Live Support Software is a popular term for instant messaging applications designed specifically to provide online assistance to users of a web site. The software enables the administrator or webmaster of a web site to receive and respond to text communication from multiple users of the web site.
From a list of live support software (applications), there are some that use JavaScript, Java or Flash Player to run directly inside the browser. These online applications differ from classic software mostly because Website visitors don't have to install anything on their PC's and they can communicate freely with website's online agents. There are also live support software that goes beyond basic text chat, and offer such advanced communication capabilities as true VoIP (Voice over IP), application sharing, remote view and remote form filling.
The majority of live support applications open in a window and connect the user to a member of "call centre" staff. The more advanced scripts allow the users to be queued, so that one member of staff can deal with a customer and then automatically move on to the next customer. The customer's position in the queue is sometimes displayed.
Live support applications are typically written using PHP and possible a backend database such as MySql. This is due to the fact that PHP and MySql are open source and effectively free. Making it highly probable that a companies webserver will have the capability to run PHP scripts. As stated before a wide variety of techniques are used to create the display which the user receives.
ZaZaChat developers are using Microsoft's Cutting Edge Technologies to develop Live Support Software - ASP.NET and MS Sql Server 2005 database.
Hosted Chat or "Chat As Service" is an ASP (Application Service Provider) model text chat service that boasts capabilities such as having multiple instances of a chat with different configurations being distributed among websites, blogs, discussion groups, and virtually every other type of online community. Since it is an ASP model and is hosted, Hosted Chat / Chat As Service requires no software installation and the users always get the latest version of the service.
With ever-increasing demand and development of web-based applications, Hosted Chat / Chat As Service is gaining popularity and is redefining the relatively old concept of online chat.