Today I experienced one of the best new product implementations since I got my first iPhone.  I installed the Drift chat capability on my website developmentcorporate.com.  Their entry level offering is free forever.  It took me 10 minutes from start to finish and it worked right out of the box.

I enjoy looking at new technologies and I am a nightmare for sales development reps.  I will download content and free trials at will just to see what I can find.  I rarely, if ever follow up, once I have looked at a piece of content or a trial service.

Drift was different.  My website does not get a ton of traffic and I do not expect that people are dying to chat with me about calculating the enterprise value of private companies or open source competitive intelligence for product managers.  I surely would not pay for the privilege of adding chat to my website. The free capabilities are what I need, but I can see the potential of upgrading to get calendar integration

Drift made it ridiculously easy for me.  To register an account, I just needed to provide my business email address.  My website runs off a WordPress theme.  I downloaded a WordPress plugin, configured it with some sample code provided by Drift, and the chat capability was live.  I also downloaded an iOS app so that in the unlikely event someone wants to chat with me when I am not at my computer I can do it straight from my phone.

If you are looking at extending the capabilities of your site, I strongly endorse Drift.  Here’s a link to their free subscription.  If you ever want to chat, surf on over to developmentcorporate.com and hit the chat icon.

By John Mecke

John is a 25 year veteran of the enterprise technology market. He has led six global product management organizations for three public companies and three private equity-backed firms. He played a key role in delivering a $115 million dividend for his private equity backers – a 2.8x return in less than three years. He has led five acquisitions for a total consideration of over $175 million. He has led eight divestitures for a total consideration of $24.5 million in cash. John regularly blogs about product management and mergers/acquisitions.