There are several real-time chat solutions available: AOL's Instant Messenger (AIM), Internet Relay Chat (IRC), and ICQ. These are person-to-person and party line environments. The other side of the coin is Internet-based Customer Relations Management (eCRM), technologies that allow representatives of an organization to organize and support efforts at attracting and maintaining appreciative, loyal customers. eCRM solutions include elaborate e-mail/reply traffic analysis, Web site visitor tracking analysis, and now, real-time chat with full transcript recording and instance analysis.
During my research into eCRM applications, I wanted to see how chat sessions worked. (And I specifically wanted to know what had happened to HumanClick.*) So, a chat with a LivePerson sales rep showed me the capabilities of this type of service. Typically, it includes text-based instant messaging between a customer and sales rep, the ability to pass the customer off to another rep, save all transcripts of a chat to a database (including appended comments by the reps after the session has ended), and numerous reports. Additional capabilities, at additional cost, involve e-mail and telephone support. My research then revealed an enticing offer by InstantService and, on behalf of the Sacramento PC Users Group, I signed up right away.
InstantService Overview
InstantService.com is an application service provider (ASP), a company that runs a program on their equipment that is controlled from a Web-based control panel. They have a three-tier rate structure based on chat "transactions" regardless of the length of the chat.
- Charities - free,
- Low Volume - $80/mo for 100 chats + $1.00/chat after that,
- Standard - $0.60/chat, monthly discounts after 1,000 chats; setup fee and monthly minimum applies.
Paul, the InstantService tech rep assigned to the SPCUG, took me through a 90-minute, step-by-step tutorial on how to manage the account and run the Agent Console. He created a training account and had me log in as a training agent while he played two other roles, as a customer and as a manager. We went through taking a customer, chatting, passing the customer to another agent, and ending the session. He then went through and explained all the account setup screens and available reports.
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| InstantService's Agent Interface. |
| Click the thumbnail for full image. (62K) |
When the representative (that's me) logs in as an "agent," a Java applet is downloaded and executed in an applet window (another browser with nothing but the title bar). Then the waiting game begins. Of course, if you are a busy company with numerous active visitors to your site, there may be people already ringing your chat bell. If not, then days may go by before someone shows up to chat. And for those with dialup access, that may be a problem. Most ISPs will automatically disconnect you after four, six, or eight hours. And I have no idea how well AOL would behave.
The Agent Console will ring a bell when a customer enters the queue. Not all machines are set up according to the needs of the applet, so a few machines will not be able to play the bell sound and a few machines will ring the bell after the third attempt. Once in the queue, preliminary information gathered via a customer form is available. Part of this information is the intended subject of the chat.
All agents can see this information and can "take" or ignore the customer. However, once in the queue, the customer has been told that the system is looking for an available agent and as best as I can determine, there is no system-configurable time-out. That is, the customer could wait all day in the queue, being ignored, as long as there is an agent logged in.
Once a chat begins, the agent has a collection of tools available: prepared Web addresses, text strings, and filenames (created and maintained by the account supervisor). For example, if the discussion concerns SPCUG's award-winning monthly magazines, the agent can "push" the Web address of the current issue of eBlue to the customer. The customer will have a new browser window pop up, displaying the intended page. Likewise, the agent can "push" the latest copy of Adobe's Acrobat reader. Once the reader is installed (the agent can not "push" an automatic installation), the customer can then read the PDF version of our magazine, Sacra Blue.
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| The customer's chat interface. |
| Click the thumbnail for full image. (16K) |
Each InstantService account can be subdivided into "departments" with each agent assigned to whichever departments are appropriate. Each agent can also be given a set of "permissions," the ability to pass off a customer to another agent, for example. And each agent can have a personalized customer chat window, complete with a photo and logo, and a distinct color scheme.
The supervisor of the InstantService account has the responsibility to create the departments and the login accounts for the various agents, configure the various forms, and has access to several reports that mainly detail times spent in the queue and in chat. Complete transcripts are also available. All administrative functions are executed via Web-based JavaScript pages.
InstantService.com has approximately 100 subscribers and is seen on more than 600 Web sites from companies that have licensed the InstantService technology. InstantService uses SimulService (www.togetherweb.com) as the back-end collaborative communications engine.
Other companies providing eCRM include LivePerson (recently acquired HumanClick), LiveAssistance, @Web (from Little Monster Media), LiveHelp (from Fujitsu Software), and Iserve (from SneakerLabs).
Experiences...
On the two machines I've used to pose as an agent on our InstantService account, either the Java Runtime Environment (JRE v1.3.1) or InstantService's Agent Console applet gives me problems. Originally, it seemed to me that that if the original browser that logged in was terminated, leaving just the applet's window, disengaging the JRE became problematic. I've done that several times and each time, because Windows stalled out (mouse cursor moves but otherwise completely unresponsive), I've had to hit the power switch. If the agent's connection was lost, re-establishing the connection produces an "already logged-in" message that then screws up the computer. Even quitting the Java applet normally causes more problems than not. I hope they get this thing fixed soon.
InstantService.com
600 University St. Suite 2250
Seattle WA 98101
206.956.8000
