Live Chat vs Phone Support vs Ticket System

Very interesting thread.

I provide free hosting service, so I have limited resources.

However, I provide both live chat and email support.

• Emails are answered within 6 hours
• Live Chat only appears when I'm online
• Twitter is available as well for basic support.

Personally I will never need to use Twitter, as my main site is hosted via CloudFlare on a very secure and reliable server and my email server is separate from my clients server, and since Cloidflare controls the DNS I don't see it ever going down.

wittwerch said:

I visited some web hosting company websites and seeing that some are offering ticket system only while others are offering live chat and ticket system or just phone support only. Just our of curiosity, what is the best option for your customers and benefits of each one? I would like to hear your thoughts!

Click to expand...

Business companies are seriously trying their best to instantly communicate with their customers in case of some concern or in case they need some support. And again, all must be as quick as possible. On the other hand, some customers are sometimes impatient to wait for a feedback for than an hour. In addition, most customers also have limited time to deal with customer service support thus an immediate anwer is important. To select from various available means of communication, the rate of transferring information is one criteria. Here are my thoughts regarding the thread's subject based on my experience:

Live Chat
One time, I had one concern to my network service provider regarding withdrawal of amount from my account on unsuccessful transactions. I communicated with them through live chat and the exchange of information is fair. The issue was solved after protracted conversation and it took only around 30 minutes. The pros are (1) it will not bother you to answer immediately (2) you have a time to think and edit your response. (3) You can copy-paste some details without bothering to type. The cons are (1) some live chat is not 24 hours available (2) slow internet connection will cut the live chat conversation.

Phone Support
I have tried phone support (answering through a call) from a customer service support when I registered my bank account to online transaction. The transaction will be completed after the call and all necessary answer will be solved also after the call. The conversation is shorter than live chat. Pros are (1) dealing with real people real voice (2) can express your thoughts verbally if you are lazy in typing. Cons are (1) missing the call (2) providing details as fast as possible

Ticket System
Same pros with live chat. The cons is that, ticket system take some time to response.

Me as a person who always likes to contact support if I have questions, complaints, inquiries and all... I would love to interact with those companies with all that they can offer with their support may it be a live person, chat, ticket system or what not. As a customer, we always want our problems to be resolved as soon as possible so I would love to have all options.

wittwerch said:

I visited some
web hosting company websites and
seeing that some are offering ticket
system only while others are offering
live chat and ticket system or just phone support only. Just our of curiosity, what
is the best option for your customers
and benefits of each one?
I would like to hear your thoughts!

Click to expand...

I'm a fan of live chat, I think it's the most
effective because agents are able to push” links to help or send training documents quickly via the chat window.
Instead of walking users through troubleshooting and resolution procedures step by step, agents can instead link the
visitor to the appropriate document or
content directly.

Live chat and ticket - for support customers and phone for pre-sail questions

I feel it is necessary to offer a variety to your customer base as some prefer a verbal conversation to know that someone is physically there to help address the problem immediately where as others I know do not enjoy spending time on the phone when there are many other tasks to be done so a ticket system and web chat work well here depending on whether it is something that needs to be addressed immediately or is more of an enquiry

The more contact options the better. Every client is different and they may not like if you have only 1 option for contact. For example some people may not like to talk on the phone they may not understand very well English (or another language) when listening, so they may prefer to write and read, as they can also use dictionaries if there's something they don't understand. On the other hand, some people may prefer to ask their question and receive an answer as quickly as possible, and what better option than doing this on the phone…So, try to include as many options as possible, for example- support tickets, live chat, email, contact form, phone..

mostly ticket & livechat is enough,
doing support from phone is a little hard, not efficient than text communication & more expensive