You don't need live chat on your website • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by jrnichols » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 4:03 PM UTC

Thiez wrote: post #144

princevegeta89 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

or they'd get worse since someone would somehow figure out a way to prove it's "customer engagement" and therefore valuable.

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

#232

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 2:43 AM UTC

system2 wrote: post #11

I have a feeling the author does not have enough experience with e-commerce. Adaptation of livechat increased conversion rates and sales and it is visible in the reports. Return rates also go down with livechat. Especially women's products (hair, makeup, shoes) are benefiting from instant answers and change the conversion rates dramatically. Having a human talk to you thru your screen is a game changer in e-commerce.…

The problem is that as a customer, it's hard to distinguish between the chats that are actual, human-will-respond-in-near-real-time chats, which are just a piss-poor FAQ bot that leads nowhere, which ones are a FAQ bot leading to a human, and which ones will ask me for an e-mail address (and if they do, which ones will spam me instead of contacting me in case a followup is needed).

Actual chat that's passively available on request and makes clear what it is is great. Anything that pops up, makes noise, or otherwise begs for engagement, or isn't "click here for human", is an anti-feature.

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

#233

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 2:50 AM UTC

FrontierPsych wrote: post #230

rkho wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A live chat window can be relatively ignored and checked once in a while. Some live chat implementations have taken the liberty of requiring an input from your end every X minutes, otherwise the chat terminates. Support agents have literally told me "please wait a while while I look into this" followed by "are we still connected?" just a few minutes later.

I know what you mean. However, you can't expect a company to tie up a support person for 48 hours on their screen and you get back to them 2 days later, that is ridiculous. Where is that line drawn that is not too short and not too long? I don't know, but there has to be a line. I do think it is my responsibility to continually check my screen to see if there's been an answer to my last message. There are two sides a…

> Where is that line drawn that is not too short and not too long?

48 hours seems reasonable. Because that support person isn't tied up, they're answering other chats until you reply.

Otherwise, at least several times the time it took the agent to meaningfully respond.

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

#234

Post by sfhh » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 6:58 AM UTC

Gdsggvfd

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

#235

Post by halgir » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 11:40 AM UTC

Sakos wrote: post #133

halgir wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I need live chat support, it's because I've already exhausted the help center and can't find my answer elsewhere. I really do need to speak with a human. Fortunately, many chatbots in my experience will indeed switch over to human support if I write "I want to speak with a human". I'm glad they take that into account.

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.

Does that actually benefit you though? Is it more efficient for you to wade through a chatbot or wait for a human to respond rather than read the documentation?