I saw a recent piece by Lisa DiCarlo in Forbes.com about the use of web chat capabilities at web sites that emulate the annoying or helpful (depending on your persepctive) sales person in a retail store who asks "Can I help you find anything?"

"Rackspace Managed Hosting, of San Antonio, Tex., has embedded a proactive live chat into its Web site. The scenario works like this: After roaming the Web site for about 30 seconds, a user is greeted with a live, pop-up chat window that includes a thumbnail picture of a salesperson and a header announcing a "Live Conversation with Jay." "Hello," Jay might type next. "Can I help you with some managed hosting solutions today?"

The user is identified to the salesperson only by an IP address, visible to the user as a guest number. However, the number is tracked, and the user's movements around the site are closely monitored. For example, when we visited Rackspace's site later the same day we had our conversation with Jay, another salesperson, Will, greeted us with "Welcome back!""

Rackspace seems to be a bit ahead of the curve, but I expect that most companies will enable such popup chat services in the near-term. The experience of the user is one of higher involvement, and potentially less confusion. In various surveys, those Internet users who were familiar with instant messaging technology expressed a willingness to use it rather than the telephone for tech support, and more so that email. This is a no brainer.

[Thanks to burgburgburg at slashdot]