It's about the right time to reveal our latest SaaS product - liveConsultant. We're very proud of our latest child - project itself is like 20 times bigger than our first player. It took more than 10 months to complete it and.. this is a short preview of what it really is.
At the same beginning when we started this software business our biggest problem was the contact with our customers. As you know e-mails are quite slow method of communication. Some people were using skype (which is nice, but not everyone wants to use it), google talk, msn etc. Even today I've got like 6 different communicators, so our clients can reach me.
liveConsultant is a web-based chat which allows anyone to communicate with his clients right thought the web-site. There is no need to install any additional scripts (everything is based on flash). It's fast and very light solution. You may say that there already are services like that - yes, that's true, but there are some huge differences in approach that we've chosen and functionality that no one else has got.
First of all - with our liveConsultant (lc for short) you can see all visitors on your web-site in real-time. Everything is based on our own separate protocol (we called it "wamp") which works simultaneously to http. As long as a visitor is connected - you can interact with him/her pretty easily ( invite to the conversations, spy all actions, find the location ... and many, many other cool thing).
We have also implemented advanced geolocalisation functionality which works along with Google Maps. At any moment you can check where your users come from and see it precisely on the map - system is very accurate. You can also see things like: IP, reference page, operating system, browser, flash version, number of views along with history etc.
Both chat history and notes that you can assign to visitors are stored globally on our servers. If there is more than operator you can always leave a note and later other consultants will be able to read it. The same thing comes with history that you can check at any time you want. It makes work in group much easier.
Our desktop application is based on AIR technology. It works on all possible operating systems from Windows XP to Windows 7, Mac OS (Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard) or even popular Linux distributions like Debian (Ubuntu, Kubuntu), Red Hat etc. We're also preparing web-based version that is going to work right in your browser (precisely the same capabilities).
Chats and pop-up windows are fully customizable (in the same way our current player is). We'll also provide all our clients with SDK - modifying the interface is going to be really easy now. You can set advanced rules for auto-inviting your customers into the conversations. It's also possible to execute any JavaScript function right from the consultant's application.
One of the coolest things about lc is that it can also collect multiple statistics. Except from casual things like views, visitors (including separate data for countries) you'll also be able to check time that your customers spend on your website or how active your consultant are. Statistics are accessible right from the LC application.
For companies designing web-sites, shops or another web-based applications we have prepared special partnership program which will allow both sides to share profit from the subscription.
We've got a lot more ideas how to expand LC. Before the end of the year we'll introduce file transfer, voip, cross-browsing and few other cool things. We also want to add things like synchronized video player and real-time conferences with webcams.
In current state LC is ready in 95% and it's already working our website (yes, we can see you! ^^). We currently beta-testing our application - more info we'll be reviled soon.