Beware (some) LivePerson.com “Experts”
June 5th, 2009
LivePerson is a cool concept. They claim “30,000 experts ready to chat”. The business model is that “LivePerson is an online destination, community and marketplace where individuals can chat live with experts in a broad range of categories”. Experts can get paid by users for their advice. I signed up as a “Web Design Expert” in order to see if it could help our business. This morning I got an email from LivePerson that there was a question on Web Design so I went online to provide my opinion on the issue. See the entire image of the question and the “expert” responses by clicking for “More” below. As my first experience with this system here are my thoughts:
- The expert responses (in this case) are not giving useful advice
- The experts did not spend anytime thinking about the holistic aspects of the request
- The experts did not do any research into the request
- I’m guessing the majority of the experts are offshore web development mills
The talismanclick.com website that the individual wanted to duplicate is not a good solution in my experience and it is a shame that these experts are going after a quick sale rather than promoting a better solution. Click “More” below to see my response. This is not to say that LivePerson cannot help people with questions but in this situation I’ll let you be the judge.
Richard Parr
CEO Executionists, Inc.
June 8th, 2009 at 7:58 am
Hi Richard,
Thanks for the feedback. I give you some insight on a few improvements that are in the works. The quality of posted requests and expert replies is important to us as well as potential clients. Your blog post will add to my ammunition as I push for a few new changes on the development side of things. We’re working on allowing potential clients to rate the experts’ posted responses based on usefulness. This will bump up better quality experts to the top of the response list, highlighting those that people found most ‘useful’. I’ll keep you updated as things progress and I encourage you to continue using the LivePerson platform. Feel free to contact me with any feedback in the future. Cheers!
June 14th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
Can you provide more information on this, or do you have some resources you can share where i can get more of such stuff?
June 24th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
I just wanted to say thank you for such a great post. I’ll be visiting your blog again and adding you to my reader ! Thank you again
Thanks,
Denise
June 25th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Thanks! Please visit our blog on a regular basis for more tips… You can also subscribe to our monthly newsletter!
June 28th, 2009 at 11:47 am
I strongly recommend that you turn the No Follow off in your comment section. I’ll watch Google Webmaster Tools, and if the links don’t show up after a couple of weeks — I won’t go back to that blog again. Another suggestion: you should have a Top Commentator widget installed. Do Follow and Top Commentator will ensure that you have a successful blog with lots of readers!
July 19th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
You are a very smart person!
July 21st, 2009 at 9:43 am
Thank you for your help, posted this to twitter!