The New York Times writer Thomas Friedman extensively researched the IT and services outsourcing sector in India in 2004. He made the observation that one should expect exceptional quality from India centers not merely because of good education, native intelligence or fondness for number crunching. There is a purely sociological factor as well. The staff he interviewed at numerous BPO centers in Bangalore and elsewhere were typically middle class. In the Indian context that meant they would all have one or more maids at home to do the housework and possibly a chauffeur to drive them to work. They were thus able to concentrate on their profesional work without the day to day concerns of their equivalents in the US.

Instant messaging works well within the community of users who have the software installed. It is inadvisable for the generic site to depend on IM.

This brings us to standard email as an online help option. The reason why so called "live" products  are preferred to email is the largely negative experience users have had so far getting help through the email contact button. This channel has never been positioned as "online" support and in fact the presumption of most surfers is that email will be replied to in a few days - if at all. If a customer is assured of a reply in say ten minutes she would probably prefer it to being kept on hold waiting for an operator to come online. Email support, even with a targeted  response time of ten to fifteen minutes, can cost as low as 15 cents per transaction. Compare with the cost of a typical chat session of 4 minutes duration - approximately $3-00..