Meet Sergeant Star, the US Army’s newest recruiter, an beret wearing avatar who answers potential enlisters’ questions about military service. A pop-up window allows users to pose questions in an IM fashion, and gives them the option to chat with a live recruiter if Star can’t answer your question. 

A smart feature includes additional content related to your question: the site’s main navigation expands to the right of the pop-up to reveal related links within the body of the page.  The answers to most of the questions I posed were helpful and addressed my queries.  Although one question, "War, what is it good for?", got a pretty weak response of "In combat, Soldiers work to accomplish the mission."

GoArmy.com reports that thousands have chatted with the virtual Sergeant, staying on site for an average of 15 minutes—three times as long as the average visit before Star’s debut. The feature, launched August 2, is the Army’s first step towards a new interactive web portal.

Angela di Pietro