Peter Brand

Outsourcing live chat on face value seems like an unimaginable idea. It goes against the grain for so many reasons, yet once a business tries it, they rarely ever go back.

Initially you ask yourself questions like:

• How can a third-party business converse with my customers with the same authority as my own staff?
• Surely my own staff would be just as good?
• If we do it ourselves, surely we can access our own systems to make updates in real time?

And so on. But let's look more closely.

Consumer product/service providers are no longer able to dictate to their customers which avenue of communication they will use to communicate with their brand.

In this omni-connected world we now live in, consumers expect to be able to contact a company whenever and however they wish.

Web browsing is almost a default human behaviour now. People do it without even thinking, especially with a mobile in hand. So how do you capture their attention, and help them see an opportunity on your website that they might not have anticipated?