The chat room is morphing with the board room.
The staple of the online world, where people gather to socialize or mingle virtually with celebrities, is being touted as a way for businesses to keep a competitive edge. It's called "service-related chat," and Novell Inc. is joining the trend.Early next year Novell plans to begin multimedia, interactive chat sessions on its Web site. The "chat on steroid" sessions will feature audio and video and will coincide with product launches and other big corporate events.
Such multimedia corporate chats may be the latest evolution in using the Internet to communicate.
First came the newsgroup, a discussion group dedicated to a specific topic - from collecting marbles to using an Iomega Zip drive. Members post messages that can be read and responded to by others.
Then came the chat room or forum, a place where two or more people can meet online and engage in conversation by taking turns typing messages.
America Online, Prodigy and CompuServe took chat rooms to a new level by setting up auditoriums where hundreds or thousands of people can gather to interact with famous people.
Now business sees online interaction as a way to coddle customers.
If a live chat works for David Bowie when he rolls out a new song or when Rosie O'Donnell wants to plug her talk show and Olympic gymnast Kerri Strug touts her new book, then why not when Novell introduces the latest version of IntranetWare?
"We're excited by the technology possibilities of multimedia, interactive events including real-time chat," said Jonathan Cohen, a Novell spokesman.
Jupiter Communications, a New York City-based new media research company, said "service-related chat" will have a "profound" effect on competitive positioning of commercial Web sites.
It can help businesses foster customer loyalty, market products, close sales and build customer communities, a new Jupiter study says.
"While there is significant interest in social chat environments, the chat market is growing in different directions," said Kate Doyle, an analyst at Jupiter Communications and author of the report.
Social chat will continue to be a draw on special-interest Web sites and online services, but "this application is also becoming a great asset in terms of improving customer service and promoting cross-sell opportunities," she said.
Some companies have already reached that conclusion.
In May, Columbia/HCA moved chat sessions from America Online to its own Web site (http://www.columbia.net). It has a handful of chat rooms where people can talk to doctors, participate in support groups and chat with colleagues.
The health-care provider also offers live events. On Monday night, for instance, it hosted a chat with two physicians for the U.S. Soccer Team. The chat attracted 50 participants.
The decision to run its own chat rooms gave the company both more flexibility and more control over the sessions, said Tod Fetherling, director of interactive and local market services. The change also coincided with improvements in chat software, which made hosting the sessions inhouse more feasible, he said.
IBM has offered "Talk Radio" telephone seminars, complete with jockeys who monitor discussions, for customers to conference with its developers for the past four years. Participants call a toll-free number to participate in the hour-long discussions.
Intel Corp. periodically hosts live interviews at its Web site, such as one Wednesday in which CEO Andy Grove offered his views on the future of personal computing. Many events include live audiocasts and the company has tried offering live video, too.
Intel also hosts dozens of newsgroup forums on its Web site, where you'll find everything from posts panning Grove's book, "Only the Paranoid Survive," to discussions of the company's ad campaigns and its newest technology.
"Intel is one of the more aggressive companies in using the Web to communicate," said Howard High, an Intel spokesman.
Novell plans to begin hosting newsgroup forums on its Web site, too. For the past three years, it maintained those support forums through CompuServe.
"Customers asked us to make these forums free and more universally accessible through the Web," Cohen said. "We are taking steps to do that now by pre-registering the first support forums, which should get started by the end of the year."
Company-sponsored forums and chat sessions do pose dilemmas for corporations. What do you do about posts that slam products or personnel? And how do you keep chat sessions on track? "It's a challenge," Fetherling said. People's familiarity with technology varies, which can cause glitches in chats, and there are people who can't resist making inane or derogatory comments.
The software Columbia/HCA uses automatically filters messages for inappropriate content. During Monday's chat on soccer, for example, the software changed the word "hell" in a message to "huckleberry." Columbia relies on moderators during large events to filter redundant and inappropriate questions.
Intel also uses moderators to screen duplicative questions during live events and staff may correct inaccurate technical information posted in newsgroups. But High said the company advocates free speech and doesn't screen newsgroups at all.
"We try to stay out of the fray," he said.
Novell has tried to sponsor chats in the past with product managers and executives but found the results "not satisfactory," Cohen said. The sessions turned into free-for-alls with "irrelevant and inappropriate questions" given the featured guest, he said.
That's long been the bane of newsgroups and chat rooms, where conversation often deteriorates into mindless drivel.
Novell hopes that by requiring participants to pre-register for its forums and live events and using moderators to filter questions it will be able to keep discussions on track.
"Our philosophy is that it should be a productive, valuable experience for the customer," Cohen said.