InstantRapport
Pairing Manager  

When you pair the right contact with the right visitor, you're pairing the person who wants the information with the person who has the information. In addition to the informational benefits, this method offers greater relationship-building possibilities, as pairing can extend to people with similar life experiences.

InstantRapport uses several techniques to make sure that when multiple contacts are available for a visitor's conversation, the best match is selected. This may be based on anything, such as which contact had a prior conversation with this visitor, or which contact has the best background in the web page from which the visitor launched the conversation (i.e., if a visitor clicked on "Talk to Us" from the Back Pain page, then IR would pair the visitor with the contact most knowledgeable about back pain).

Customizing InstantRapport's matching criteria is easy, and can be used to provide even more sophisticated matching scenarios. Visitors can be matched to the best contact based on geographic region, common interests or backgrounds, browser history, answers to a survey, or other rules which are specific to your team.

Away From Keyboard (AFK) Contacts

This feature ensures that when a visitor talks, somebody is there to respond.

It's a matter of trust. If your site says a contact is available to talk, then a contact should be available to talk. One of the most common problems with instant messengers is that nobody is around to answer a visitor's questions even though the visitor has reason to believe otherwise. In the mind of the visitor this situation reflects very poorly on the quality of your data center and your institution.

Although a team may have a policy that a contact must mark him or herself as "unavailable" when not available, the contact may have forgotten to log out during lunch, or may have become distracted by an offline telephone call or office visitor. From the visitor's standpoint, they have summoned a contact and nobody has responded because the contact is AFK (Away From Keyboard).

InstantRapport is capable of recognizing when a contact is Away From Keyboard, and tries to match the visitor with a different contact. IR also marks AFK contacts as "unavailable" until they return to their keyboard, so that they do not get matched in the future. This feature eliminates that "ghost town" feel to your online data center. Visitors get responses when somebody appears available and contacts don't come back from lunch to a screenful of conversations all asking "hello... is anyone there?"

By being smart enough to anticipate real-world situations, InstantRapport provides a better visitor experience when things don't quite happen as planned.

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