X-Cart's Sales-n-Stats or LiveResponse?

[dgirdwood]

Hello,

I have an X-Cart online store and have been using their live chat program Sales-n-Stats (the free version). I was hoping that the Kayako community could help me out.

SnS is, for the most part, a satisfactory product. The challenge is, that it is not an excellent product and I really would like an excellent, user-friendly product. After some searching in the X-Cart forums, Kayako was suggested - and here I am.

I will be testing out LiveResponse with the free trial, but before I actually commit and make a purchase, I was hoping that I could weigh the Pros and Cons of SnS and LiveResponse with real-life user experiences.

If you have used both, please send any and all comments my way. I want to as prepared as possible before I make the decision to purchase LiveResponse (or Sales-n-Stats).

Thank you,

Don

[Jamie Edwards]

Hi Don,

First, thank you for your interest in Kayako software.

As I have not used Sales n Stat before, I cannot offer any information that compares the two. However, there are several X-Cart users are here and I am sure they will post soon.

[craigbrass]

In comparison, both do pretty much the same thing. The only thing I find is that Kayako's application for the operator runs really fast yet the one for SnS runs really slow. I have tried this on 2 machines so it isn't isolated.

[dgirdwood]

Thank you both.

Jamie, I have requested a free trial of LiveResponse and have received all the emails with regard to "going live" but none of the special links work.

I have tried the IP flush and it still does not work. I set it up and received the emails yesterday morning. Since it is only a 7 day trial, I want to make sure I can actually use it for 7 days.

Any ideas as to how we can get the links to work?

Please let me know.
Thanks,

Don

[Jamie Edwards]

Hi Don,

Can you forward the e-mail to me (address in my signature)?

[dgirdwood]

Since both X-Cart's Sales-N-Stats and LiveResponse have very similar features and they are both $299, I guess it will boil down to UI and ease of use.

On first glance, LiveResponse has a nicer looking UI, more modern and pleasing to the eye in my opinion. SnS feels very dated, very Win95 (or older) looking. Blah.

Hopefully, I can get the LiveResponse demo working (so far, no luck) and give it a real go.

[craigbrass]

Totally agree with you on the dated interface of SnS. Kayako use Code Jock's (http://www.codejock.com) user interface components which make it look really good.

After you have played around with Kayako, you'll love it and want to go with it!

[dgirdwood]

OK, so I was able to finally (just now) get the Live Response app to go online. Who knows what happened or why it was not going on before.

I have a few questions about LR:
Is there any way to gather historical information on visitors? Not the chat sessions, that I see is logged, but I mean who came from where and went to what pages etc...

2) I see the field "Country" in the Information section, but there never seems to be any data there. Is this a limitation of the free trial version or why doesn't it show any countries?

3) Aside from being "Online" is there a way to be there invisibly? I noticed that there are Away and Be Back Soon, but both imply there is online support, just not at that moment. Any "invisible" options?

I like all the data (minus the missing Country data which is important) that LR displays. Nice UI. I think that it is much different than SnS (aside from the ghastly Windows 3.1 look SnS has) in layout, design and even data gathered. It seems like it will be easier to use.

I'd really like to have the history feature, where you can see where customers have been when they are no longer online. That is something I use a lot in SnS.

I just thought of something else; if a customer logs in, does their login info appear (Name, email, Address)? If not (SnS does not do this, but the fields are there), can you enter the information manually somewhere? That way, when the same customer comes back, you already have their data entered and you can see who it is and what pages they are visiting this time 'round. Is that possible?

Just a few first questions.

Thanks,

Don

[craigbrass]

1. Are you meaning like to be able to create reports over a select period on visitors? If so, this isn't available but feel free to suggest it in the Feature Requests board here on the forum. It would be a nice feature.

2. Hmm, I just noticed this isn't working on my install either. I'll have a word with Ryan later to see if this is a bug or something I have set wrong.

3. Not really. It would also be a nice feature. The way I do it is simply replace the away and be right back images with offline ones when I want to be invisible as I would never use these status' as they were intended.

4. No but it is planned I read.

[dgirdwood]

Thanks Craig

[craigbrass]

Your welcome. Let us know if you have any further questions.

[aggregator]

Hi guys,

When you talk about SnS over LR, is it really comparing the same thing? Is LR integrated with x-cart? I was planning to use SnS, but it has been a nightmare for me to install. They haven't really explained the instructions well enough (in my opinion anyway). I tried to find an alternative and found this thread. If Kayako can integrate and work seemlessly with x-cart, I would probably pick it up. I have some experience with using it.

I would like customers to be able to initiate chats with representitives if they have any questions about what they want to buy, should they feel the need to. If anyone knows a product they can recommend, I'd be more than happy to hear it.

Thanks

[craigbrass]

How do you mean intergrated? Both tell the user of the application which page the user is on and all the details about the user...

The only thing I can think of is being able to say which user id the user is logged in with which is what I would like to see Kayako open up some way (can't think of an easy way to do it off the top of my head) so we could have software like this tell the admin the user that is logged in which is a link to view that user's account.

Kayako can do everything else you listed above.