I am sure everybody has experience with call centers and waiting for their turn over a telephone. It some times takes hours for the call to complete. The idea would provide all the Customer Service reps with Messaging facility that can communicate with all popular Messaging clients like MSN Messenger, Yahoo messenger, ICQ, AOL and Lotus Sametime. This way customer can ping the customer service and will be connected to a live agent. If there is no one available right away, he can just leave the instance on, and when available, the agent responds with a doorbell sound. There are many call centers that support interactive chat facility but the usage is limited due to bad performance and user contention.
-- concept, Jun 09 2003

I guess it's better than holding a headset to your noggin for 45 minutes. No, I don't have a speakerphone or a phone thing you wear on your head.
-- snarfyguy, Jun 09 2003


Many companies already provide this type of online call center through their web sites. So I'd have to call it Baked.
-- DrCurry, Jun 10 2003


Yeah, "live help" chat via Java applet imbedded in a web page is nothing new.
-- phoenix, Jun 10 2003


Most people (including customer support agents) can manage 6-8 online conversations at once, hopping between the windows, as opposed to a single telephone call.
-- DrCurry, Jun 10 2003


Having doubts about being one of about 8 people talking to a single rep at one time, I don't mind waiting a bit longer to speak to them as long as I'm going to have their undivided attention when they get round to speaking to me. I have plenty of other stuff I can be getting on with until I get a response, surely that would be more constructive than sitting at my desk waiting for the rep to answer 7 other messages in between each of mine.

I'm kinda using this system already at work, I have MSN installed, and an account that I use purely for useful work contacts, which at the moment are just 2: the guy who set up our broadband, and my best mate who is wonderful for answering trivial questions about crashes, networking etc. So far it works for me, and it's nice that my phone is left free to make/receive other calls.

Xerox Tech Support have a sensible telephone method, there is a brief touch-tone bit to direct you to the correct department, and an operator then takes a few brief details and has an engineer/analyst call you back as soon as they are available. No hanging around, and no queue-jumping.
-- fshhhh, Jun 10 2003



random, halfbakery