Trustiness in costumer/user chat services: the importance of design

The usage of web-based live chat help systems is particularly on the rise among e-commerce businesses. But its wide use is in stark contrast to the lack of analytic studies on how the users interact with this kind of systems. This article analyzes the user's awareness of the presence of live chat help systems and the impact that the live chat access banner's design has on the users' behavior. To that end, a usability test with 35 participants has been carried out, as well as two satisfaction surveys and a final questionnaire. The results of the study show that the chat system is satisfactory to the vast majority of users and that, of all the possible access banner designs, the one showing a human avatar proved to be the most successful in getting the participants to use the live chat to solve their doubts.