What do you think about my idea?
I have an idea of building live chat for websites dedicated for sales people, the twist is that it would show video stream from the office of the company (showing for example the sales guy with whom visitor is supposed to chat) for visitor to build trust and encourage him to start chatting. What do you honestly think about this idea? Would you install something like that on your page to communicate with your visitors?
This may be an uphill battle. The trend with Intercom et al seems to be to use things like email/SMS capture, automation, etc, to blur the lines between synchronous and asynchronous communication. Livestreaming the sales rep is obviously extremely synchronous (you might not even be able to multi-task or manage multiple threads at once w/o looking rude).
What if once you start chatting with someone you stop streaming video?
Agree with Tyler here!
Myself, and most people would install anything that increase sales, so you have to actually ask, if it really increases sales, then there is your answer.
Great points. I wonder how hard it would be to build a simple MVP to test the hypothesis out. Like just hook into a popular webcam app and find off-the-shelf chat to try the idea out.
How exactly would it work? Would it just give people the option to see a rep they are already talking to on live chat or would it just pop up with a rep in the same way chat bots and live chat support pops up?
I was thinking about the second option you are speaking about
In theory, it sounds like a good idea. However, in practice, it's hard to imagine that working very well. How many offices have perfect lighting and audio so that it won't look weird? And then, what about the remote sales team working from home or in a noisy coffee shop? That would be really tricky.
http://blogs.quovantis.com/top-5-video-streaming-solution-providers/
Seems like a tricky proposition to me; chat works pretty well for lead gen and video requires a much higher level of professionalism, I think, to be successful. This means you're putting more dollars into lead gen.
That said, you might look at industries that might require more 'proof' from customers that they're alive/kicking/valid entities -- a real person on the other end may let them know they're not some spammer from across the globe. Or, alternatively, maybe you can look at industries that target a different generation of consumers who may not be so quick with the keyboard.
Yeah, I know, any good examples of such specific industries?
Unfortunately, can't think of any off the top of my head. But, then again, I'm a guy that would much rather talk on the phone than use a google hangout so my imagination is probably a bit more limited than others. :/ Good luck!
Nice! I could potentially let you fork http://chatthingy.com if you need a basis with which to work.
Integrate with Intercom's chat API from the start, so you have an audience already ?
Good one! Since Intercom is a rising star, and there might be a chance for they may be work on it in the future.
But as the current situation, Live Video chat can give more trust and resolve the user issues sooner.
I think more about the quality of video, storage space in the server and what if the user may be from another country?...Just thought it suddenly.