Chat Sucks, Spin Sucks, Trust Rocks

  

 Email Article  

Tweet  

  

  

  

We all hate "spin" - a story that is self-serving for the teller rather than the plain, honest truth. That's why Bill O'Reilly's book The No Spin Zone made the New Yorks Times best-seller list and why Gini Dietrich's Spin Sucks blog has become so popular. Speaking of which, check out Workface founder Lief Larson's guest post there today, Three Ways to Increase Engagement on Your Website.

Lief's post explains that legacy online chat sucks for the same basic reason spin sucks—because it doesn't engender trust. Spin doesn't support trust because it's designed to decieve, or at best to mislead. Legacy online chat doesn't produce trust because:

• You, as the site visitor, have no control over when, with whom and how you will engage.
• The vendor decides that for you, based on a "track and ambush" approach that logs your IP address, tracks your on-site movements, then assigns a call center rep based on that info.
• You have no idea who is on the other side of that chat window. But you're often required to give up your anonymity before getting any information of value.

In short, chat sucks because it is old school. It doesn't support the way people buy, and want to do business online, today. A better alternative is to put the website visitor in control, give them options as to who to engage with and in what fashion, and respect their privacy.

Want to learn more? Download our new whitepaper, Chat Sucks for Marketing: Alternatives to Live Chat - How to Improve Reaction Time, Better Engage Customers, Generate More High-Quality Leads and Enhance Your Brand.