As part of the Mozilla project efforts to improve support for Firefox, it unveiled yesterday its Live Chat option. It comes as a third tier of support that follows the Firefox Knowledge Base, a complete rewrite of mozillaZine’s Knowledge Base that started on past July and the Support Forums opened a few months ago and currently in beta status.

Users who have tried live chat  with any provider in the past should recognize it as the most effective way of providing support: one on one.

People who want to act as support agents just need to download Spark, a Java-based instant messaging client that connects to Mozilla’s OpenFire servers. OpenFire is an open source real time communication server that uses XMPP an open instant messaging communication protocol.

Then, support agents need to configure Spark, create an account and connect so they are able to receive incoming support requests. Instructions are provided on Firefox Knowledge Base.

Users seeking support can visit Firefox Support and search the Knowledge Base to see if the problem is a well known one. On search results they are offered additional support options (live chat and forums).

An awake colorful Foxkeh image means there is at least one agent online who can help him. You need only to click on Foxkeh to get a chat window where you enter your name, question and the username of an agent you have contacted in the past in case this is an ongoing case. Your request then enters a queue waiting for the next agent to be available to help you.

On the agent’s side, he will receive a notification that a user needs help and his question. The agent can then decide if he can handle the request and accept or reject it.

When the agent accepts, a typical chat window appears and the agent and the user are connected for support.

For quality assurance purposes and to prevent agents to abuse the system and try to get unnecessary personal information, all chat sessions are logged and supervisors can see an ongoing session at any time.

I gave it a try and found it to be very straight forward.

Live chat support is in beta though and, David Tenser, Firefox Support lead has a wishlist including the possibility for agents to connect via Pidgin and multilanguage support, as there is currently no way to let the user seeking support what languages is help available at a particular moment.

Personally, I wish there was a web based client so there was no need to install Spark and a way to use it on port 80 which is tipically opened in firewalls.

If you have ever wanted to help Mozilla this is a wonderful way to share your knowledge with others, no matter how little you think it is. Remember to be courteous, professional and more than anything, patient: at some point we were all newbies who could hardly understand what somebody else meant by a button.

For complete details on how to become a support agent check Firefox Support’s Helping with Live Chat.