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

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?

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.

There are two words in English that might be the most important ones regarding not only customer relations, customer service, but also sales and marketing.

Responsiveness: The ability to engage your consumers, measured in the length of time that elapses between consumer question or comment and your response.

Response: The nature and quality of that response.

We all know the autoresponses that are so common today. They may sound like this: Your comment/question is important to us. We will get back to you in the order your comment was received…


Now try to put yourself in your customer’s position and think how big a difference such a reaction would make to you: Hello and welcome to (your company name). Thank you so much for taking the time to contribute. My name is Anna and I’m your operator. Is there anything I could help you with?

More and more companies today provide what we might call a “human response”, sending customer a message: We heard you.

And that simple message makes a HUGE difference.

So what exactly LIVECHAT blog will be about?
We’ll try to be flexible and broad on topics as we have a lot of stuff to talk about. So it won’t be just about live chats, business, instant messaging, software, internet or e-commerce.
Who will be contributing to it? Just about anyone at LIVECHAT, from sales reps and programmers to execs. Sometimes our posts will be educating about our products and sometimes will cover just about any topic that applies to our clients’ industries, needs or just interests. Some days we’ll be serious, others we’ll get funny (or at least hope to:-)). We’ll do our best to be thought-provoking and give a new and fresh perspective on the ever-changing market and internet dynamics. We’ll cover emerging trends and provide some behind-the-scenes commentary. We’re not gonna stick to our corporate image though or try to appeal only to “the suits”. As we have some of the most wonderful people one can imagine working here, we’re extremely proud of our LIVECHAT team. That’s why one of the main goals of this blog is to show you LIVECHAT’s “human” side. We want to share insights into our people, our company, and the things that occupy our minds, discuss the hot topics of our conversations with you. We’ll try to spotlight our beloved clients, reveal some of our secrets (yes, we’ll try to provide a peek behind the LIVECHAT curtain as well), tap into guest bloggers and possibly sprinkle in some photo and videos. We’ll write about the events we organize or take part in. We meet cool people. Check cool tech. Visit interesting websites. Experience life. Fight obstacles. And write about it. Over time, we hope, all of the above will be covered.

Please feel free to share your thoughts with us as we want to share our thoughts with you.

If you ever find us interesting, here is the RSS feed to subscribe to and check us out on a regular basis:

So, let’s begin.