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Post Date: 2004-03-22 14:48:39

Rackspace's Live Chat Feature Facilitates Sales Process
Rackspace Managed Hosting,a small Web-hosting company of San Antonio,Tex.,has installed a proactive live chat into its Web site. It proves to be an effective marketing approach of the company.The chat feature is used as an interactive instrument for attracting more customers.

As a customer service and sales tool,live chat has been on the scene for several years and Rackspace makes a propitios use of its assets.It appears to customer's attention 30 seconds after entering the web site in the shape of a live, pop-up chat window.The customer is summoned by a thumbnail picture of a personalized salesperson and some appealing words of product introduction.The user in his turn is identified by an IP address visible as a guest number.Users finding the chat feature intrusive have the option to click off it without ever responding to it,or can give the salesperson the standard "I'm just browsing" response.There is no way for salespeople to get specific contact information on users which protects the latter from unsolicited intrusion.

According to Morris Miller,Rackspace's co-chairman,estimated one-third of users approached via chat engage in conversation with a salesperson and half of those enter higher discussion levels.He considers the chat feature as beneficial because it has appealed nearly 50 percent of new customers in the past half an year.Thus,it made a certain contribution to company's 2003 revenue of about $70 million.

The technology applied gives Rackspace the chance to monitor the behaviour of existing and new customers via low-level customer-relationship management reporting.That makes the salesperson's reaction to the concrete case instant.

Rackspace uses technology by Digi-Net Technologies and LivePerson.The company is the only one of LivePerson's customers which initiates a chat with users on its site.Others rely on customer's initiative.

Rackspace Managed Hosting has adopted a smart and flexible marketing approach for stimulating sales process.The new live chat feature is an up-to-date way of hawking the company's product which makes Rackspace stand out on web hosting services market.