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Tired of waiting for that leaky tap to be fixed, that picture hung or the garden tidied while he sits on the sofa watching the footy?

Well maybe it's time to take hardware matters into your own hands. We've found the perfect way to help chick's get handy. hardwareshop.com.au is the ultimate way to DIY. You can buy products online, there are hints and tips, detailed instructions and resident hardware expert Handy Andy is available to chat live and answer any hardware queries and guide you through DIY jobs.

Never before has it been so easy. With hardwareshop.com.au there's no reason to leave the house. The site helps you select all the products you need for a project and they're delivered straight to your door.

Now there are no excuses!

Surveys of companies' performance in handling customers' online inquiries show a marked disconnectedness between call centres and online technologies. A study by Jupiter Communications, for example, found that 42 per cent of major Web sites took more than five days to reply to customer inquiries, never replied, or didn't even offer the option of email contact.

It's a far cry from the immediacy of phone service, which is part of the reason why even online companies have been forced to provide phone operators to assist with online purchases. However, interactive chat technology from a number of vendors now allows customers and customer support representatives to carry on typed, two-way conversations in real time, eliminating the lag in response time and, e-tailers hope, encouraging customers to complete their online purchases.

Live online chatting has been a natural fit for new hardware goods supplier hardwareshop.com.au, which integrated technology from HumanClick to provide customers with business-hours access to two building and construction experts who provide advice on anything from product selection to tips for DIY home renovation.

"The reason we've chosen hardware as our industry is that it's so information driven," says CEO Phillip Cochineas. "People need to make informed decisions, but many people get intimidated in large-box stores. Online competition is not going to be distinguished purely by price, and the way we're going to distinguish ourselves is to take that intimidation away and provide the advice you used to get at the old corner hardware store. People like to be reassured that there's a person there to help; it definitely helps the shopping experience."

Many live chat solutions are provided as hosted solutions, in which the software provider also maintains the back-end technology and companies simply paste appropriate HTML code into their pages. Yet, while the technology may be easy to implement, companies using live chat solutions still need to provide people on the other end. Sensing a market opportunity, call centre consulting company Global Partners has taken the concept of call centre outsourcing a step further, by using live chat technology as the basis for its new i-contact centre.

Based in North Sydney, the i-contact centre is a 24/7 outsourcing operation staffed by up to six customer service representatives. Don't expect to ring them, however; the i-contact centre has been designed as a phone-free call centre where representatives handle email queries, live Web chat and co-browsing, instead where support staff drive customers' browsers to walk them through comparison shopping, buying goods, and so on.

David Laws, a partner with Global Partners, believes the i-contact centre will be appealing to smaller companies which cannot afford the exorbitant cost of Web-enabling existing phone-based call centres.

"Traditional companies building a Web presence have spent a fortune getting their Web sites up and running, then they see customers that don't make it to the shopping cart and realise they have to offer some support there," he explains. "Call centres are trying to become Web-enabled, but the cost is very high because you're integrating proprietary telephony systems with computer technology and the two don't sit very well together. We're saying that companies can use the Internet to build relationships with customers, and can do it cheaplyand effectively by using the right technology."

Forrester Research believes that increasingly online-savvy customers will quickly come to expect this type of interaction from the vendors they frequent online. And with most conventional call centres still quite slow to embrace online communications channels, Forrester has predicted a big future for dedicated online customer interaction centres.

While this sort of increased customer intimacy may sound great in theory, Martin Conboy, CEO of analysis firm www.callcentres.net, points out that companies must still address basic issues such as staff training, product knowledge and maintenance of relevant industry skills. This is particularly the case, he adds, in outsourcing situations where companies must make sure the outsourcers' representatives are up to speed with their products.

"The difference between company A and company B, given that their products and services will be homogenous, will be the grade of customer service that they offer," says Conboy. "Consumers will want to access the business how they want to access it, but on the supply side the companies do not have the facility, capacity, and functionality to be Web-enabled. Suddenly, call centre employees have to have skills that are as simple as spelling. A lot of people can't type fast, and can't keep up with an [online] conversation. What sort of impression does that give [to customers]?

"It's all part of the idea of getting back to the basics of hardware and home improvement. We're about creating that feeling you used to get on a Saturday morning at your local hardware shop. The place where you got great advice, spoke to someone you knew and shared a yarn. This is hardware the old fashioned way" says Phillip Cochineas, CEO of hardwareshop.com.au.

The live chat feature on hardwareshop.com.au allows customers to ask questions and chat real time with hardware experts while they shop. Customers can ask home improvement questions, be shown recommended products, taken on a guided tour of the website or just be reassured that there is a human face behind their computer screen at home.

Live chat forms an integral part of the consumer centred shopping experience at hardwareshop.com.au. It accompanies other new developments at the site including revamped handy hints and an improved product search function. All of these developments aim to maximise available technology to personalise the internet shopping experience.

Phillip adds, "In the $16 billion hardware and home improvement market you've got to distinguish yourself. There's no point having 100,000 products online if the customer can't distinguish between them. Hardware and home improvement is an information intensive industry and yet that seems to be the part that traditional hardware retailers are leaving out of their business concepts. What people need is informed personal service. That's what we're about."

The hardwareshop.com.au real time chat function is live and fully operational at www.hardwareshop.com.au.

About hardwareshop.com.au
hardwareshop.com.au aims to be Australia's premier online home improvement destination. hardwareshop.com.au offers an extensive range of hardware and home improvement products online. hardwareshop.com.au offers customers a secure site, quality products, comprehensive product knowledge and information, gift ideas, live chat, handy hints, customer forums and delivery Australia wide. hardwareshop.com.au is based in Sydney.

The hardwareshop team felt that there had to be a better way of relating to the hardware customer. The team felt that the Australian hardware market was dominated by massive hardware retailers whose stores were too big, too confusing and too crowded. The launch of hardwareshop signals a new era in Australian home improvement and is a throw back to the days when the shop assistants at your hardware store actually knew something about hardware and cared about what they were selling.

"We did not want to be just another on-line retailer and we wanted to do something a little bit different to your run of the mill hardware shop. This meant rethinking the traditional hardware business and going back to basics, incorporating features such as easy navigation that appeal even to the Internet novice" says CEO Phillip Cochineas.

"Our consumer centred approach is aimed at alleviating the frustration of shopping with existing bricks and mortar stores with their intimidating warehouses, unreliable advice, hard to find service, as well as inconvenient store hours and locations."

"We provide quirky features which put the fun back into shopping for hardware - from community forums to online advice and unique gift ideas such as hardware hampers. We want to win back the old loyalty that customers used to have with their old corner hardware shop."

About hardwareshop.com.au
hardwareshop.com.au aims to be Australia's premier online home improvement destination. hardwareshop.com.au offers an extensive range of hardware and home improvement products online. hardwareshop.com.au offers customers a secure site, quality products, comprehensive product knowledge and information, gift ideas, live chat, handy hints, customer forums and delivery Australia wide. hardwareshop.com.au is based in Sydney.