On paper the effort sounds interesting, but in practice it will be difficult to achieve success. Online shoppers don’t want to wait when they have questions. The thought of offering chat but not having someone available to chat at that moment is counterproductive. I see this an interesting gimmick that will irritate far more consumers than it will satisfy.

This is a no-brainer. As in-store online shopping and browsing grows, having in-store personnel available to help shoppers is simply good customer service.

Retail had better stop seeing the experiences as different the more it moves into this century. It’s not HOW they shop. The question of the day is, DO THEY SHOP?

Joe Milano, SVP of Saks.com has it right when he states: “Priority is always to the customer in front of you.”

Using store staff to engage in live chat seems to be aligned with the concept of “seamless” service, but there are major challenges with implementation! When does a store have enough surplus staff to enable some to engage in chat? Most probably at times when customers are least likely to shop. The article specifically states that: “Saks limits its online access … Saks associates appear to be rarely available for live chat.” So how likely is the customer to try live chat if associates are rarely available?

Live chat can be very powerful as an engagement tool on websites. But it takes a different level of talent to serve multiple customers at a time in chat sessions. Store staff were recruited, trained and paid for different levels of face-to-face engagement. Let them do what they do best … and staff separately for live chat if that is needed.

As we all face the challenge of delivering a seamless shopping experience, the more an enterprise blurs the lines between online and offline shopping, the more seamless it will become for the shopper. This is a great example of a successful tactic to achieve this goal. I see this being adopted by more retailers and I only see in-store shopping being enhanced due to more involved staff with local store inventory. Really great effort!

The concept is a good one however it would put a strain on an already busy associate. Perhaps it should be limited to personal shoppers and if the lift is big enough would warrant hiring more associates.

I have a friend who was developing an app for the DIY industry to let folks request a chat with an expert but they would have to pay a little something for it. The experts were not employees of a store but well-vetted. People were willing to pay unless the service didn’t bring value. Interesting. It’s an Uber world we live in.

For my 2 cents.

Like many of the prior comments, I agree this is going to be a staffing issue. I like the idea and think it will show excellent customer service results. But only if it is staffed properly and at all hours, day and night. Online shoppers have no “open or closed” clock. They shop when they want. This means continual staffing will be required. It is customer service around the clock.

This doesn’t seem much different than what already occurs when an associate gives his/her business card out and says — implicitly or explicitly — “contact me if you need anything.” “Live chat” is somewhat innovative, but I would think there are coordination issues, with online requests (often) interrupting store interactions … either that or frequently “busy” signals.

This is going to be an essential load balancing tool for customer service oriented companies. When it’s slow in-store, why not take advantage of the extra capacity offered by associates?

For customers who have a relationship with the associate, extending that relationship in any touchpoint is a great idea. However, targeting browsers doesn’t have a financial model that will make sense. As it stands, conversion rate is relatively poor online for browsers. Let’s assume these browsers at Saks are more likely to buy and have a high conversion rate of 5%. So for every 100 chat sessions, 5 people will buy … that’s one in every 20 chat sessions. Now let’s assume that associates spend 5 minutes chatting with each browser. Total chat time is 1 hr 40 minutes (20ppl x 5min) for a single sale. The math doesn’t work out … even if conversion was 10%

Better — use the solution just to target your most loyal customers.

Don’t be fooled by shiny objects. Build the financial model and poke holes in it. And by the way, do customers even want this? Why not try out the model with a company like Needle that uses advocates to drive sales online?

My 2 cents.