You don't need live chat on your website

Live chat for support is bad, and live chat from a bot to sell something is even worse, and for the same reason: none of them are actually live. Even in the case where you get to talk to a human, it usually starts with a queue (not real time) and ends with a ticket if your issue wasn’t resolved immediately. All of this, as they say, “could have been an email”, then both parts don’t have to stand by like a couple of radio operators. It’s an illusion of urgency and effectiveness.

I’ve worked in support and I’ve also (like almost anyone) used support to get problems solved, and the urgency of a phone call or a live chat is, most of the time, not only uncalled for in almost every case but actually worse than the alternative:

For the support example specifically, I believe the best way to resolve most issues is to: 1) get as much necessary information as possible in the first question, whether that’s automatically collected, or submitted through a form etc 2) have it quickly end up in the hand of a technically competent person who can work, in peace, to resolve the issue. Chat or phone calls may seem good because it feels intuitively like it speeds up communication, but it doesn’t. It only creates urgency and frustration on both ends that does nothing to speed up resolution, and often falls back to non-realtime anyway.

As for selling stuff, bots have never been a good idea. If you have good UX and clear information there’s no need for a half baked script to guess what the user wants to navigate to, because they can just navigate there themselves.

I approach it from the other direction nowadays. I'll hit up live chat instead of checking the help center. If they're going to annoy me with that on every page, I'm going to use it. And if it wastes their time on something trivial, that's on them.

> live chat for support is bad

Just this week, I had to reach REI because a package showing as delivered was not actually delivered. The carrier researched the problem and told me that I needed to contact the seller. I clicked Live Chat from REI support page, picked from few menu options, got connected to an agent, and within a few mins had sent me out a new order plus refunded me for one item they no longer had in stock. During the chat I had the option to either elect for a new order, or to have full refund. Being on standby "like a radio operator" allowed quick exchange and resolution. I much preferred this to a phone call or elongated email exchange. My POV is that different people have different tastes/preferences concerning the channels they want to use to receive support. I think it is good when companies offer multiple options.

As a newcomer to Spain, I was looking for an ISP that could help me out with language barriers. I chose the one with the live chat option that connected me to a human within 30 seconds, even before I was a customer. It's been really helpful because I don't speak much Spanish yet and can use Google Translate if I need to. It’s been great so far.

I have had to contact some other services via a phone call and it can be a nightmare trying to do anything in a language you can barely speak.

It’s not so bad now that I can speak a bit of Spanish, but I still will choose a company based on if they have a live chat feature that connects to a human.

Revolut's in-app chat was like that. You may have to wait over 4 hours, so obviously you're not looking at the screen when a person picks it up. Then when you take a look you find they've replied and then left, and you have to wait for another person on a different shift to pick up your reply.

The trouble is, this was also their only support channel. No phone or web or email.

This went on for nearly 1 week when I was trying to talk to them to unblock my blocked-for-no-reason account a few years ago, and their response times got progressively slower.

In the end a quick message on social media got the account unblocked in 20 minutes. How?!