BoldChat™, InstantService™, LivePerson™, Talisma®, Velaro, and WhosOn.
The Live Chat Market Overview includes valuable information about live chat software providers to help any business considering this service find the best solution for them. This independent study was conducted to clarify the differentiators and position in the market for 6 leading live chat vendors. The study included a review of strengths and weaknesses by each provider such as:
Feature Set, Flexibility/Customization, Availability/Reliability, Price, References, Analytics, Reporting and more.
We'll discuss the methodology of the report and take a deep dive into the 8 overall criteria you need to know if you're evaluating chat vendors.
We'll also discuss the more than a dozen individual features and functions evaluated in the report.
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Tim Smith, an ex-VP at Gartner and Avaya's former Director of
Competitive Intelligence is a product management professional
with extensive experience in strategy, execution, product
design, and business performance. He has been providing
competitive/strategic assessments on behalf of participants in
the communications industry for more than two decades.During his tenure with Gartner, Tim developed research in a number of enterprise and service provider markets and drove the development of several new coverage areas. Tim's presentations at numerous Gartner events, including the Gartner Symposium, drew consistently large audiences and high rankings. Tim, as a diligent and objective researcher adept at discerning key market trends and directions, has been a featured speaker at several industry-wide events including Interop and Supercomm (now NXT comm.) Contact Tim
What was the general process you used to conduct this live chat software review?
I consider this a classic market scoping research study. I used various primary and secondary research sources to identify vendors, understand vendors’ offers and assess vendors’ approaches to target markets. I interacted with vendors and their products and contacted customers to understand their experiences.
Who is this study for? Who should be interested?
I believe the study has value for both customers and vendors. Clearly the primary audience would be prospective customers looking to get a handle on the market and an idea of the vendors they should consider. Turning this around a little bit, there is some good insight for vendors about where they stand in the market. Sometimes an external, independent view of the competitive landscape can be helpful in shaping ongoing strategy, marketing and selling efforts.
You were paid a consulting fee to perform this work – how can the objectivity of this study be trusted?
I would argue that any market study is performed for a fee on behalf of one or more clients. I can state unequivocally that the results stated in this paper are my own.
Based on your research, what advice would you give to companies thinking about implementing a web-interaction solution?
There are very attractive offers out there. Use competitive bidding techniques to optimize the pricing you can get from your prospective vendors. The ROI of your implementation will benefit significantly. On the other hand, beware of company scale as you optimize price and ROI.
What did you learn from conducting this study that surprised you?
A couple to things stand out for me. I’ll cover them in no particular order. The linkage and relationship of chat capabilities with existing call centers and contact centers seems rather haphazard to me. I believe there is opportunity for tight integration that is being missed mainly by the vendors. This market seems poised for dynamic transition as the widespread use of the hosted services (aka application service provider, aka software as a service, etc.) model enables aggressive smaller companies to quickly challenge with highly scalable, attractively priced products.
Studies like this can’t include everything. Can you discuss an interesting element or two that ended up on the cutting room floor?
The first thing that comes to mind is that there are a number of additional vendors in the market that were not discussed. Although they tend to focus on smaller implementations, there may still be other hidden gems out there.
Studies like this are never “complete” what do you think needs to be done next?
I would like to delve more deeply into the idea of synergy and integration with other areas of business process and technology such as existing call centers, CRM and overall e-commerce. Also, it would be interesting to revisit this market scoping exercise in a year or so to see how positions might have changed.
The Live Chat Market Overview is a hyped-up live chat software review conducted by an ex-Gartner VP. The study is divided into five distinct sections, spans over ten pages, and has a handful of graphical representations making it easy for readers to visually compare each of the web chat players. The report, comprehensive in its review of six different live chat software vendors, is accessible to novices and experts alike.
The study investigates eight different factors including feature set which itself, includes an additional fourteen sub-categories. The study does not rank-order live chat vendors. Instead, it identifies critical criteria and then reviews each of the six vendors against each line item.
One of the most insightful aspects of the Live Chat Market Overview is its multivariate analysis. The author constructs a two-dimensional matrix which allows each of the live chat software providers to be examined against two criteria at once. The outcome is a robust review of several key market leaders in the live chat space.