Like the best software, a Web site should offer immediate context-sensitive help wherever needed. This might take the form of instructional text right on the page or a secondary popup window that appears when the user requests it. The text should be jargon-free and simple but not condescending. A live human provides the best help . The user and rep can view the same pages at the same time, passing URLs back and forth automatically.
Interactive help is next best.
A help application like NativeMinds uses a database of keywords and information to approximate the experience of interacting with a person. But it's only useful if site staff continually review and improve the database to address changing user needs. And the database itself is primitive, unable to form its own connections or piece together fully customized responses. A Frequently Asked Questions page is useful for smaller sites, but an FAQ section quickly mushrooms to unusable size on larger sites. Even when carefully broken down to small, topic-specific sections, the ability to search or scan for a particular topic is limited.