible, I still wind up eating it every time.  Why?  Because even bad pizza is better than no pizza.

My philosophy is that live chat is like that – even mediocre live chat support is better than no support.  Poor chat support can be attributed to an apathetic rep, language barriers, slow typing… but isn’t that still better than no support at all?

What about web visitors who don’t actually chat with an operator but are encouraged to know that someone is there if support is needed?  In this case, the operator was never a factor, but chat still helped earn more sales.

The obvious argument here is that a bad support experience may drive people away, but I would argue that a complete lack of support can produce the same effect.

When a website visitor sees a customer service phone number, they fear they may have to wait on hold for an extended period of time or their call may never get through. If they send an email, they think it’s unlikely to generate a response. But with live chat, a visitor knows they can instantly receive live assistance, whether they take advantage of it or not.

How is that a bad thing?

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 at 6:00 pm and is filed under Live Chat. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.