Hint: When Your Service Is Your Sales Pitch...,

Get Your Act Together!

A good friend who also happens to be a very smart guy, Martin Focazio, recently completed a research project for a major client and shared his findings with us over at the WWWAC List.

The WWWACies, as we like to call ourselves, are survivors of the Y2K DotBomb. It was founded 12 years ago by people like Kyle Shannon and Courtney Pulitzer as the organization for the plaid flannel shirt guys, curmudgeonly programmers, developers, designers-the guys who wrote the books. NYNMA was for the suits in the suites. NYNMA doesn't exist anymore. As a sales and marketing flack, I tag along to learn what everybody will be talking about next year.

Anyway, companies pay Martin lots of money to get the straight dope on various topics. He's also a top-rated speaker for the American Management Association. And, he's actually started a blog by popular demand. It is NC-17. Well, just some strong opinions, really!

Here's his post -
"I recently had a research project to investigate best practices an
innovations in "Click to Chat" platforms;

I reviewed the offerings of the following 40 companies over a period of 4 days:

Aestiva LiveHelp
Akiva Chatspace
BluLark LiveSpider
Boldchat
Chat4Help
Click Chat Sold
Click&Care
ClickSeva.
eGain eService Enterprise
eLiveService
eStara
FaceTime IM Director
Get1on1
Groopz
InQ
InstantService
KANA
Kayako
Ligne Directe
Live Advisor
Live Office LiveSiteManager
Live2Support
LiveHuman
LivePerson
MayWeHelp
Netlert
Novomind
Omnistar Live
OrbitSupport
ProvideSupport
RightNow
RightNow Live
Sales N Stats
SightMax
Sitechatter
StarDevelop
SubjexCSR
Talisma
WhosOn
Xigla

Of the 40 companies, 31 of them didn't have anyone online via their
own live chat system between the hours of 9AM-5PM on a weekday. That
makes 78% of the firms offering Click To Chat too busy or something to
turn on their own click to chat system to service inbound enquiries.

I can excuse some of the companies that were just providing a link to
a PHP platform or some such, but for companies actually offering a
click to chat service, especially those offering a hosted service,
here's some news: if you can't be bothered to use your own product to
service your own leads, then I, as an evaluator, won't feel all warm
and fuzzy and you won't even make it through the first evaluation
round .

Second. LINK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS. Don't claim "a leading biotech firm"
uses your product unless you can cite an example. If your
implementation isn't open to the public, then grab and sanitize some
screen shots, write a 2 page case study and give a freakin' reference
name so we evaluators can check your claims.

There's a reason why LivePerson.com can charge 5 figures a month for
what is a true commodity service, it's because they make it easy to
feel good about the purchase decision.

Take heed all entrepreneurs. Demo or die."

Uh, can you say "customer service"?