What do you mean by HelpSwitch being an "application service provider"? An ASP is a company which helps their clients to deploy an
application solution to their business problems, and
this help comes in the form of a service, which will be paid
for by the clients usually in the form of a monthly service
fee.
For example, your telco is offering local and long distance
phone solutions to you as a service, and there is a monthly
phone bill.
HelpSwitch is offering real-time customer services solutions
to their clients for instant deployment. We are just
like your telcos, offering you a "help" switching service to
connect your customers with your support operators.
Do I have to buy any software licenses from HelpSwitch? No, all software licenses required for your company are
included in the monthly service fees charged to your company.
Do the support operators have to be all in one location?
Can they work outside the office? No, you can have some support operators in North America,
some in India or Ireland to take advantage of the difference
in labor cost.
Your operators do not necessarily have to work in the office,
they can telecommute and work from home if permissible by your
company's policy. All they need to do is to login with
their user ID provided by HelpSwitch for your company.
Deployment
What are the requirements for running HelpSwitch's
application software for support operators? Hardware: Any Pentium III or Celeron PC (with
800mhz, 128MB memory, 40GB hard disk) should be adequate.
HelpSwitch recommends using a PC with Pentium 4 or Athlon CPU
at 1Ghz or higher with 256MB memory. Operating system: Microsoft Windows 98, Me, 2000 or XP.
What browsers would the customers have to use? HelpSwitch supports two categories of browsers:
Microsoft Internet Explorer (4.0+) and Netscape (4.0+), which
covers over 97% of the browser installed base worldwide.
We do not have a IT department, our web is hosted and
managed by a third-party ISP. How can we deploy
HelpSwitch solutions? Once you decide to use our service, HelpSwitch can work with the third-party (managing your web
site) to put a link or button on your web site. Your company
does not need to be involved in the technical work at
all.
How can a link/button be put on our web site to use HelpSwitch's real-time customer service solutions? You need to do two things:
a) to import a simple javascript, and
b) to setup a link using this script.
Detailed instructions will be sent to you upon setting up an
account with us. We have a demo site at
http://www.antistaticball.com where a http link and an
image button are setup for live chat. If you look at the
source page (where you see the actual html code) with your
browser, you will be amazed by the simplicity of the setup.
Fees
How does HelpSwitch charges for its services? Are
there any charges for message traffic volume? HelpSwitch charges it customers for real-time customer
solution services based on a flat-fee per operator
basis. You decides how many operators you want to use
this service, and there are no charges for any traffic volume
between your customers and your operators. You know
beforehand how much you would spend for our services.
