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You don't need live chat on your website

timharek.no

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Re: You don't need live chat on your website

#31

Post by eastbound »

gwbas1c wrote: post #26

The problem isn't live chat, it's nagging . A lot of the chat bubbles that I see flash in the corner, and make the title of the page flash as well; with lots of annoying bleeps and bloops. I also find that sales is very trend driven. Currently they're trendy, but I hope that sales websites learn that you can't just stick things in people's faces all the time.

Whenever it nags, I click on it and ask how to remove the chat.

Then I say it doesn’t work, because, clearly it doesn’t. At one point they give me a real person to talk to.

That’s what in-product char is for, right, resolving UX issues?

I’ve been looking for months for a time-tracking tool on MacOS and I never subscribe to any because I throw the ball when opening the pricing page and the chat opens. I’m so annoyed I insult them, I really need a time tracking tool for my team.

Re: You don't need live chat on your website

#32

Post by princevegeta89 »

aendruk wrote: post #2

> Can I help you with anything? No. > An agent will be with you shortly! > Hi, what can I help you with? > Agent ended the session.

You forgot to add some messages added by bots and the chatbox itself with links to FAQs and crap. It's not so straightforward to get to humans these days

Re: You don't need live chat on your website

#33

Post by gnicholas »

I had a live chat widget on my startup's site for a while. What I found was that maybe 10% more people reached out, but the bigger difference was that about half of the contact that would have come through our email form (and not required an immediate response) was now coming through chat. This meant that we needed to respond immediately, which was a downside.

The most annoying thing though was when people would try to prove that I was actually a chatbot.

Any tips for how to definitively prove you're not a bot (shy of getting on a zoom call, which is what one user suggested!)?

Re: You don't need live chat on your website

#34

Post by eastbound »

revskill wrote: post #12

So the issue here is the automatic popup. If the issue is not about content (not everything is simple to find out), live chat is helpful. But it's only helpful if the support team is ready to help via email.

The kind of people it’s intended for, don’t know how to open a chat. Some people are afraid of clicking unknown icons. Some (different) people are afraid of starting a conversation.

On the Nespresso website, the chat button covers the Buy button partially. So I ask them “Please confirm my order”. Chats are almost always a horrible implementation.

Re: You don't need live chat on your website

#35

Post by yummypaint »

dmje wrote: post #29

Chat is one thing. Obtrusive chat is another. Bot chat is a sort of pinnacle of shitness that eclipses all others. When companies do chat and it actually helps the user, all good. When it's done entirely to help the company by reducing salaries for real staff / trying to prevent users getting in touch / promoting some feature or product the user didn't want in the first place... - then it's generally all bad.

Spectrum (the ISP) had terrible incompetent bots attempting to pose as humans last time i was forced to deal with them. They were even trained to claim they were human, but couldn't answer questions any person trivially knows the answer to. It's a true insult to the intelligence and time of their (unwilling) customers. The purpose is to waste peoples's time and grind them down in hopes they give up before even entering the phone tree.

Re: You don't need live chat on your website

#36

Post by subradios »

The problem isn't live chat, or nagging - it is a corporate policy structure for something complex (sites like eBay, Facebook, and Amazon are effectively running small municipal governments at least) combined with an incentive structure to get the person to tie up as little support time as possible, because that costs money.

Added in is the modern trend to try to make immensely complicated things like "global commerce" look like it takes two button clicks. Abstractions are good, but something, somewhere, should tell me how my inputs to this system affect what happens.

Re: You don't need live chat on your website

#38

Post by yummypaint »

csharpminor wrote: post #10
beachy wrote: post #3

Nice rant but, like those popups that ask for your email when you show signs of leaving the site , the proof is in the pudding - do these live chats increase conversions?

Agree. At one of my startups we hooked a $350k ARR enterprise customer over webchat. We also received some of the best early UX feedback through webchat. Developers are somewhat different from the general population in that we like to read documentation rather than going to a person for help. But for almost everyone else having someone to answer a question immediately is the preferred experience.

How did you establish that the customer would not have contacted you if not for webchat? If i go to a company's website already intending to contact them i might type in a chat box before i email or call them, but they would have gotten my business regardless.

Re: You don't need live chat on your website

#39

Post by naet »

gnicholas wrote: post #33

I had a live chat widget on my startup's site for a while. What I found was that maybe 10% more people reached out, but the bigger difference was that about half of the contact that would have come through our email form (and not required an immediate response) was now coming through chat. This meant that we needed to respond immediately, which was a downside. The most annoying thing though was when people would try…

I think you don't need to definitely prove you're human or pass some kind of adhoc turing test. You just need to convince them that whatever need they have can be taken care of via the chat widget.

If the need is to speak to a human, help them schedule a phone call with a sales rep / support rep / relevant party.

Re: You don't need live chat on your website

#40

Post by nathias »

webignition wrote: post #16

In my experience, the usefulness of live chat features varies wildly. If the live chat service connects me to a human who is able to resolve my query in a timely manner, I'll take that any day. Phoning a large company can result in waiting in a call queue for a long time. My attention is on the phone call instead of anything else. A live chat window can be relatively ignored and checked once in a while. Emailing a la…

This could be an email, but of course the business doesn't want this as it would create a record of interaction. Whenever I had to use live chat it was a tactic to wear you down.
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