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Within the suite of their live help services are two versions of Volusion live chat -- free and "Premium Edition" (the "free" version of Volusion Live Chat Software does not include Volusion's telephone technical support; and only supports one operator.) The operator console requires a PC for installation. The free version is easy to set up: give up your contact information and email address (where a verification code is sent as part of the install). The download of an .msi file from their website soon follows. The setup on the operator computer is quick, with the coding (javascript) shown to you in the final installation screen. Let the testing begin! The operator console is very basic, which I guess you'd expect since it's free. Geolocation is limited to Internet Protocol (IP) Address and country of origin. Console shows chat duration and amount of time user had to wait for an operator to respond. Real-time showing of website visitors, the ability to invite your website visitors to chat, canned responses, and chat history are available in the Premium Edition only. I ran into a few problems: the sample screenshots of their live chat application (shown on their website under Live Chat) were a bit blurry (or maybe I'm losing my eyesight :-) Within the operator console I couldn't find an option to block chat requests (from those knucklehead Internet visitors customer service inevitably runs into). Within firefox I wasn't getting sound notifications on the visitor side of the chat (where you can enable/disable sound alerts). Also, there seems to be about 30 second difference between when a web visitor requests a chat, and the console notification. A nice touch on the Volusion website is the many pre-designed live chat icons/images for you to use (which you can designate for use in the operator console; or make up your own). The ability to customize the company name (that shows in the chat window to your website visitors) is a nice feature, especially in the free version. Whether using the free or $29.95 USD/month (Premium Edition) Volusion offers an interesting option in the live help marketplace. Try them out, or at the very least review their employment opportunities if you're an IT guy/gal (they were hiring at the time of this review). -Dave Swanson
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With
offices in Simi Valley (Calif.) and Texas, Volusion.com came into
being around 1999. The live help services described below are part
of a larger package of e-commerce services offered (hosting, shopping
carts, SSL certificates, etc.) (jump to common 