You probably already have email and/or phone support for your site. If you don't, you should definitely add these capabilities. Having a way for your users to contact you in their time of need is essential to maintaining long term clientele.

Naturally, depending on the size of your customer base, it's difficult to maintain and answer a high volume of incoming calls and emails. Another great step that most sites are implementing is a forum with an FAQ section (a set of Frequently Asked Questions).

This allows users to see frequently asked questions, read and answer topics that concern them. Obviously, it also greatly reduces the number of common sense or seemingly obvious questions you receive on live support, phone, and email.

Again, email, phone, and forums are almost a given in customer support. But it is important not to underestimate the power of live chat support. One reason is it can curb the number of phone calls you are getting. If you have toll-free phone support, you are of course paying for all of your incoming calls.

Depending on the type of business you run, live chat may or may not be the right choice for your demographic (your average customer). However, even if the ratio of customers who would prefer live chat versus another form of support were 1-10 (10%), you could save that much in phone calls. It would, therefore, still be worth it to have live chat functionality on your site.

Naturally, you are still going to require staff to maintain the incoming chats, but the beauty of it is that it is easier for a customer service representative to maintain multiple support requests via chat than via phone.

What if you don't have phone support at all? What if you just have email support? Will chat support still serve as an asset to your website? Of course it will!

If, for some reason, you think that email is just as good as live chat support, think again! Users want their answers as soon as possible! Even if your email respondents are quick, the user will have a stigma about email support being slower and less ?real-time? based, and thus may not end up asking their question at all! If they give up due to a lack of live chat support, that is a sale instantly lost. And that means money in your competitor's pocket rather than yours!

Keep in mind that many users will give up if they don't see an easy way to get an answer to their question. And even though your forums and FAQ's may be helpful to some, others will feel overwhelmed when they see the multitude of topics (even if you have a Search option built into your forum and FAQ modules).

Now, you may be thinking that maintaining a chat support staff is too expensive due to a higher volume of customer requests for support. If that is the case, it is a good idea to have your chat support, email support, and phone support simply listed on a Contact Us page or a Help page (as opposed to prominently listed on the Home page or other frequently visited page of your site).

Keeping your live support options in a slightly more obscure place prevents it blatantly obvious to your casual site visitors that these are available, at least at the outset of their quest for answers and information. This will also allow users who are more proactive and able/willing to find their own answers to check out your forum and FAQ before resorting to contacting your company for live support. As a result, having your live support options list nestled away on a Contact Us or Help page reduces the number of live support requests you incur.

However, keep in mind that by hiding your live chat support capacity, you will be alienating some users, which again can ultimately affect your bottom line. Therefore, it is simply up to you and your staffing managers to determine where the best place is on your site to list live support options.

The verdict is that live chat support is a necessary component of a successful business website. If you do not utilize this effective tool, you are missing out, and again, could be reducing your long term and short term success, even if it does slightly reduce overhead.