Web Chat is another niche and is an integral part of modern day Contact Center Solutions. It uses all aspects of Inbound Call Routing, Queuing routing the chat to the best agent to handle it. The success of any Web Chat deployment really depends on how efficiently it can route chats to the best agents !

Also chats needs to be stored and easily available to admins to review them later for agent efficiency and record keeping just like call recordings.

Hi Lee

I would be happy to have a discussion with you on the benefits of web chat. Feel free to contact me at anytime

John

Do you ask customers to use headsets ? If not, how is the audio quality ?

Hi, We just completed a Proof of concept on web chat using two solutions, egain and Live Chat inc. We ran each brand on our car rental web site for 3 weeks each. We concluded that web chat as a tool most certainly had a positive impact on conversions and was widley supported as a positive move by our customers. I suppose like all tools its how and where you use them that determines how effective they will be. we carefully selected the touch points on our site that triggered a web chat prompt. Our POC is now complete and we have chosen Live Chat Inc fr reasons of funcionality and price. Good luck with your web chat process.

Cheers
Paul McGovern

Customer will follow our company on FB or Twitter if they are getting/gain something by twit to us.

My organization introduce FB and twitter to resolved inquiries and complaints. Its really success! 40K follower in just 2 months.

John B, close but not close enough...

Emily: That's why you should track the visitors coming to your website. Do you currently have anything like Google Analytics in place? You can most definitely find out exactly how many people click on your link, and even if they carried on exploring your website and how long time they spent on it!

I have just started using Twittter at work.

I've had a personal account since 2009 which i mainly used for communicating with friends. A month ago i changed my profile so its almost exclusively for work now eg changed my bio, photo, interests, stopped following Paris Hilton and statarted following our customers and other Unified Communications suppliers!

However...I'm not sure if I'm convinced. On the one hand its a quick, easy and most importantly, totally free way of getting your brand out there to potentially thousands of people (at present I only have a measly 150 followers but I'm working on it!)
But on the other hand I'm just not sure its worth it for a medium sized company like us. Are people really reading my tweets? If i posted a link, for example, to my companys website would anyone actually bother to follow said link?

I'm going to persevere with it for the moment as like i said its free and I can do it on my phone on the bus on the way to work!

Hi Lee,

I would suggest that your best bet would be to contact a few potential providers and be honest about your concerns. Most half decent providers would bend over backwards to provide you with case studies and business case assistance if it means the increased possibility of sealing a deal with you. After all, all of their clients will have had to go through the same thing you are, so they will surely have someone that can help you or put you in contact with one of their existing clients who can.

Good luck with it anyway and let us know how you get on - Web chat is something on my ever growing 'to do' list too so would love to hear how it all turns out for you.

Regards,
Matt

Im in the process of trying to convince some key stakeholders on the beneifts of Web Chat.

I have searched online but havent really found any good case studies / info that I can review, does anyone have any experience of webchat or case studies thy can share?

Thanks,

If a twit is a pregnant fish is a twitter what caused it ?

I am only on face book to keep a track on what my daughters are doing on there.
I am like so many of you who cares if Debroah Jones is "In a Relationship" or Fred is having coffee right now.
As I send most of my day in front of a monitor I can not be a@#$ spending my free time doing the same. I have a few real friends if we want to catch up we do so over a beer and or meal. How can you be "freinds" with someone you have not meet, you have to see the whites of their eyes to make that call.
FYI Daddy John Smith is a friend of mine and the beans on toast were yumnmy :):):):):):):)

I'm amazed that John Smith did not have a glass of John Smith's to wash it down with.

I have never bothered setting up a profile on the site.

It's a site that really annoys me and I really don't understand the fuss!?

People seem to live their lives on it these days just updating their status to let people know what they had for lunch and other pointless things nobody really cares about!

I must agree with applebyd though, I hate it when people publish their entire life on there:
12.15pm - John Smith is feeling a bit peckish
12.17pm - John Smith has decided to have beans on toast
12.23pm - John Smith is waiting for his beans to cook
12.27pm - John Smith is enjoying some yummy beans on toast
12.34pm - John Smith has finished his lunch and will now wash up...

Aaaghh!

Apologies to Patrick McGoohan

Ouch seems like I touched a raw nerve.

@DaddyM - Some good feedback there. I've not thought of it as a way of connecting the call centre together.

Nope....

I only use it to send private messages to people who refuse to be contactable
by any other media....

I really really don't care if you're having 'cheesy chips' for dinner, if the cat's
just been sick on the baby. I don't want to be tagged, poked, liked,not liked, farmvilled, friended or de-friended.

I am not a profile, I am a free man!

DaveA

I find Facebook is a good networking tool and a call centre is a great example of a place where having Facebook can be handy.

When I first joined Facebook, I found i was able to find out a bit more about people I worked with such as if they have families, their background and their hobbies and interests.

I always used to say hello to one of the guys from the IT department at the coffee machine, but when I became friends on Facebook, I saw that we shared the same taste in music. This gave us some common ground and we were able to have more conversations. This also helped me get my IT issues sorted quicker!

I've found it's a good way to find common ground with people you'd otherwise not speak to much.

I hope that's given an insight!

Hi Jonty , Well said , I do feel the same here , however in FB you find things which are exaggerated and framed ! or you need to be really creative for friends to say something on it

Am I the only one who doesn't get Facebook?

I have a Facebook profile and a number of friends. I go onto it, but I never seem to find anything that I want to say.

And by the look of it, it's the same with most of my friends?

Am I missing something?

I have looked at a few famous people of interest but I dont find it particularly good reading. I guess someone must otherwise it wouldnt be such a success.

I mainly use it as a micro extension of Call Centre Helper. I also use type "call centre" into search.twitter.com so see if anyone is saying anything interesting.

I have had a look at Twitter but havent found anything of interest, what do you look at?

Are you active on Twitter?

I am a bit addicted to it.

We ran a poll asking if people could use Twitter and Facebook at work. The results so far are

- Yes: 34%
- Yes, with restrictions: 8%
- Only in the break area: 5%
- No, It is restricted : 53%

Votes: 124 Started: 9 Dec 2010

Martin Hill-Wilson shared with me a recent report showing that Twitter is still a minority report.
http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Twitter-Update-2010/Findings.aspx

What are your experiences?

One of the best methods is to take older machines ready for recycling/scrapping and place them in or near the rest areas or in a corner of the centre. Install DeepFreeze on them to avoid accumulated junk and virii and use them as scratch boxes.

Even the sternest warnings and direst consequences will be ignored in favour of the need to be connected to their facebook page 24/7. By installing machines for this purpose you control when they can use it and alleviate costs of dismissal, hiring, retraining and cleaning virii/trojans introduced via games and personal mail attachments.

Although, these days, the iPads, iPods and Blackberries tend to continue the productivity drain. You first line of defence is simple call avoidance policy... monitor pause codes and bring them up in reviews. For staff with excessive aftercall wrapup you should occasionally remotely view their screen or glance across to see if they are blackberrying to determine whether they are actually documenting or engaging in call avoidance and deal appropriately.

I'd go with the outright ban on active workstations to be honest, along with severe penalties for willfull circumvention.

-Gary

We also had social network site and asked staff to use it in moderation. Obviously this did not happen and after a few warning the “abuse it then lose it” rule kicked in, so now it is gone. We were looking into software that allocates internet usage time to each individual i.e. 6 hours web usage a week, and once that is used up they have no access until next week, but it was decided not to go that route. We still have internet access but no social network sites or entertainment sites anymore. Strangely when they lost it less than 10% of the staff had an issue the rest just accepted it.

Blocking them off is often the best bet. You could also restrict the time when staff can access them. They should only be doing it during lunch or break times.

You could set up a PC in the break room for people to check stuff on facebook etc.

The other approach is to start monitoring the amount of use.

You can probably find some of the worst offenders and the have a quite word. If this does not work then try disciplinary procedures and let word go out on the grapevine..

All the pc's on work stations in our office have webscense which is a website filtering system. We have two pc's in a breakout area which do not have the webscense software on them that people are free to use in their spare time.

The settings on the webscense give you the option to allow certain sites and to block others. At work stations we have all social media websites blocked and all gambling websites. You can set it to allow sports websites only at lunchtime and that type of thing.

My customer service team has a bit of an addiction to recreational sites, such as Facebook and MySpace. Any ideas about the best way to deal with this (without blocking access completely). Warnings don't seem to have been effective.

I have mentioned it before, but yes we have it working successfuly for a client. I'm not allowed to say who though.

Its a popular subject but because people dont see it working in the mass market they are slow to take it up.

I get lots of people talking to me about Voice Biometrics for identifying callers, but I have not had a chance to use it in anger yet.

I suspect that it will be like lots of voice recognition technologies and not be very accurate.

Possible add on-shoring becoming the 'in' thing
(RBS excluded of course)

Has anyone seen anything interesting in the contact centre world?

The things that have been most interesting for me over the past 12 months
- The rise of Social Media (particularly Twitter)
- Duvet Days (now starting to take off)
- Speech analytics (although it can still be rather fiddly to use)

Anyone spotted anything else?

We have Sametime (embedded in Lotus Notes) available
although not everyone uses it.

We had it as a live Beta when the BT fire happened in
Manchester a few years ago, and, it was a lifesaver as for
three days it was the ONLY real-time communications we had
between sites,

In terms of general use, I find it's fantastic for 'quick' questions
where you don't really need to call.

Regards

DaveA

I also work for a Major bank in South Afica, We have access to social networking sites like facebook between 12-2 during lunch breaks and then after business hours 5:00 PM. we also have access to most sites on the internet during the day. Gaming sites are not allowed as it carries a risk of virusses, pornography sites that incite racial hatred or racism etc are banned, the list is also updated continiously as new sites start to come up on user profiles. Web access needs to be carefully monitored depending on the environment that you work in. especially with regards to Risk of information security. Also things like flash disks, writable cd-roms e-mail needs to be monitored so that information cannot easily be sent out of the contact centre to unwanted persons.

Answering your question about "names" of instant messaging systems out there, the one at the forefront in business is Microsoft Office Communicator. It's a closed system (so people with an MSN account can’t go an chat with their friends outside of the workplace), it can also offer presence and offers a full audit trail of conversations as well.

Someone asked about this a couple of days ago... Here is the link:
http://www.callcentrehelper.com/forum/topic/dose-you-contact-centre-use-internal-messenger

Good luck.
Gene

Do any of your call centers use instant messaging i.e. MSN or similar?
if you do What are the positives? why and the name of the messenger?
if you don’t, why?

Thank you all for your posts.

Do you allow any type of gaming or web based games?
We currently run a book club allowing agents to read a book that is downloaded to our internal system. All books have to be out of copyright.

Do any of your contact centers use instant messenger (msn type)?

We do not allow gamings at all,

My contact centre is very much like an office, so has a more relaxed atmosphere around web access. Agents are allowed to use social networking sites as well as email. However, gambling and adult sites are prohibited, of course. This relaxed attitude breeds a relaxed attitude among the agents, which is great.

I find that there is very little abuse of this privelage, but it's very easy to restrict one person's access if they've been abusing it.

What I tend to recommend to clients is that there is a "walled garden" of websites and other business related sites at the agent's desktop.

In the agent's break area, where there may be some other PCs present, they can access their email and other social networking sites during their lunch or other breaks. But all of the sites will need to comply with the company's prevailing IT website policy... so if the corporate policy of the business says "No Facebook", then thats that.

G

We allow staff access to the web with a few caveats...
Access to certain sites such as:
social networking
personal e-mail such as hotmail
gambling etc is banned at all times.

Access to a set list, ie bbc, suppliers/competitors allowed all day with shopping sites available during lunchtimes.

We are able to report on what sitea have been accessed and when to take up with staff.

Hope this helps.

Hi Ant,

I recently put a business case together for a form of internal messaging called presence based communications. Not only does it allow internal messaging (which is all audited and recorded), but it provides a status for each agent, and their team. it's particularly useful in recruitment and specialst enviornments where calls need to be transferred regurlarly, as it allows the agent to identify an available agent in another team, have a IM chat, if necessary, and then transfer the call. I calculated it would save each agent about 8 minutes per day, and this centre had about 200 agents.

In short, if its santioned by the business, and there are clear policies on how it can be used, then it is a valuable tool. You will probably need to assess how you think it might be used and where it will bring business benefit.

Let me know if you have any further questions.

Kind regards
Gene

thank you for you post godfrey, we work with many companys within our contact centre allowing agents to visit many of there sites.

do you allow any form of gaming?

My contact centre agents are only allowed to visit business sites, e.g those who deals with vehicles will only be allowed to visit Vehicle manufatures and Vehicle dealership sites. They are also allowed to visits all banks for internet banking.

Personal/ social networking sites are prohibited.

Does your contact centre allow web access?
What web sites can your agents visit?
Can personal networking sites allowed to be visited?

Do any of your call centers use internal messaging i.e. MSN or similar?
if you do What programmed? What are the positives? And why?
if you don’t, why?