Do You Expect Affiliate Reps To Have An IM Client?

**Lee** · 02-23-2010, 12:10 PM

I was just curious to see what you folks thought about this, do you expect your affiliate reps to be reachable by instant message vs. just by email or 'contact form' on the affiliate site?

Im starting to see more and more reps posting on the board keeping their IM usernames 'hidden' from people and instead opting to go the email route.

Do you think it helps a program if their reps are able to be contacted by instant messenger client, AIm, ICQ, Yahoo, etc than just by email or contact form?

Regards,

Lee

**GayGeek** · 02-23-2010, 12:27 PM

Expect, no, but I really really like it when I can ICQ them.

**Maryflixxx** · 02-23-2010, 04:01 PM

I think an affiliate reps job is to be available to the affiliates... when they are needed.

So, yes, if IM is the preferred method of communication for webmasters/affiliates, then the Rep should be on their IM all day, every day.

When I started with Maleflixxx, they had had issues with old employees abusing IM privileges. So they banned it for a while, and I found it limiting given that everyone seemed to be talking on ICQ all the time.

I was very happy the day I installed ICQ and got online.
My affiliates and business partners were too, and business soared very quickly for me after that.

M.

**nickbaer** · 02-23-2010, 05:15 PM

Many of my e-mails wind up in my program sponsor's BULK mail folders, especially AEBN, which begs the question: Why does e-mail even exist as a communications medium with program sponsors in 2010?

I like "support tickets", where a thread history is kept, with some kind of RTF so I can paste screen grabs or other images.

ICQ doesn't work on OSX (at least I don't keep checking to see if it does YER).

YahooIM is OK.

I don't like using cell phone minutes, because when I need to raise an issue, there's usually URLs, or screen grabs or other images involved to explain, and the call just gets to be a waste of time.

The real waste of time is to call someone to tell them that I sent them an e-mail!!

See point #1.