That sounds really cool and hope giffgaff can somehow implement this idea. Although seeing that there is already so many eager giffgaffers who wants to hop on the first question which is being asked, a live chat system seems unnecessary. However, this is just my own opinion, but still a bright Idea
Although I think the idea is sound, my main question on this is;
How do we keep track of people answering questions? (as this is a large part of your payback points)
Also, the 'clutter' that you refer to, does help people find an answer, to a questions, already given. So that way you don't get the same questions popping up too often.
Unless the chat is more used as a social tool, rather then a question and answer tool. But it would be hard to tell someone eager for an answer, 'Sorry, you will have to post that on the boards'.
That might really annoy the person with the problem, seeing as he can see there are people online with knowledge.
Is there any way you can see around these issues? Are there any extra issues you can see that I've missed?
I run an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) server for Be Broadband where there are approximately 90-100 users online at any one time and it serves to help people with issues in real-time. There's also some staff memebrs who sit in there to provide help and socialise with the customers. It's really quite good. Ask Robbie, he'll know what I'm talking about ;-)
I could set up a prototype for you if you wish. If you want to talk about it some more, you know how to contact me.
Don't get me wrong. I understand that it could (and probably would) work very well. We run everything on Lithium here, which has an intergrated chat-system. It is normally used for direct chat with customer support workers, I'm sure you know the ones I'm talking about, where a website says, 'Want to talk to someone straight away? Click here'.
Anyway, I've used it before as a normal IRC-like chatroom and it that works fine as well.
But as I said, although it's not something I'm against per se, when looking out for our community members best interest, I am wondering how we would measure the payback.
I don't see a way for me to measure that questions get answered.
We could set it up and clearly state that any action or questions that get answered don't contribute to the payback system.
Does Be Broadband reward their contributers? Because at giffgaff that is one of our main principles. If you do something great for us, we would really like to do something back.
Then again, maybe we/you could wriet some clever IRC scripts which measure activity levels and 'accepted solutions' withinn the chat?
Could work, it'd require some form of API access to Lithium's database though. But you could also use it purely as a social medium too - it could also be linked to the Be IRC network so users could sit in a #GiffGaff channel and a #Be channel, might stir up some interest for Giffgaff ;-)
Hi all, we've decided not to implement an 'official' giffgaff user chat as there is no way for us to measure helpful participation, which defeats the purpose of having a payback points system. There is also no way to moderate the content, and many other loop holes which will not outway the benefit of having this feature.
I used to be the owner of a Web Site hosting and design company and used Livechat when I had spare time or when things were slack.
You can be offline/online when you like and this shows on the web site.
If you can answer the potential customers questions there and then to their satisfaction you will be amazed with the conversion rates you can achieve just for the cost of taking a few minutes out to answer online questions.
You also learn a lot about your web site easier than log files, as you know live when a customer or potential customer arrives, you can ask the known customer what he is looking for by his first name if he returns to your site, where your customer is on the web site and you know what they may be looking for before you even speak to them.
I convinced potential customers to try us using this form of communications and as there is a lot of competition out there found the personal touch won them over.
If you are not so well known in the market place or are new, anything which does not cost you anything must be used to your advantage to increase sales.
