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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

#141

Post by alldayeveryday »

lucumo wrote: post #93

One thing that annoys the living crap out of me is when live chat is the only way to get support and they have office hours! So now I can't send an email at 1 AM when I have some time to myself, but have to take time out of my day to chat with customer support. I might as well use the bloody phone by then.

Some live chat systems will create a ticket from your off hours chat, and then followup with an email once their support team comes back online. I've even seen when this email allows to click a link to go into a new chat session (assuming on hours).

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

#142

Post by mirzap »

This is heavily biased. You want someone to adapt business case to your preference. I personally hate those bubbles as well. I also hate pages overblown with ads, newsletter dialogs, browser asking for permissions etc. But I'm not most people. Most (regular) people like it and use it. Most people don't mind the ads as well. They don't mind those annoying browser notifications asking permission to receive updates. It is how it's supposed to be for them.

So, like it or not, if you run B2C business - you really need those little annoying chat bubbles.

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

#143

Post by princevegeta89 »

denton-scratch wrote: post #83
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, especially on the first page you ever visit, and it covers 60% of the contents. Also, you usually have to close the "subcribe to our newsletter" popup first, to even see the chat window, covering the content you're interested in. Then you scroll half a screen down, and a new popup with a survey, asking you how much you like their page. Basically, they actively try to discourage you from seeing the content you ac…

Well, I guess this is what happens when a business operation is placed under the control of marketing. It's a very old-fashioned attitude; back in the early noughties, many companies thought of the web as essentially an advertising billboard, so the website was placed under the marketing team. That's counterproductive, if the website is actually a core business operation.

It's pretty sad that even little startups these days are ending up doing it. They usually have two or three people "available" through chat but the chatbox punches you in the face even when you're just a visitor trying to check out what the fuck their startup does.

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

#144

Post by Thiez »

princevegeta89 wrote: post #30
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.

Fuck those chat bubbles that automatically open when I visit websites. "Hi, Thank you for visiting. Please look around and let us know if you have any questions" I'm gonna really reach out to you if I run into questions but don't automatically expand the chatbox and ruin my experience here. I vividly remember car dealership websites being the worst of them all. They all use the same software more or less and it is ju…

I just type "No thank you, I have no questions yet!" in those boxes. Then shortly after you will something like " ".

If everyone would do this then eventually the company would be forced to remove the initial chat bubble since their support is wasting 90% of their time looking at bullshit "No thank you!" answers.

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

#145

Post by Eleison23 »

thombat wrote: post #125
soco wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very annoying "feature" of some of those is making you wait for the human (okay that's acceptable) BUT timing out the session if you don't reply them within a minute or such.

That's the cousin of telephone hold music that interjects with a recording periodically, such as "We apologise for the delay; your call is important to us". All this does is repeatedly grab the caller's attention AND progressively reduce the strength of the grab, so that finally when a real live & hopefully useful human joins the call they may not be noticed. Just give me some crappy Muzak: instrumental without voice…

No post body was provided.

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

#146

Post by zorrolovsky »

I dislike live chats but many users and businesses see value in such functionality... who am I (or the author) to demand they stop?

There's a mantra in UX that says: "you are not your users". The way I interpret that mantra is that you shouldn't assume that your opinions, preferences, motivations and behaviors are the same as other users'. In other words, a single experience or use case will never cover 100% of the needs of all users.

Sorry to state the obvious, but different people have different needs, and they see value in different things. To demand that "XYZ" stops because one person doesn't like it is so wrong and myopic... it's actually a pet peeve of mine. It's fine to share your experience "When I open my email, I do XYZ" but for the love of god, never make the sweeping assumption that your experience covers everybody else's' needs or opinions.

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

#147

Post by robertlagrant »

jlokier wrote: post #139
soco wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very annoying "feature" of some of those is making you wait for the human (okay that's acceptable) BUT timing out the session if you don't reply them within a minute or such.

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…

Bad internal structure, is how.

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

#149

Post by thih9 »

dyates wrote: post #76

Live chat windows that pop-up automatically and hassle you once you've spent X seconds looking at a website are annoying, much like email subscription modals. But when I've been actually looking for support and made the choice to click on the chat button, I've generally had a great experience, so long as it's connected me to a human rather than a menu of chatbot options. It's asynchronous enough that I can keep doing…

> as it's connected me to a human rather than a menu of chatbot options

Another annoying option is getting an auto reply about no-one being available; or being asked for personal data, sometimes before even starting the chat.

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

#150

Post by SamuelAdams »

chucky123 wrote: post #21

The problem isn't live chat. The problem is incorrectly implemented live chat. I run a small saas and I can't count the number of times someone messaged an inquiry and I immediately got in touch with them. They were astounded by the quick response time, which is simply not possible with contact forms.

Actually I wonder if this could be a growth area for Slack. E-commerce chat.

I had to chat with Verizon reps yesterday to set up my phone. They asked for my device ID or some other configuration numbers. I sarcastically put in 11023 47781 (number is fake for this example).

And what appeared in the chat was 11023 47781. The chat app truncated anything between . Probably an attempt at XSS protection. But not the behavior I was expecting.

So if a company doesn’t have the capacity to do chat well, why not outsource it to a company that can? Make the integration easy, style the pop up to each company that uses it. Boom, new revenue stream.

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