Over a two-week initial trial, the company’s live chat proved popular with customers and is now a permanent fixture on the Waterloo website. 

Mark Purnell, director of customer experience at Waterloo, said: “Waterloo has always put customer service first, and this development is part of our commitment to continually improve what we do.

“With live chat, visitors to the website can get a quick response from one of 13 people in the order and estimating teams. They are used to dealing with technical questions and the combination of live chat and the website means we can quickly direct people to the information they need.

“A lot of queries we receive through all channels are of a technical nature. We knew that the success of the service would be down to a combination of technical know-how and intelligence of the answers, as well as the speed of the response. To further assist customers, at the end of the conversation customers get a copy of the live chat for reference, sent by email.”

Mr Purnell added: “Interestingly, there is already a pattern on questions and information. We have a huge amount of information about products and applications on www.waterloo.co.uk and we have found that we have been able to help visitors find exactly what they want within the site.”