Millions per day? Billions per day? How many customers prefer chat? A recent interview shows that a Fortune 500 company in the Telecommunications industry reaches an estimated 8 million website visits per month. Based on recent chat log statistics, a similar company handled upwards of 7,500 Live Chat conversations in one month, for one product line. The truth is your audience prefers the web, and these visitors expect chat as an option.

A Virtual Assistant (also known as a Virtual Agent, Virtual Chat or Automated Chat Agent) is a self-service application that interacts with website visitors by answering questions about your company’s products and services. Virtual Assistants are similar to Live Chat however, instead of interacting with a live person, end users interact with an Artificial Intelligence (AI). Companies using Virtual Assistants often ask for suggestions when selecting a live chat vendor, including which vendors offer true integration with Virtual Assistants, and best practices. Since Virtual Assistants complement Live Chat, like peanut butter and jelly, noHold is happy to share the recipe.

This guide has been created to do the heavy lifting for you when it comes to researching live chat vendors, and how they compare. Get answers to your questions about the key features, determine which vendors provide seamless integration, and decide how to find the right information or marketing collateral to make the best decision.

Millions per day? Billions per day? How many customers prefer Live Chat? A recent interview shows that a Fortune 500 company in the Telecommunications industry reaches an estimated 8 million website visits per month.  Based on recent chat log statistics, a similar company handled upwards of 7,500 Live Chat conversations in one month, for one product line. The truth is your audience prefers the web, and these visitors expect chat as an option.

BoldChat conducted a study in September of 2012 entitled Live Chat Effectiveness. Their research revealed that there is significant growth across the US and UK with more than 65% of American online shoppers having engaged in a live chat, up from 50.4% during 2009. (Source: http://www.boldchat.com)

Moxie Software, a leading provider of customer-centric enterprise social software, concurs.

“We live in a multichannel world; email, live chat, phone, Virtual Assistants all play a part. No single channel is enough; a successful customer experience requires multichannel support. Many people still prefer a phone interaction, but an increasing number of customers are moving to online channels. Customers want to communicate via web chat today, and tomorrow continue the customer service conversation on the phone. Moxie offers the channels of choice—anytime, anywhere.” – David Spitzler, Vice President of Business Development, Moxie Software.

Moxie Software is not alone in its vision of a multichannel platform. LivePerson offers LiveEngage platform, an end-to-end, real-time engagement platform empowering businesses to get the most of out their existing digital assets by intelligently engaging with customers based on a real-time understanding of their needs. Chat, voice, content as well as video chat are all components of the LiveEngage platform. Similarly, TouchCommerce offers Live Agent Engagement and Self Service Engagement. The key is to offer the channel of choice while increasing conversion and decreasing site abandonment.
“81% of customers are expecting a resolution within 5 minutes. This is the standard. If you can’t meet that demand via telephone, chat is a less expensive channel.”
Here’s the agenda:
- List of our top Live Chat providers; also known as the Most Valuable Providers.
- The key criteria you should look for from each vendor.
- The customer success stories from companies just like yours. Show me the money. Where are the actual wins?
- What are the best practices? We understand that everyone wants to know how the leaders do it, so we staged a mini press conference where we share the plays that make each vendor an MVP.

 
Live Chat Vendors – Our Top Picks
*Note: This list is in no specific order or rank.
LivePerson, Inc.
Salesforce™ (Live Agent)
Moxie Software™
Genesys®
LogMeIn® (BoldChat)
TouchCommerce
Velaro™
Oracle® (Live Help on Demand)

Key Criteria – What Makes the Player Stand Out?
Ease of Implementation
Although all vendors tout ease of implementation, it’s important to understand the rules. By communicating your company’s goals and understanding which functionality is off the shelf vs. custom, you will come out with a better idea of the implementation timeline. Also, schedule some time to speak with customer references. Most vendors will be happy to arrange this type of discussion. Keep in mind, integration with existing applications will affect the time to deploy. It’s a bonus if the live chat vendor has partnerships with your existing vendors. Move on to the next portion for more on integration.

3rd party Integration
According to a recent article published by Computerworld, a vendor’s ability to integrate with 3rd party applications is becoming increasingly important and customers demand it. “In business today, an open Application Programming Interface (API) is more or less table stakes. It’s something you have to have,” says Stephen O’Grady, an analyst at RedMonk, an analysis firm that focuses on developers. “Increasingly, your traction is going to be driven by how open and how programmatically manipulable your product is.”
Leading research firm, Gartner says, “Organizations planning a Web self-service implementation should focus not only on the immediate channel requirement but also on creating a multichannel customer touchpoint strategy. Self-service strategies must include proper planning for many channels and functions coming together to deliver the same great experience irrespective of the customer touchpoints.” Source: Gartner, Inc. Investment in Web Customer Self-Service Reaps Time-Saving and Cost Rewards, Published: 8 March 2013 – Analyst: Johan Jacobs
Open APIs from your live chat vendor ensure that you can connect chat with other applications, such as Virtual Assistants, call center tools, social media and more.

Mobility
End users are increasingly mobile. They want to interact with your company from whichever device they choose. According to an article published in the Washington Post, “In five years, Cisco said mobile data traffic will outgrow global land-line data traffic by three times.”  Source: Washington Post - Mobile Internet Usage Expected to Surge, 2013.
In contrast, a recent Gartner report (Predicts 2013: CRM for Customer Service and Support in the Age of the Everywhere Customer), “By 2015, only 20% of organizations will have launched mobile customer service applications for self-service use by customers.” Gartner recommends to “Survey your customers ¬¬—find out what they really want. Is mobile customer service the answer to what they are asking for? If not, then consider other solutions that will fit their demands better. Mobile architectural considerations are paramount when deploying mobile customer service solutions.” Source: Gartner, Inc. Predicts 2013: CRM for Customer Service and Support in the Age of the Everywhere Customer, November 2012. Analyst: Michael Maoz, Johan Jacobs, et.al.
Mobile customer service interaction is expected by your customers. Marketing, customer service, and customer support must partner to provide the best experience for end users. Limited real estate via mobile browser makes a great argument for Live Chat and Virtual Assistants. Both are light-weight, and can be easily customized for the mobile experience.
Mobile chat solutions by Live Person offer mobile best practices support for agents.  The solution supports mobile best practices, ensuring the best possible mobile experiences.  For example: Mobile User Identification and Alerts.  Agents can identify and prioritize on-the-go customers, who often have more urgent needs and expect faster response times. Mobile canned responses empower agents to select from a separate list of mobile-optimized canned responses, keeping responses as brief as possible and without hyperlinks. Source: http://www.liveperson.com

Click to Call
According to Moxie Software, “Long hold times are many customers’ number one complaint.” Click to call provides a way for customers to always know the average wait time and request instant call-back or schedule a specific time and date for a call. Call backs can be prioritized over other interactions and customers can even initiate an interactive chat along with a voice call. The bonus is that there is no need for agents to have additional hardware, and customers are not required to download any software.
In 2012, Live Person was awarded #1 Live Chat and Click to Call Vendor by Internet Retailer. LivePerson’s website describes click to chat: Using real-time information about each person’s activity and behavior on your website, LP Voice lets you segment visitors and determine to whom to offer the voice channel using sophisticated business rules and predictive targeting.  Once a visitor enters his phone number and clicks on a voice button or invitation, his phone rings and he is automatically routed to the most appropriate department within your company for immediate, relevant assistance.

Reporting
Reporting is a standard feature for Live Chat. However, you should take an in depth look at the type of reporting your company would like to capture. For example, one company using both live chat and a Virtual Assistant said that it was necessary to receive comprehensive reporting via email. This goes beyond the traditional ‘login to access your metrics’ model. In addition, the same company required that these reports show combined Live Chat and Virtual Assistant analytics.
Genesys, provider of customer service and contact center solutions offers cross-channel reporting. Cross-channel reporting maintains a consistent view of customer interactions and service levels across all channels. LiveEngage by LivePerson combines real-time, on- and off-site visitor behavioral data with a broad set of customer and business data, including historical, operational, demographic, and third-party data, enabling LiveEngage’s proprietary analytics engine to target visitors with a compelling engagement opportunity at any step in the conversion funnel and throughout the customer lifecycle.

Visitor Tracking
Taking the guess-work out of customer behavior is important for up-sell, services, support and more. LivePerson’s visitor tracking answers questions like: Who are they? Have they visited your site, chatted, or bought before? How did they get here this time? How are they clicking through the site right now? What’s in their shopping carts? Where are they from? Which visitors are more likely to buy if you engage them now? LivePerson has pushed the envelope by offering these prediction engines. Customers have seen a ~20% uplift in results, such as up-sell opportunities.
According to one noHold customer, visitor tracking ranked extremely high on the features list.

Co-Browse
Collaborative browsing is the simultaneous browsing of a website to assist with shopping cart or forms completion. Often referred to as assisted forms completion, this activity will allow an agent to respond to a customer request for online assistance or click-for-help request. Source: Gartner, 2013. Magic Quadrant for CRM Web Customer Service Applications, February 2013. Analyst: Johan Jacobs
Genesys’ co-browse (web collaboration) connects agents to customers’ browsers to enable real-time online customer service with web collaboration. Streamlines support interactions for real-time forms or application help, and increases online sales by offering help at the point of hesitation.
Co-Browse is a valuable feature, but keep in mind that it gets mixed reviews from end customers. Allowing an unknown agent to control your screen can be uncomfortable. If your company decides to offer this feature, use verbiage that makes your customer feel confident that co-browse is secure.

Support
Live Chat providers like LivePerson offer 24x7 online support along with a community forum for customers. Velaro also provides a community forum, among support options such as success reviews, customized training, and 24x7 emergency support. Support should not be viewed as an afterthought or standard offering. Support is a differentiator. Be sure that the Live Chat vendor offers the right level of support for your company. After all, making a vendor selection is just the beginning of the relationship. Integration and customization will require resources; take time to evaluate the support options necessary for your implementation as well as your company’s ongoing needs.

Recent Recognitions and Awards
Genesys: 2013 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Customer Service – “Challenger” Magic Quadrant for CRM Web Customer Service Applications, Published: 7 February 2013, Analyst: Johan Jacobs.          Legal disclaimer: Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
LivePerson: The Frost & Sullivan 2012 North American Market Share Leadership Award; 2013 Stevie Awards; 2012 CRM Rising Star; #1 Live Chat and Click to Call Vendor by Internet Retailer; For more LivePerson Awards, visit: http://www.liveperson.com/news/awards
Moxie positioned as a leader in 2013 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Customer Service. Magic Quadrant for CRM Web Customer Service Applications, Published: 7 February 2013, Analyst: Johan Jacobs. Legal disclaimer: Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Moxie listed in KM World’s 100 Companies that Matter in Knowledge Management. For more, visit: http://www.moxiesoft.com/news/awards.aspx

Success Stories – Show me the Wins!
Here are a few links directly to the case studies featured on each vendor’s site.
LivePerson – LivePerson Industry success stories
TouchCommerce – Client Success
Moxie Software – Customers and Success Stories
Bold Chat – Case Studies
Salesforce Live Agent - Customers. Select an industry and product from the drop down menu to see customer stories.
Genesis – Customer Stories

Press Conference: An Insider Look at Best Practices
5 Best Practices
The following are all related specifically to integrating a live-agent chat tool with a Virtual Assistant tool, such as noHold.
1. Dynamic Chat Button:  Don’t offer a chat option unless the chat agents are available.  A Virtual Assistant is active 24x7 – but live agents are typically only available during certain hours.  Make sure your ‘click to chat with a live agent’ does not appear unless the customer can actually click to engage.  The last thing you want is for a customer to click the button only to receive a message like, “that feature is not currently available”.
2. Pass the Thread:  If the customer asks one or more questions of the Virtual Assistant and then decides to escalate to a live agent, you must pass the conversation over to the live agent.  Not only does this avoid forcing the customer to repeat themselves – it also tells the agent what the customer has already tried (or been told) which did not satisfy their need.
3. Integrate with Chat Agent desktop:  A properly designed knowledgebase (KB) will allow the Virtual Assistant to answer a lot of questions (often achieving 90%+ success rate).  While some customers will transfer from the VA to a live agent, many more customers are likely to go straight to the live agents.  You should integrate the VA’s KB capability, including the ability to use natural language to find answers.  The live agents can simply click to send the customer’s live chat question into the VA.  Then click to send the appropriate response straight to the customer’s chat window - saving typing and searching time.  This reduces chat handle times and improves the accuracy and consistency of responses.
4. Skills-based Routing:  Since we know what the customer is asking about – we don’t need to send them to a ‘general’ group of live chat agents.  Most live agent chat centers are organized by various areas of expertise – like billing issues, account changes, technical issues, etc..  When a customer clicks to chat with a live agent – use their session log to route them to the right group.  Getting the customer to the right group AND passing the conversation to the live agent will greatly enhance the customer experience while improving operational efficiency.
5. Proactive Invitations:  Live Chat is typically offered as an escalation or alternative.  However, there are times when you’ll want to engage the customer in a live chat session.  For example, if the customer asks, “How do I cancel my account?” or “How do I return my purchase?” – You should pop a chat invite and ask the customer “Can I help you with that request?” 

This session would actually be with the chat agents in the “save” group that would attempt to persuade the customer to reconsider.
Dave Brown is Managing Director of BolderView Systems Pty Ltd (http://www.BolderView.com.au).  BolderView is noHold’s exclusive reseller in Australia/New Zealand and provides complete implementation and integration services.

Here are a few helpful hints from leaders who have paired Live Chat with Virtual Assistants:

- Always begin by identifying the customer, region, product, etc. One company captures this information first, before engaging a live chat agent.
- Offer options. Some leading brands position the Virtual Assistant next to Live Chat. This way, when live agents are unavailable, or chat queue is too long, the Virtual Assistant is offered as an additional option.
- Provide customers with real time information. Customers chatting with a Virtual Assistant can see the wait times for Live Chat agents.
- In some cases, integration using APIs is not required. The session transcript from Virtual Assistant can be passed using specific parameters. In one example, the Virtual Assistant transitions to live chat by collapsing which initiates a Live Chat session.

Resources:
7 Tips for Selecting the Right Chat Vendor, by Velaro
BoldChat Resources a wealth of information from data sheets, to research and analyst reports.
LivePerson – The Connected Customer Blog .  LivePerson Aspire 2013, LivePerson’s customer conference.  NYC, October 8-10
Moxie Software - Resources
Bill Rose, Inc. – The Art of Managing a Tech Support Center – A 2 day hands-on workshop presented by Bill Rose. Register Here
BolderView Systems Pty Ltd (http://www.BolderView.com.au).  BolderView is noHold’s exclusive reseller in Australia/New Zealand and provides complete implementation and integration services.

Disclosure: Unless otherwise stated, this information was compiled from publicly available content from each Live Chat provider. By publishing this document, noHold is not suggesting that it is endorsed by or compensated by any vendor listed herein. Vendors are not ranked or scored in this document.