A Forrester study calculated the average costs for a call-center session at $33, whereas on-line chat runs at $7.80 per query and access to a knowledge base via a web-based query costs just $1.17.

When requesting information from traditional search engines the user is often presented with a long list of pages, which may or may not contain the answer that they are looking for. Searching through this information can be a very frustrating exercise. A study by Forrester Research discovered that 92% of searches were unable to find relevant information or arrange it in a meaningful order.

The Gartner Group predicts that in 2001, 25 percent of all customer contacts and inquiries will be conducted via the Internet.

Datamonitor estimated that e-tailers lost more than $6 billion in uncompleted transactions in 1999 because of poor customer service. Celent Communications showed that in 2000 some 56% of the top 150 financial service firms in the U.S. either did not accept web-based queries or did not respond to online inquiries from potential customers.