Thread: your opinion..offering a chat service on website

Aloha, I was just able to collaborate and work out details with someone about a special order today..since we were both online at the same time, it was easy to email back and forth rapidly. What could have taken days through email was done in a matter of minutes.

So I started thinking, what if I made myself available for certain time periods on chat, where dancers and resellers could collaborate with me quickly on an order? I can do something as simple as facebook chat, or I do have an im name on yahoo.

I was thinking it would be time/appointment oriented so we were both on the chat at the same time.

One problem is that I can easily get overwhelmed, I can hardly keep up with emails let alone the speed of chatting and how many requests might come through, but damn it would be effective than hit and miss emails :)

thoughts?

You've identified you can get overwhelmed, and standardised 'chat times' may not help that, so perhaps there's other things you can do to help reduce the email workload.

Can you make appointments for online chats on a case by case basis? In the same way you'd make an appointment for someone to come and peruse your stock. That way, you won't have to make yourself available for chats that may or may not eventuate (and stress yourself out knowing there's other things you need to be doing).

Perhaps when you get an email order in that you know would be easiest to settle over a chat, you can respond with "It's probably easiest to finalise your order over a chat session. I have appointments available on xxx or xxx times. If either of these suits, let me know and I'll book it in. Otherwise, I look forward to receiving further correspondance by email."

Another thing that strikes me...it sounds like you have to do a lot of backward-forward emailing, and I presume this is because there's a lot of individualised detail to cover with your clients. Perhaps you could use detailed questionnaires, and keep a set of 'standard' replies that you can copy-paste, in order to help reduce this?

I believe that doing it on a case by case basis where you set up a chat appt. with a client ahead of time would work. Otherwise (IMO) you could get overwhelmed by folks who may not be serious customers.

what about skype?

I like the appointment idea. You might go crazy with 50 customers trying to chat with you at the same time and getting discouraged by the "wait time".

I LOVE online chat for services. I use it all the time for tech support with my website. So much easier than racking up cell phone minutes. I hang up if I wait longer than 5 minutes because I only have a 400 minute cell phone plan!

Originally Posted by jewelbellydance

Can you make appointments for online chats on a case by case basis? In the same way you'd make an appointment for someone to come and peruse your stock. That way, you won't have to make yourself available for chats that may or may not eventuate (and stress yourself out knowing there's other things you need to be doing).

was gonna say the same thing...

yes it will be by appt .. signed up with skype and my user name is akaisilks