Live Chat Support

[Harrisonj11315]

Tom's Hardware Live Chat Support, that would be amazing. You could allow people of the community with say atleast 1k posts to manage live chat tickets. And promote them etc for their service. It would be so damn useful for basic things. But keep it free as every other company makes that kind of thing paid. And with the community's knowledge here, it would be better than any paid tech support live chat.

 

[ssddx]

sorry to burst your bubble, but there are a few problems with that.

A) experts who use tom's hardware post from all over the globe in different time zones. there are peak and dead times.
B) live chat requires a significant amount of free time. it is far easier for most people to answer threads.
C) experts here are unpaid and do so because they enjoy it. it seems like you're expecting a paid service for free which is not good.
D) it would need to be moderated to keep up our image. points A->C apply to that as well.
E) there is little benefit to such a system over threads.
F) not everyone likes live chat and in a live scenario it can be a bit hard to provide the level of detail you can with posts. dont underestimate the digging and searching that sometimes is involved with making responses here - it can in some cases be time consuming.

while i have always thought having a basic chat system (irc, steam group, etc) would certainly be nice and i do on occasion use it as a medium for explaining complex topics it just will not work well here other than for hosted events. while it sounds good in theory, if you think about it in detail it is not practical.

 

[Harrisonj11315]

It is practical, some posts i made before did not get answered for quite awhile, and i have seen many similar cases. What if you need support right then and there but can not pay for something like that. Its quite practical if you think about it. Yes moderators may be needed but my idea about at least 1k posts is a basis for who you would let be chat people. Like have at least some years on here with certain number of chosen answers. And of course you can just place a disclaimer about the support members not being official rep's of tomshardware and have a way to report people on it. But really it should be considered farther then just shooting it down for some supposed impracticalitys.

 

[thor220]

I'd have to agree with ssddx. In addition, a good chuck on the people posting "solutions" on Tom's are couch computer experts. They only know as much as google will tell them. Not good for live chat if they have to google the answer every 5 seconds.

I'd say the correct that before coming up with any sort of live chat.

 

[ssddx]

@harrisson
it seems that you have ignored all of the reasons i listed above. there is a reason why some support is paid, because it inconveniences the one doing the helping. while i am sure there may be some users who would spend time in such a situation do remember that most of our members have real lives which are far more important. just because you do not wish to pay for something does not make it a good idea - think of everyone involved first before stating such.

@thor
we have all levels of users here. some are very knowledgeable while others might just be starting their knowledge journey. regardless of this fact there may be a bit of research involved depending on the question which does not work well for live situations.

 

[Harrisonj11315]

seems you are ignoring everything i stated above, and no <mod edit> it is an inconvenience to the people providing the support. but what do you consider a forum, people do it because they either have free time or enjoy it, and with a live support chat there would likely be that group of people who enjoy helping people.

<Watch your language in these forums>

 

[randomizer]

It is practical, some posts i made before did not get answered for quite awhile, and i have seen many similar cases.

Why do you expect that to change with live chat tickets? People can choose to ignore your ticket just as they chose to ignore your threads. Maybe nobody knows the answer. Maybe you're asking the wrong questions.

What if you need support right then and there but can not pay for something like that.

Sounds contradictory to me. Either it's important enough to pay for or it's not. Tom's Hardware cannot guarantee someone is going to be there when you need them, let alone someone who can actually help. 24/7 rapid response SLAs are expensive for a reason.

There are a few other problems with such a proposal. Live chat won't help others with the same problems. Having a forum or a Q&A style format like the StackExchange family of sites means that the discussion is persisted publicly, which reduces duplication of effort (although that's more applicable to SE because of its voracious mods). Live chat also prevents you from considering other possible opinions since you'll be dealing with one person. That could be good or bad depending on ho knowledgeable the person is.

To be honest, I don't see anything to be gained over a forum, other than less "noise" in a given discussion.

 

[Harrisonj11315]

just saying what would be the hurt in trying something useful out like live chat.

 

[USAFRet]

At my workplace, we briefly considered a live chat coach system.
"I am available from 1030 to 1200 every Tuesday and Thursday."

User base of 100,000 plus. Only a very few people (2!) were willing to sign up to do that.

Asynchronous comm (like we have here) is far, far, far less intrusive on both ends. A 2 minute pause while I go pee is not going to bother someone in the Forum.
A 2 minute pause while I go pee in a live chat situation....someone better be paying me for that.

What you are proposing is little different than an actual phone call. This single person and issue occupies 100% of my attention.
Whereas now, I could respond to 5 different issues within 7 minutes.
Hey, I just did that!

 

[thor220]

@harrisson
it seems that you have ignored all of the reasons i listed above. there is a reason why some support is paid, because it inconveniences the one doing the helping. while i am sure there may be some users who would spend time in such a situation do remember that most of our members have real lives which are far more important. just because you do not wish to pay for something does not make it a good idea - think of everyone involved first before stating such.

@thor
we have all levels of users here. some are very knowledgeable while others might just be starting their knowledge journey. regardless of this fact there may be a bit of research involved depending on the question which does not work well for live situations.

I wasn't referring to people who are on the path to learning about computers and the like. I was talking about the people who are addicted to the badges and other forms of false achievement. There are people on Tom's who seem to just make as many posts as possible, regardless of the quality or advice given. The badges that Tom's hands out (or should I say the system?) don't indicate expertise at all, they simply tell you if the user has spent allot of time. I've seen multiple red level "experts" give out advise that would even make someone of below basic level knowledge facepalm. I'm not saying Tom's is devoid of experts but it's impossible to ignore the flaws in the current system.

 

[Karsten75]

I'm going to jump in here, and I'm in a grouchy mood, so no punches pulled. The support you get from this site is free - no-one giving support is earning a damned penny from it. Purch - the site owners, admittedly makes money by skimming our services and cladding them in advertisements. Be that as it may, TANSTAAFL.

Now you come on and complain that your particular questions don't get answered, and you "deserve" a response and so there should be Live Chat support.

First of all, it's a terrible idea. You get get one of the numb nuts on this forum that gives advice that is as likely to burn your house down as it is to solve your problem. One of the reasons I started answering questions was when I realized that I knew more than some of the people answering my questions - and by no means do I know a lot.

Secondly, who's going to offer up their time to man a Live chat if it doesn't pay? Why would anyone sit in front of a monitor without an option to walk away when the need strike, or to not have to answer a dumb, idiotic question - of which there are so many on this site. Imagine the type of person wanting to do that unpaid - and that's likely the "help" you'll get from such a chatline - which brings me back to the first point.

Then there's the matter of whose questions get answered. In my opinion decent questions - well phrased, showing some research and not a wall of text gets answers. If you get a dumb-ass answer, then perhaps wait a few days and ask again - maybe you get a smarter guy looking at it this time round. Avoid the badge chasers. Verify the answers given with some independent source.

Good luck.

 

[ssddx]

@karsten

the irony here is that i used to spend a great many hours myself manning a fairly popular irc live chat room for free on my off time because i thought it was fun. despite that i still realize its a bad idea that on a bigger scale just does not work. if someone who actually isnt opposed to the idea from the get-go and has done the very same thing comes across and gives a whole bunch of reasons why its not a good idea then you would think someone would listen enough to actually consider the points being made.

oh well.