What's the most important thing you can offer your customers? If you said "support" give yourself an A+. Incorporating live customer service into your website is one of the best ways to assist those who browse your site and may have questions. Yes, they can send an e-mail to you and wait a day or two for the answer, but by the time you reply the buying mood may have already passed. Another opportunity missed.

So how do you offer live on-the-spot support? Well, it can be done with a simple text chat button or with voice over IP, aka VOIP, or a combination of the two.

So now that I have your attention you may be wondering how to accomplish this fine feat. Believe it or not, the following services won't cost you a dime and are easy to implement.

Human Click: http://www.humanclick.com

No software to run on your system. You connect to their server every time you log onto the Net and a small doorbell graphic resides at the bottom of your screen. Once you download and register as an operator, you are given a small amount of HTML code to cut and paste onto your pages. This places a small display box that says "click here to talk to an operator".

When someone enters you're notified by a doorbell sound just as if someone were at your "real" front door. All the visitor needs to do is click the box to initiate a text conversation with you at anytime during his or her visit. When you double click on the doorbell the operator window pops up where you can see the host name, pages viewed, and other information about the present visitor in your site.

Click2Talk: http://www.click3talk.com

This service connects your site visitors to your existing phone line. You specify the phone number where all incoming calls are sent. You must embed the HTML code they give you into your site pages to activate the service. When a visitor clicks the embedded button, a Java applet initiates a phone call from their PC to the number you have specified.

If your budget runs a bit higher you may want to try one of these paid services:

E Fusion: http://www.efusion.com (Voice Over)

By placing a "push to talk" button on your site pages anyone who visits your website can initiate a conversation. Check their site for current pricing.

Live Person: http://www.liveperson.com (text chat)

A visitor to your site clicks a button to start a text chat with you. Live Person runs on its own server, so there's no software for you to install. They charge a one time set up fee of $1,000.00 and a monthly license fee of $250.00 per operator seat. See their site for further details.

With the amount of companies coming online, offering live customer service is one way of distinguishing yourself from the crowd. Start grabbing your share of customer loyalty with this easy to implement solution.

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