Chat and CRM for ecom sales

[todd999]

Any word on When, and How we will be able to get a Live Chat system in v4?

We have been looking at BoldChat and a few others that have Chat + CRM + Ticket system but we want to stick with cerberus and like the direction things are headed.

We are an Ecom company with 15 seats now and if we can get more chat and CRM features we would be able to double the seats by adding the sales staff.

One feature we like in boldchat is that if two workers IM about a case it is stores the log with IM logs to the client and all the emails all together... all in one ticket...

Any plans in the Chat area?


-Todd

BTW - HUGE THANKS for the return to vBulletin

[jstanden]

Any word on When, and How we will be able to get a Live Chat system in v4?

Hey Todd!

A redesigned LiveHelp is my next big project once I get the Support Center done for 4.0. It's been recommended by a lot of people. We've done some past attempts, but we never had the flexibility/speed/tools available that we do now with Cerb4/Devblocks.

We have a lot of great ideas for LiveHelp, and we're obviously open to all the ideas you guys can throw at us.

A big thing I'd like to see is "tokens", where our development team can give a specific person the ability to get through about a specific issue -- when normally the development team isn't available to answer chats.

There are times where troubleshooting a strange bug would go much quicker in real-time, but the phone doesn't facilitate sharing data and giving out our direct IM accounts is a bad idea if we ever hope to get our work done. ;)

Associating chat transcripts to tickets (and to companies in your address book) is an absolute must in my opinion. The main criticism leveled at us with previous incarnations of LiveHelp is that they didn't do enough to integrate with Cerberus. I strongly agree.

As for CRM, I'd really like to get a chance to show what Salesforce & Co. ("glorified rolodexes") are doing wrong as well.

For instance, the most important thing we could be doing with our sales feedback loop is tracking what people are asking for (feature-wise, etc). If 50 people say they would buy if we had the 4.0 Support Center done, then it's negligent for us to not put those 50 people on an internal (non-public) waiting list in an easy way. So as soon as dev is done delivering the feature, our sales guys would know who to run off and tell about it.

As well, our sales guys should really be doing a "vote by proxy", concierge-type service for the people they're talking to. If somebody says they'd like to see "feature x", sales shouldn't be sending them a link to JIRA (where they have to create yet another account, find the issue, learn how to vote, etc). Sales should just be incrementing the votes by one and silently attributing it to a customer.

These things would be really useful even outside the software industry. There are plenty of other things like them which seem so simple but nobody is doing right.

We're in the position to do it better, if I could somehow double the length of a day. ;) (Hey, it's 2AM right now, I'm doing what I can for you guys!)

[todd999]

if possible to let us use this an an internal IM (replace PM system) and attach internal chat logs as a comment it would be a BIG help

THANKS FOR ALL THE GREAT WORK!

-Todd

[todd999]

Just a note / wish

In our current Live chat system we have a problem when Agents forget to turn the client off and go home at the end of the day. This leads to upset customers who try to chat because it says we are online.. I wish we had a way to set a schedule at the server to switch from live chat to email form. Perhaps with an active override in the client.

Perhaps this is yet another reason for a calendar with staff schedule so that the server knows when a particular agent should be logged in...

just a thought...

[gordogre]

Jeff,

I admire and appreciate your enthusiasm and diligence in answering questions on the forums, and of course it is great to hear what is in development and what your ideas are.

However, from the perspective of making business decisions on what software to purchase in a timely fashion, it is very frustrating to not have much of a real schedule or roadmap in place, instead always having to check back to see what's been done lately.

I'm also looking at purchasing a LiveHelp type service, and of course I'd prefer to use something integrated into Cerberus 4, but I'd like to know how far off in the futuer I can expect to have this functionality in Cerberus 4, to help me make a decision about to buy in the short term, and how long to commit to the short term solution.

So - again - when do you think LiveHelp will be available for C4?

Thanks for all of your work, the product is really coming along.

Greg

[todd999]

What are your thoughts on building from scratch vs. tight integration with an open source system like:
http://www.phplivesupport.com

it seems to have all the features we want except the connection to Cerb and logging of chats in tickets...

I love what you guys do when you write from scratch v4 is looking better each day, but it does take time and a few versions to mature any new code... Perhaps a leg up might speed the dev...

Just thought as we are planing to move to v4 in Jan/Feb and want to have connected chat asap...

Happy Holidays!

-Todd

[jstanden]

In our current Live chat system we have a problem when Agents forget to turn the client off and go home at the end of the day. This leads to upset customers who try to chat because it says we are online..

Yeah! We could simply check the idle status from the desktop client -- but sometimes you're near the PC and not using it, when waiting for a chat.

Schedules would be easy enough, until someone is working overtime. Though I suppose the server could send them a popup asking if they intend to keep working (and timeout in a couple minutes without a reply). If they logged back in after that it wouldn't bother them.

[jstanden]

So - again - when do you think LiveHelp will be available for C4?


Hey Greg!

I really do appreciate your enthusiasm, but it's not realistic (or responsible) for me to just make up a release date for you. It would be completely speculative.

If live chat functionality is absolutely critical for you right this minute, then you can use anything in the meantime. All you need to do is make sure it can log transcripts or "while you were away" messages back to the helpdesk through e-mail.

We're currently using LivePerson on our site again, in preparation for Cerb4 livehelp functionality. There are plenty of things to not like about LP. But at the same time, it's more practical for us to use anything and get started than find reasons to delay. ;)

We have something like 1,400+ people on the waiting list for integrated livehelp. It's certainly not going to be ignored any longer than it absolutely has to (for Cerb4's usability/feedback). The new Cerb4 plugin system (and Devblocks) makes our actual development work for a livehelp pretty straightforward.

[jstanden]

What are your thoughts on building from scratch vs. tight integration with an open source system like:
http://www.phplivesupport.com


I favor integration with anything! Even when our flavor of livehelp is complete, we're not planning any kind of exclusive lock-in to prevent people from bolting on something they prefer better.

Just thought as we are planing to move to v4 in Jan/Feb and want to have connected chat asap...If all goes well with custom fields and translations in the next week or so, then we can give livehelp the attention it deserves (especially considering the waiting list I mentioned above!). Some Cerb4 stuff will undoubtedly pop up with priority and divert our attention here and there -- which is why I hesitate to mandate a specific deadline.

That said, I'll offer you guys a working version of whatever beta we have as early as we possibly can.

We're currently using LivePerson on our website again just to get ourselves in the mindset of *needing* livehelp. If we don't need it, our implementation for you guys would be much less inspired. ;)

Happy Holidays!You too! :)

[chrisdowns]

Can we have an update on this please

[owc-admin]

Would love to find out how this project is going too.
Thanks
Jim