Web : Breaking the Chat Ice

Who loves live chat and how marketers can reach them

Proactive chat, done well, can prove highly valuable. However, it requires careful preparation and ongoing management in order to ensure success. While the research shows that a majority of shoppers are welcoming, a significant percent of those surveyed (20 percent) indicated that they had actually left websites because of poor invitation practices.

Here are two critical considerations to take into account:

1. Don't Force It. Some proactive chats force the visitor to acknowledge the invitation before they can regain control over the Web page. The visitor must accept the invite or decline it. But, during that time, they can't do anything else. This was cited as the No. 1 reason among those who had left a site due to proactive chat invitations.

2. Timing Is Critical. A variety of time-related factors can have tremendous impact on your invitation acceptance rate. Timing, in our experience, is in fact the most powerful variable when optimizing proactive chat. There are many factors involved, including:

• The total page views of the visitor;
• The total time on site of the visitor; and
• The total time on the current invite/target page.

One way to set the last variable mentioned is to use website analytics data. At first, try setting the invite time just below the average time-on-page metric for the target. After a predetermined "sufficient" number of invites have been accepted, try setting the time beyond the average time on page and see what impact it has on conversions. One school of thought is that those who stay beyond the average time might be more valuable.

If your firm approaches live chat strictly as part of a cost-reduction strategy aimed at driving customers into a less expensive contact channel, you could be leaving money on the table. You could also be ignoring a very attractive segment of the Internet shopping population that, above all else, wants to chat with you.

Ross Haskell is vice president of marketing at Wichita, Kan.-based online communication software provider Bold Software. He can be reached at ross@boldsoftware.com.

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