Obviously, you may trust more someone who is not a seller but rather an advocate of the brand. TokyWoky is therefore working on this new trend. It has already prestigious partners like Kiabi (when I visited the page, 700 people were online), or Lancome (60 people while visiting).
I like the concept, and I think it is actually cool to be able to interract with people while visiting an E commerce shop. Now I wonder if it could work for every companies. I believe you need either a strong brand equity, or be in a specific industry which allows you to have real fans (or both) in order for Tokywoky to be interesting.
Actually Tokywoky don't recommend to incentive coaches in order to get response. They do it because they like to help, and because they like the website.
My experience with Tokywoky
The interface is great, it is easy to use, easy to chat with users, and quite fast. I had to wait couple of minutes to get a good answer.
The people I chatted with on the website seems to have been "coaches" for months, and quite happy. They also told me it was a bit addictive, but that actually shows that people like it.
One of the downsize is that if you are a visitor and not a coach, you can't read the answers to other questions, which is a pitty, especially as some questions seems to be interesting.
Good luck to this young French Start Up. I actually believe that in the future, it will be clear that E merchants will have this feature.
