One of the bad ideas currently infecting companies in the technology field is the LivePerson “chat with a support person now” thing. This is a bad idea for multiple reasons:
- It’s a gigantic floating piece of garbage distracting me from whatever it is I’m trying to learn about your company or it’s products.
- The representatives on the other side are idiots who wouldn’t know what customer service is were it [insert your preferred-gendered joke here].
Case in point: Limelight Networks. The website lists about 15 “Services” they offer, and none of them are immediately obvious and I don’t want to spend the next hour parsing their marketease trying to find the specific niche product I’m looking for. So I (like a fool) click the stupid chat thing obscuring their page. This started at 8:30am and went on until 9:30am.
Jon: Yes what company or site are you from so I can better help you?
You: [redacted]
Jon: Thank you for waiting. I’ll be with you in just a moment.
Jon: I’m sorry for the delay. I’ll be right with you.
Jon: I’ll be right with you.
You: Why don’t you have a salesperson contact me and just ask me if our website is, in fact, a blank page?
Jon: I’m sorry for the delay. I’ll be right with you.
Jon: Thank you for waiting. I’ll be with you in just a moment.
Jon: I’ll be right with you.
Jon: I’ll be right with you.
Jon: Thank you for waiting. I’ll be with you in just a moment.
You: So what’s the point of this chat, exactly? For me to wait on iHold for an hour while canned messages about your imminent reply scroll past?
You: Until I get bored and find another vendor?
After another couple minutes I just closed the window, and now I’m at Akamai‘s site, looking at their “solutions finder” — which is what I was looking for on Limelight’s website to begin with.
James Cape 
Don’t you like Flumotion?
I find the ones that float over what I am doing to be disturbing on many levels.
On the other hand, on the times that I have used them, I’ve had consistently good experiences. I’ve used them with everything from hosting companies, to satellite providers with good success and relatively knowledgeable replies. It certainly beats calling to get clarification on things, imo.
I think you’ve just found that Limelight stinks at CS.
Well, compared to talking to the folks who we pay $25k/year to support our in-house industry-specific software solution, no they don’t compare so well. Compared to the below-minimum-wagers in Costa Rica that hardly speak English, I would MUCH rather have them in the background and check in once every 5 minutes until my part is sent out than wait on the phone. AND I get a log of what happened sent to my email where I can find it later in a search…