Recently I was battling to log in to BusinessWarriors.co.za and I noticed a link to "Click here for live help". I clicked on the icon and was greeted by a friendly (real) person who helped me through the process of logging in. I had seen this type of chat on other sites, but never before had it helped me so effectively and quickly. The alternative would have been to fill out a form or an e-mail, and probably wait a day for a response (if at all!).

The service on Business Warriors is provided by LivePerson.com. I poked around a bit on their site and they seem to be quite comprehensive, although a bit pricey at $99/month. A bit of Googling uncovered another option in ProvideSupport.com who seem to offer something very similar, but starting at $15/month.

I have set up the 10 day trial of ProvideSuuport.com on 2 of our e-commerce sites (www.flagkit.co.za and www.bugzapper.co.za) to see if our visitors/potential clients would make use of it. 24 hours later nobody has requested a chat, so perhaps the South African market is not educated enough on what live support would entail? Perhaps we can lay blame on the usual "slow internet" culprit and guess that the average SA surfer doesn't have time and bandwidth to click on links that look too fancy? Or maybe our sites are simple enough to not require help! ;-)

If you are interested to test out the service please feel free to visit on of the sites mentioned above and click on the link. An operator should be on-hand to take your call (ie, me!). I am really excited about this type of service and what it could do to improve the web experience for everyone. I can think of a ton of sites that I use and wish I could chat to someone about.

[PS - you might be reading this post some time in the future, and we might not be using this service on our sites anymore. If that's the case then clearly we decided it isn't worth it!]

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