Chat Technology Brings a Human Touch To Online Customer Service

department. At the Disney Store, a perky sales associate greets each visitor who enters and offers shopping advice.

On the other side of the shopping coin, those same consumers are surfing the Web,and they still need help. So

e-commerce companies are looking for ways to provide a similar level of personalized service on their sites.

Real-time customer service software, which uses chat technology to link site visitors with sales or support personnel, is the newest vehicle that lets companies do just that. A sales agent, for example, can begin a dialogue with a first-time site visitor who requests information about finding a product or how to order, and discourage customers from abandoning a filled shopping cart before ordering.

"Live customer service will soon be a commodity on the Web," predicts Philippe Lang, director of marketing at HumanClick Ltd., Oakland, Calif., which hosts an online customer-service application. "Every single Web site that is selling something, whether it is goods, services or even human resources, will be using live customer service...It is natural that people who visit Web sites want to be able to communicate in real time with someone in the back end."

Automation Hell
Customer demand is perhaps the most significant piece of the puzzle.

"Customers are tired of 'Press three. Your call is important to us,'" says Jesse Reisman, director of product management and development of iChat, a suite of products that includes instant messaging, message boards and chat-room software from KOZ.com Inc., Durham, N.C.

In fact, 90 percent of online customers say they prefer human interaction, reports market research company Jupiter Communications Inc., New York.

"The average home user and business user are more sophisticated than they were a few years ago," says Alan Brooks, vice president of product marketing at eConvergent Inc., a Pleasanton, Calif.-based business solution provider. "People want electronic interaction when they want it, and they want human interaction when they need it."

Chat-based customer support may actually increase sell-through on Web sites. It also paves the way for opportunities to upsell. "Chat helps stickiness on a Web site because if people flounder, it provides a way to get help in the same mode without dialing a phone or doing anything else," says Thomas Gaither, vice president of marketing at zapdata.com, a B2B marketing information portal in Waltham, Mass. "That's important for an e-commerce site because if people get frustrated, their first instinct is to flee."

Zapdata.com launched its site in October, and has two dedicated "cyber-reps" who are trained in how to chat and basic sales techniques. "The interesting thing we've seen is that our cyber-reps are playing this intermediate role that is somewhere between service and sales," Gaither says. "You can see from transcripts of their conversations that they are viewed more as advisers and consultants than as pure customer-service people."

Almost every large sale zapdata.com makes has a chat associated with it, he adds. "In one case, for example, we had a $25,000-plus sale that was the result of information given over chat that provided the reassurance the customer needed to make an Internet purchase of that volume," Gaither says.

Companies are actually lower on the learning curve than their customers, KOZ.com's Reisman adds, but can benefit universally from chat and other online support solutions. "I can't think of a single business, except maybe a neighborhood grocery store, that doesn't have a product the customer might need assistance with," he says. "If it is a physical object, they may need some sort of response. Chat software is an inexpensive and easy way to provide that."