Okay, I admit that I’m a sucker for scripts and programs.
Ebooks I can do without, but good technology is something that most everyone can use. Plus, as a geek, I love finding a well done script (which is harder than you’d think).
So when Virtual Smart Agent went on sale, I couldn’t resist buying it. I don’t particularly have a need for it, but like I said, I’m a software junkie.
If you haven’t seen it around, Virtual Smart Agent lets you put one of those ultra annoying “Wait, a live agent would like to talk to you” sort of scripts on your website. Up until now, those scripts were only used by the big names, because there was a recurring fee associated with them. The author of Virtual Smart Agent, Dave Guindon, thought a recurring fee was outrageous for what you were getting, so he wrote his own version and is offering it for a one-time payment. I suspect there was also something of the “I can write a script better than this” going on, too.
And let me tell you, as a professional geek myself, I can attest to the fact that he did write a very nice program. There are tons of customization options in a web based control panel, and lots of reports on how well your agent is doing at converting people leaving your site into sales.
You can specify in the control panel for the software what keywords will return what responses. So if the web surfer types in “what is your return policy?”, and you’ve provided a response matching the phrase “return policy”, that response will be displayed. Provide responses for enough keyword phrases, and people might think they’re talking to a real person instead of a bot.
While I personally find these “live agent” deals intensely annoying, Dave did some testing and found that about half of the people who were going to leave his website ended up buying at a discount because of the live agent offer. It’s hard to argue with results like that.
You only need the program if you have a website where you sell something. I suppose you could use it for other purposes, but it’s intended to offer people who are trying to leave the site a discount on whatever it is you’re selling.
I’ll do a full review of this after I’ve had a chance to play with it and set it up on a site, but I wanted to give you all a heads up since Dave’s doing the usual “price increases every so often” type of launch with this.
Click here for more details on Virtual Smart Agent.
P.S. Have a product to sell but don’t feel confident enough to set up your own website to sell it? Join The Advisory Panel and let me know about it. We can work out a deal where I do the technical end of things (including using VSA on the site), so you don’t have to.
I’ll be interested to hear how it works for you. So many of the “big” sites that use those type of bots have bots that only know one or two phrases or so it seems. It sounds like a tool like this could actually help much more!
It all depends on how much time you put into building the list of keywords and responses. You could have quite a smart bot when you were done if you invested some time.
Nice post! Do you have a bonus for virtual smart agent? I’m looking for a better bon us than this one: http://www.smartvirtualagent.com/bonus.html
Pat
Hi Pat, the value of a bonus depends on whether you need it or not. What are you looking to use right now?