Gadu-Gadu S.A., providing service to one of the biggest communities in the Internet, has bought 63% of shares in LIVECHAT Software, which is providing corporate instant messaging solutions.

Thanks to that, Gadu-Gadu S.A. will be able to offer business instant messaging solutions based on Gadu-Gadu network infrastructure. LIVECHAT Software S.A. services will still be offered on the business market of customer service software.

– Gadu-Gadu is used more and more often in business to contact customers and internally, inside the companies. Software provided by LIVECHAT Software will let us introduce specialized business communication with Gadu-Gadu protocol – says Krzysztof Szalwa, Board Member at Gadu-Gadu S.A. – We believe Gadu-Gadu will become even more useful in everyday work, business communication will go on with GG numbers, while from the technological point of view, the users will receive professional business software. There are many companies already using GG number along with traditional telephone number or email address – adds Piotr Pokrzywa, Board Member at Gadu-Gadu S.A.

– Joining Naspers Limited, we join Gadu-Gadu and Allegro.pl but also we receive the strong investor, what makes LIVECHAT Software’s position as a business internet communication leader more solid – says Maciej Jarzębowski, CEO at LIVECHAT Software S.A. - Thanks to Gadu-Gadu investment we should be able to offer to our customers better and advanced solutions soon – adds Mariusz Ciepły, CIO at LIVECHAT Software S.A.

The youngest players of Slask Wroclaw play in jerseys with LIVECHAT Software logo.

We hope that our young basketball players will have a successful season!

We are growing up rapidly. With this growth, our upgrades and maintenance policies grow as well.

We get more stabile and secure.

This week we’re introducing a standard maintenance time window, launching every Saturday night at 9pm to 12pm PST.

To see when this maintenance window starts in a different timezones please visit:
www.timeanddate.com

Recently, we have published Salesforce add-on for LIVECHAT Contact Center. Integration of these two products allows you to store chat trancript in your CRM and add contacts directly from chat window. This is great opportunity to improve your customer service and ease your operators work at the same time.

Here is presentation of integrated products:

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You can watch integrated products in action. Simply click here to watch video.

You can download Salesforce add-on from add-ons section.

We plan to add video streaming capabilities to LIVECHAT Contact Center. It will be offered as an add-on, users will be able to run it as an optional functionality. The basic idea is pretty simple, agents will be able to present video streaming on demand to customers visiting your website. It will help them in sales process, to build better confidence, relationship with a customer.

I have done some research and I need to share it with you because I want to ask you some questions:

First of all I visited this site: Introduction - How to Create Streaming Video. Then I decided to have a close look at Flash Media Server 2. Flash offers easy way to publish video streaming to web users. But we will also need a streaming server to offer that service in SaaS model…

Fortunately there are hosting companies that offer streaming servers that will solve part of our tech. problems. Do you have any co-operation expirience with companies you can share with me ? Can you recomend me any of them ?

Second problem we must face is how to place flash component in a desktop application. This component is required because we need to upload a/v streaming to server and also (optionally) publish the customer’s video streaming to an agent or between agents in a conference.

We think it should be developed as an add-on using the API. We look for freelances who will be interested to develop that add-on for us. You should join our LIVECHAT Developer Zone to get more details about the API and the community of developers.

Our team is currently involved in integration and deployment of Contact Center software in some of the biggest companies starting from insurance providers, ending at financial sector. It is a big challenge for us and, I must admit, time consuming.

In the course of time it turned out, most of our developers were focused on the deployment tasks and were unable to work on development, to build new functionality to LIVECHAT products. To remedy this issue some of us decided to do some R&D and finally we all agreed that API is what we were looking for.

Using the API other independent software developers will be able to build new add-ons, a small pieces of software that can add new features to LIVECHAT. With help of the API we will also do rapid deployments and outsource integration tasks.

So, we are in the process of working on the LIVECHAT Developer Zone - a place for software developers, freelancers, integrators, beta testers cooperating with our development team. We have released API beta and encourage you to use it and share your thoughts to help us build better software. Join us, now!

Check out the Developer Zone Wiki for latest news, tutorial, technical reference and developer documentation.

People in the internet are vulnerable to different kinds of attacks- viruses, adware, trojan horses, etc. Some of them are less, others are more dangerous. Among all of them, one of the worst things that can happen to you is identity, money and data theft during internet transactions. The example could be online shopping- sitting at home in warm armchair with a laptop on your knees gives you feeling that you and money in your pocket are safe.

But is that really true? Not having cash in your hand and not standing in line to the register doesn’t make you more secure. To be honest- probably that even makes it all easier for internet thiefs- they just look for people who don’t realize that their money may be ever in danger while surfing the web. How to deal with it?

In my opinion, the first step to maximize your data security is simply acting smart and responsible. While shopping online- use trusted websites. Checking, if the order pages are secured (their address should start with https:// instead of http://) and if they have positive reviews from other users is not that hard. You can also look for proofs of security provided by third parties- most of the good stores care for their customers and provide extra security using services from other companies.

At the moment more and more websites are getting seals confirming their security and top quality services. Since customer’s security is important for us as much as their satisfaction from using our products, we decided to show it our customers. That is the reason for ControlScan’s seal in our chat windows. Also, using their services became a solid foundation for the partnership we just started.

What a strange day I had…

A few days ago my father told me an interesting story which become an interesting customer service case study for me.

So, first, my father’s car broke down. It became very slow and heavy, and – no matter how hard he pressed the acceleration pedal - it just didn’t seem to speed up as it used to. He had to have it repaired.
As, like most people, he values quality over price especially when it comes to services, he doesn’t usually choose cheap. So he took his beloved car to one of the better (and, as you could imagine, more expensive) garages in the town. It is famous primarily for the quality of their work. But the customer service provided by the garage highly disappointed him. Why? Even though there were many staffers apparently very busy with their duties, no one showed him where to park his car, no one approached him and when he entered the office a young lady at the desk seemed too busy to spare a second to. What do you think he did? He went back to the car and left the garage, of course.
As he was driving back home, he called a friend who gave him an address of a very small garage run by three young blokes. He didn’t say much more than ‘you won’t regret it’. And my father didn’t. He said it was one of the most remarkable customer service experiences in his life. Even though the garage didn’t have a separate lounge or even employ any staff other than the three mechanics (no blonde secretary at the desk), all of them wearing dirty mechanic clothes, my father received a warm welcome as soon as he opened the door. One of them promised him they would take care of his car in less than half an hour (he kept the promise), and another gave him a chair to sit and offered something to drink. The car was fixed within an hour and afterwards they even replaced a burnt bulb in the tail light.

So, what’s my point? Here it is.
Customers don’t usually understand quality. Most often they have no tools to measure the quality of the goods/services you provide - all they know is the experience that surrounds the sale.

Even today my father can’t judge the quality of the repair. It would take a trained mechanic to tell if it really was a “quality” job. But, like most people, my father let his experience to form his opinion about quality. And he found it remarkable enough to tell other people about it.
Insisting your goods or services are the best doesn’t mean much when the experience isn’t excellent - without great customer service.


Customers consciously or unconsciously expect you to manage their experience. And great customer service anticipates concerns, confusion, questions and even anxiety.
Remarkable customer service must plan the experience and guide it every step of the way.

And what does it look like in reality? In most companies customer service positions are among the least respected and lowest paid jobs. There shouldn’t be anything more important (even your current operations or unexpected tasks) than serving customers and creating great experiences. The employees working in customer service either enforce or weaken your brand every time they talk to a client. Doesn’t it seem sensible that the employees who are serving your customers should be your most experienced, most engaged and well-compensated people?

Remember the last time you walked into a store and there was no one to help you? What did you think of the store? My guess is, nothing positive. Most of the shop owners and managers nowadays are well aware of that fact. But can the same be said of e-commerce? Do the managers apply the same rules in the online world?

The common thinking is online shops save a lot by automating sales and support services. At the very best, auto responders and automated FAQ list dispensers or 800 support phones are set up, and… you can sit back and check your bank account watching the numbers grow bigger and bigger as you sip your gin&juice. Seems like a perfect world. Well, sorry to disappoint you. It doesn’t work that way.

The truth is, current online service levels would never be accepted offline. Web companies spend huge sums on marketing to attract customers. But they’re in danger of losing them when they fail to provide adequate customer service.

Online shoppers abandon more than two-thirds of their almost completed purchases at the checkout, often because they can’t get a prompt answer to an important question, according to surveys.

Without proper customer support, companies virtually deprive themselves of a large part of their profits.


LIVECHAT software has been developed to fill this gap. Chat is probably the most effective technique that offers the same level of customer support online as shoppers are used to offline. Now, when a customer has a question about that new bike or jacket, she clicks on the LIVECHAT icon and a chat window pops up, with a company staffer on the other side willing to help you. They can answer questions immediately or can suggest alternatives, just like traditional clerk would. Unlike a traditional clerk, however, the support chatter can handle four or five customers at once.

At the cost of $33 per month for each operator using its software, it’s much cheaper than 800 lines, and definitely cheaper than lost sales. Think about it.

It is amazing to see just how much online research affects consumer purchasing decisions whether they buy online or at traditional stores. And the multi-channel shopper is rapidly becoming the norm, not the exception.

Recently I had an opportunity to talk with a few marketing and/or sales managers from various European countries. All of them confirm that the majority of adults conduct research online before making any purchases and they become more brand sensitive after they conduct this online research.

No matter online or offline, apparently most of the consumers are likely to purchase the very same brand that they discover online. Surveys and questionnaires run by a few e-commerce companies show that consumers choose to shop online primarily for the convenience that comes with online shopping, in addition to product availability and price issues.