Live Support for web hosting site - Good Idea?

That can be part of the problem, if the OP has to either spend his time or pay some one to handle 16hrs/day worth of live support requests it can be a major drain on his ability to manage the rest of the business.

Although I think live support is nice, it has no effect on which hosting provider I use. I have ~20 dedicated servers at 5 different hosting companies and my favorite hosting companies don't have live support.

 

We offer live support at the moment and its great, a few things you have to look out for are try keep someone on there most of the day. also if it says someone is online make sure that there is someone online to answer their question. We had it in the past where people forgot to log out, when they came back there was windows of angry people talking to no one.
There has been a few times where personally talking to the clients over the live chat I belive has helped us end up with the sale.
You should also make sure that the other support methods such as emails and tickets are looked after and answered well.
Another tip is never answer support questions over the live chat, always use support tickets that way there is a record and all of the admins can see and help with it if required.
Regards,

 

Live support is a great thing to have the amount of people I have coming to me via live support asking about extra addons for hosting, then finding out more really does help to seal the deal

 

I will love to see live support for my hosting company. This is a great idea and will attract lot of customers.

But the only problem will to maintain the quality of the support. That is: a customer will not like to see a live button at your site which he will use and will not get any response.

 

I have mixed feelings about it because I both am a client and a webhoster.

Here are my concerns:
- For you as the owner live chat takes up a lot of your time! You might want to be looking at a live chat where im is integrated so you can just sign in and forget about it. But the most live chat systems require you to login and logout and if you forget this it will cost you money.

- A live chat system makes it too easy for customers, If I see a website with a live chat I do not read the features. While the features are helping you sell your service...

We decided we prefer an email solution because the replies will be longer and more professional. With an email solution you can also contact your (maybe-)client if you havent heard from them in a while and all email addresses will be saved so it can be a good record to make up stats at the end of the year.

 

Yes definatly its a good idea you can make your easily convert your visitor to clients

 

this is an old thread but,
for me, from a website users perspective, I dont feel that I need live chat when I choose a server provider as I am happy to have support done by email. I like having ticketed support, where I can easily view replies and keep a transcript. The few places where I have had live support, the questions that I ask, tend to have to be escalated as the live support staff is really a minimum wage worker only able to handle that bare basics. Compare that to sites that dont have live support, and you can normally submit a ticket and have it resolved very quickly. Not always, but often live chat is like the receptionist with the real techs behind them. I would rather submit a ticket and have it resolved quickly by a tech then chat about it for 20mins on live chat.

From the perspective of a hosting company, it depends on your target group. There are alot of customers that demand (or require) phone support, some prefer live chat. So IF this is your target group, then do your best to accommodate their needs. The issue of course is the additional overheads that comes from this, and that costs have to be met one way or another, which in the hosting world is easier said then done.

 

I loved it when AdWords had their live chat up. I don't know why they got rid of it. Too costly, probably.

As the OP's question, yes, it's a humongous benefit to have a live chat available. How many issues I personally solved with my web hosting providers just though the live chat. Many. Between emailing and a live chat, I'd choose a live chat every single time.

 

I'm currently using Zopim Live Chat to give live text support to my customers.
It's a really nice application, if you use a paid plan you can customize the colors and use several agents.

A lot of hosting companies use it, and I recommend it

You can read more about it on zopim.com