On Tuesday, Lorna Borenstein, vice president and general manager of eBay Inc. [2], talked with conference goers at eTail 2003 East. One highlight of the presentation indicated that eBay has experienced a 135% return [3] on investing in real-time customer service via chat.

After testing chat capabilities with visitors, inactive registrants, and active users -- and finding that live chat boosted activity across the board -- eBay increased chat capacity 15-fold. One secret? Staff the customer service chats with employees, not third-party outsourcers.

How closely are you connected to your customers? How immediately can you react to their needs?