From time to time this question comes up in sales calls and general chat about the value of live chat. As in, “should I shoulder the $17 a month for my small business or pony up for the $129 per month platinum subscription?”
Cold numbers and links to studies show that live chat helps tremendously to increase sales conversions and generally bonding to your company. But the other day an email came into Olark support that illustrated the benefits far better than characters on an Excel spreadsheet.
I give you a tale from the real world from a company not unlike yours in scale and scope:
July 1, 2012
Hello Olark Friends,
We are a small company in Norway with approx. 1 mill USD annual revenue. Being a small company every order counts. We are currently spending about 2500 USD each month in google adwords campaigns, but have only had about 1 % visits converted to solid leads.
We’ve now used Olark for one and a half days and the results:
10% of visitors have chatted with us.
8% of visitors have received an offer for an item.
4000 USD in orders.
Just wanted to say thanks, and we will obviously not cancel our subscription after the free 14 days. 
Jonas Storm Halvorsen
MD
Top-Print
www.top-print.no