Your users reside in 24 different time zones. I'm a bit skeptical about the usefulness of any type of live chat or message system. It may only add to a customers frustration if they don't get an immediate response from something they perceive as a real time system.

You guys have never implemented a plain old ticket system.Why is that? It's something a lot of internet users are accustomed to. Why try to reinvent support systems when you have your hands full with development chores? A lot of see more people think the ticket system in Trac is for support, so they are already familiar with ticket systems. What you guys were thinking when you put Trac under the 'Help' menu, is beyond my comprehension.... it wasn't a smart thing to do.

If it were me, I'd implement a ticket system that a group of 'Ticket Agents' could access, and tickets could be 'claimed' by an agent in that group. Once the ticket is claimed, no one else can interact with the customer unless the ticket is released by the ticket agent that claimed it. A problem I often see in the forums, is that a question can receive a perfectly good answer, then several more people come along and give not so good answers. There are many cases where more is not better... more sometimes creates a fog. I'm sure there are ready made ticket systems that can be used. If the agent that claimed the ticket can not resolve it, then they have the option of kicking it up to a higher support level, ie, you guys at Boonex. It would give you guys at Boonex a front line of defense, so you wouldn't have to tend to a lot of minor problems, most of which are because of a users inexperience with Dolphin.

For this to work, you'll have to have some sort of incentive program for 'Ticket Agents'. Award points for each ticket successfully resolved. Perhaps points could be redeemed for special products in the market available only to Ticket Agents. If there were some really cool products, it would incentivize people to become ticket agents, and then to put in more work on tickets.