Live Chat Option in Connect Forum

Hi,

Nice Idea !!!

Please review the levels of tech support that are already available.  

Remember that additional staffing and tech are not created for free.

Thanks

It's an interesting idea.  For me, it's a balance between taking personal responsibility to know the product, and knowing when you're stuck on a difficult problem and need help.  Some already use Connect to solve issues daily.  Would a perpetual chat session become a second brain and encourage such use?

Not sure if the intended suggestion for having chat is only for one on one chat or or a subject-specific channel (think IRC channels).  I'll take a pro's and con's approach to my post here but you'll note that the Con's are what drives my final vote.  Consider this:

Con's:

• One on one chat:  Sure you can talk in real time but the problem is you have to find somebody who wants to talk to you, and has the time to do the real-time thing.  Most posts on this forum are probably fire-and-forget.  The only way I ever know anything I post is replied to is by the email alerts.  So I'm not likely going to want to float around the forums hoping to find someone that is free to chat.  Example:  In the SEP forums, here are certain Trusted Advisors that I find always reply to my posts.  But they also reply to a lot of other stuff.  I doubt I would efficiently be able to sequester their time in real-time to chat.  So it remains best to stick with forum-based posts that can be replied to at their convenience. 
• In theory if you needed real-time "gotta fix it now" support then it's best to follow official support channels that give real-time assistance
• If you're talking multi-user chat, like a #SEP chatroom or something, well the problem is this:  people post questions, make comments, make small talk, etc, and many questions from chat members just scroll up and off the screen.  And back to the small talk subject...the problem with chatrooms is that a whole lot of the text entered line by line is just useless chatter (from the perspective of somebody trying to get some help), so it's annoying to deal with
• As trivial as this may sound, the actual UI of the chat interface makes or breaks it's usefulness.  Example:  4 screens ago, somebody posted something you need to read (perhaps you were away from the PC while it was posted).  So you try to scroll up but every time somebody else types in a new message, your window auto-scrolls back to the bottom where that text just appeared.  this might sound small but believe me in an active chatroom this can be maddening at times especially if the message you need to read is a few lines long
• Lack of archival and search:  Half of the time when I want to find out something about a Symantec product, solve a problem or what not, I Google it.  And most of the time when doing so, I end up at a Symantec Connect forum post.  This wouldn't be possible or efficient in any way were this done by way of a chatroom transcript somehow saved and presented to search engines.  Also, if you have a history of questions asked in forums and need to refer back to it at some point, you can't with a chatroom approach whereas currently  you can just by checking your threads history

I could continue on but I think those are enough Con's for one post - imagine I posted them in a chat room?  I'd be labeled a flooder.  Nothing's worse that some person that pastes 2 screens worth of technical output into a chatroom window or just keeps posting line after line interspersed with the chat of other users. 

Pro's:

• It's sort of real-time provided you have somebody available that wants to spend time talking about your issue at the same time you're there to do so - not very likely compared to just leaving a forum post though
• Allows for a more personal connection - but frankly that invites additional small-talk which is nice but at least for me, where I am an IT consultant rarely with enough time to even spend on official duties, it don't want to introduce an element of rudeness to my chat partner by being all-business. 

Unfortunately I can't immediately think of a pro that doesn't really have a con attached to it but I'm typing this on the fly without really thinking it all the way through. 

So my vote is to leave Connect without chat or at least thoroughly evaluate it's impact on the success of Connect in it's current forum.  Connect is probably the very best forum system I have ever seen (Microsoft's stuff is improving a lot though) so I am concerned about new ideas being jumped on simply because they're new. Just my 2 cents. 

Good Idea!!

Hi,

It will really help to sharing our knowledge base and for issues quickly

I agree with this idea. I guess each of us Technician would be able to choose when to be "available for chat support" and when not....

Its more dynamic, we save time by asking exactly what we need and not reading big post of useless information (no ofense..)

A good point given above is that if the technican can opt in, then there's no replacement for the forum feature.  I agree that as a forum member, if I can reach a tech quickly that's great. 

But again, keep in mind that with chat, there is no archive posted thus nobody else gains from previous solutions provided.  These days almost every time I need something solved, I first search Google and more often than not the results are a Symantec Connect forum post right at the top of the search results.  This wouldn't happen if chat become popular and Symantec would likely find quite an increaes in incoming support requests. 

Also speaking from call center experince, I can say that once your customers get used to something, whether it is "opt in" or not for the technician, they will begin to demand it and expect it when it is not available.  Symantec management will see thiese demands and respond by making chat official and not opt-in for the technician.  That' smy guess anyway as that's how these things often tend to go. 

I'm thinking more from a global support center perspective.  I realize individual techs and individual forum members see benefit in this chat feature, but thinking about it from a organizational perspective, and also factoring in that lack of archiving thing, still makes me leery of this chat thing. 

Having said that, sure, I'd still love to get answers more quickly, who doesn't ;) But I maintain still that if the issue is that critical and time sensitive, you can call in for support .

I'd only suggest something like this be brought into the forum in the following instance:

1. You have current support with Symantec

2. You've logged a query on the forums and it is unresolved

3. The case has been escalated by a TA or admin

Costs would probably also prevent this from happening as it means employees sitting idle, waiting for somebody to come along for a live chat.

Other than the above, I am unsure whether or not this would actually be implemented, or work.