A Fresh Take on Live Chat?

Pete Prestipino
by Pete Prestipino 20 Sep, 2013
A Fresh Take on Live Chat?

Startup Skychat is launching its live chat platform today and it is hoping to redefine the way enterprises use live chat support. But does live chat need any help? Any redefining?

SkyChat founder, Roshan Singh, is also the co-founder and CEO of FX Junction, a social currency trading platform for Forex traders and brokers. Based on that experience, Singh believes what will seperate Skychat from the long list of competing vendors is its chat widget is closely connected with a dashboard featuring real-time charts, traffic visualizations and sound alerts for notifying operators as visitors browse the site or request live help. 

"We wanted to provide live support to the members of our trading network while being able to see what's happening on the site at this very moment," said Singh. "Our search for a service that offered both of these benefits and didn't look like it was built in the '90s proved unfruitful."

The Skychat offering provides some basic widget customization, includes some basic information about current visitors (e.g. location), provides post-chat survey functionality, and the ability for visitors to leave a message when no operators are available. Operators can also transfer chats, ban visitors, and use shortcuts to answer common questions. 

Only time will tell if that's enough to compete in the already crowded live chat software space.

Pete Prestipino
Pete Prestipino
Digital marketing executive with proven experience in all aspects of search engine optimization (SEO), performance-based advertising, consumer-generated/social media, email marketing, lead generation, Web design, usability, and analytics. - 20-year Internet marketing veteran, currently serving as the Digital Marketing Campaign Manager at Antenna Group (formerly Chicago Digital). - Former Editor-In-Chief of Website Magazine, and a regular speaker on Web technology digital marketing strategy - Author of several books on digital marketing Including Web 360: The Fundamentals of Web Success; Affiliate 360: The Fundamentals of Performance Marketing; Domains 360: The Fundamentals of Buying & Selling Domain Names, and SEO 360: The Fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization.