You don't need live chat on your website

https://timharek.no/blog/you-dont-need-chat-on-your-site/

by 5amdotis • 4 years ago

517 226 4 years ago

timharek.no

aendruk2• 4 years ago

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.

princevegeta893• 4 years ago

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

justsomehnguy• 4 years ago

Can I help you with anything?

< I want to know about <something>

An agent will be with you shortly!
Please provide:
your name
your email
your phone

No, thanks.

beachy• 4 years ago

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?

csharpminor2• 4 years ago

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.

yummypaint2• 4 years ago

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.

joegahona• 4 years ago

I'm not sure if your question is rhetorical, but I'd like to know this too. My observation is that what started as a decent idea was quickly hijacked by marketing departments and got corrupted so quickly that they've become an annoyance to me -- not unlike pop-ups, browser push notifications, and so forth. It's the "tinted car windows" of the web, immediately putting your site into a bad neighborhood.

Anecdotally, I've had far more success DM'ing companies on Twitter -- I don't think I've ever gotten a bot-like, automated response when taking that route, and I've had really specific questions answered quickly and thoroughly.

apengwin• 4 years ago

Zawinski's second law states that all software with messaging/chat eventually becomes a dating app.

durnygbur3• 4 years ago

no, linkedin hasn't

Aeolos• 4 years ago

Are you sure about that?

I know if at least one case where it has...

Oras• 4 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3dxMGzt5mU

samsaga2• 4 years ago

It could be nice to use a gpt-3 chat trained with the info from the web to have something like an ai search system.

drpixie• 4 years ago

Noooooo (but it will happen) - so we can have convincing but wrong content about company products!

Readers are commenting that chat increases "conversions" (I guess that means sales). I'd be interested to see what convincing but wrong chatbots do do conversions and to ongoing customer numbers.

mjfl• 4 years ago

Eh. It's good for B2B. If you're ordering technical stuff and need something specific adjusted, can be helpful to chat to someone that can connect you to a specialist quickly.

_nivlac_• 4 years ago

Eh, in my experience, I generally disagree. Why wait for an email response when you can get an answer then and there? Also, outside of online retail shopping, I've found live chat very useful.

Sure, get rid of the intrusive popups and chatbots which don't help. But keep the live chat. It's valuable to the customer.

tjpnz• 4 years ago

How can I tell whether it's a human I'll be talking to or a bot? I've had enough of my time wasted that I'm no longer prepared to bother.

brookst• 4 years ago

Fortunately we’re getting more bots so you’re much less likely to waste your time with a human these days.

aendruk2• 4 years ago

In my experience the realtime chat agents appear pressured to clear issues immediately at the expense of correctness. Sending an async message gives the respondent time to research things or ask for help instead of making up answers on the fly.

system22• 4 years ago

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. I personally use amazon customer support chat myself very often.

Sujan• 4 years ago

Came here to point out that the right question is if it works for the company that offers it, not how a minority of users experiences it.

You answered that. Thanks.

zulln• 4 years ago

I personally use amazon customer support chat myself very often.

For what?

conductr3• 4 years ago

It's the best way to do something you can't on the website. As example, I've had to return products that have said they were not returnable or beyond the return date, chat is the easiest way to talk to someone and get it resolved.

brushfoot• 4 years ago

Yep, the author is thinking like a developer, not a consumer.

If I need assistance, I will most likely do one of the following:
Find a support e-mail.
Go to a physical store.
Ask a friend.
See if I find an unintrusive live chat that I chose to enable.

This is a developer mindset: take the time to solve the puzzle. I get it, but the majority of people don't think that way.

Most people don't want to solve the puzzle. They want to buy the product and get on with their day. Live chat lets them do that, and by the numbers, it works.

BeFlatXIII2• 4 years ago

That’s why I have such contempt for my fellow voters.

nonameiguess2• 4 years ago

How in the hell?

A few weeks ago, I had Amazon accidentally send me someone else's package, who lives about five blocks away from me. Not even the same street name. But it reported my own package as having been delivered, which clearly was not the case.

I wrestled with that stupid chatbot for probably two hours. There was no option in its menu for this specific problem. It would only allow to report not receiving something, and the only option given to me was to wait a few more days, or report the wrong item had been delivered, in which case I needed to send it back. I tried calling the support phone number instead, but it was just the same chatbot but over voice, with the same options.

But this wasn't my problem. I had the right package. It just wasn't mine. It wasn't addressed to me. If I returned it, how would they know if it was me who sent it back?

I don't even remember how I finally found a phone number to call that connected me to a human, but I'm pretty sure I had to outside of Amazon to find it. As soon as I got connected to a human and explained what happened, they were more or less instantly able to help me, but it was incredibly frustrating not having the bot itself give me an option to talk to a human. I could only complete it's automated workflows.

Amusingly, the CSR told me to just keep this other guy's package and they'd send him another, even though I could have easily walked down the street and given it to him. Fine, I guess. It was a pressure washer attachment that actually does fit my pressure washer.

drdec• 4 years ago

I had the right package. It just wasn't mine. It wasn't addressed to me.

I think this assessment was the root of your problem. This wasn't what happened. What happened was two separate things and the mistake was tying them together.

You didn't get your package they claimed to have delivered. Full stop. Deal with that problem.

Second, you received a package addressed to someone else. Deal with that separately.

jackson1442• 4 years ago

I think there's a difference between live _support_ chat and live _sales_ chat. If I'm seeking support I'll take live chat any day of the week.

I actually just complained about this yesterday- I do _not_ want to have your shitty version of clippy[0][1] flying around the screen, pulsing, and asking if I need help while I'm browsing your page. Stick it on the support/contact page and that's plenty good for me.

[0] https://media.welsh.cc/Mod27D

[1] https://media.welsh.cc/e1tniz

conductr3• 4 years ago

The availability of chat isn't what's wrong. It's the implementation. It should just be a static button in the header/footer or where ever. When I need it, I can find it, just like every other link.

tgsovlerkhgsel2• 4 years ago

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.

revskill• 4 years ago

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.

eastbound2• 4 years ago

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.

bluSCALE4• 4 years ago

Personally, I feel chat is too immediate and am easily irritated since whatever I need has me upset. I prefer an email and a fast response or a phone number to call.

webignition• 4 years ago

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 large company can result in waiting for a reply taking 3-5 business years. Live chat gets me a response relatively quickly.

A live chat service that does not provide an easy means of interacting with a human and which instead easily allows getting stuck in a bot loop is a great example of poor customer service and, for me, a great way of quickly finding out who to not do business with.

That said, a poor live chat service for a business that I absolutely have to contact (most recently when terminating internet service after moving house) is an exercise in frustration and annoyance that is hard to replicate in any other manner.

usrbinbash• 4 years ago

Exactly. Good chat implementations are great; meaningful automated information, fast handover to human operators while also providing them with the relevant information, and all that in the comfort of my browser window is a great experience.

Being stuck in a loop against what's essentially a buggy ELIZA-Clone however, or a system that somehow is incapable of authenticating me even though I've logged into my account on their website, is not.

jimbob45• 4 years ago

Are they better than a well-stocked FAQ with a search function?

nathias2• 4 years ago

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.

NeoTar• 4 years ago

A decent amount of the time I've been asked at the end of a live-chat if I would like a transcript emailed to me.

badwolf3• 4 years ago

These are almost always saved by the business/chat app.

anon56• 4 years ago

Before signing up to a new service, I tend to contact their support first to assess how difficult it is to contact them.

If I have to wait for an hour to get support, or navigate through some maze to reach them, or find it difficult to attempt to terminate my contract, I'll go with someone else.

When I really need help or something is wrong, that's not when I want to find out that it is almost impossible to reach them.

akiselev• 4 years ago

Note to self: Use ChatGPT to immediately respond to any support request that aren't from existing users so that potential customers have to perform the Turing test.

Plot twist: the chat bot is also running the Turing test. If the potential customer passes, they can sign up. Otherwise, “Contact us for pricing” and I don’t mean it as an anti-bot feature…

rkho• 4 years ago

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.

Sakos3• 4 years ago

I hate this so much. I get the idea, but it's infuriating if I have to repeat the whole process just because I was distracted for 5 minutes.

thesuitonym• 4 years ago

I find that if you just reply after their message, the chat status goes to "waiting on agent", so you don't get disconnected while they look.

FrontierPsych• 4 years ago

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 and both must be responsible actors. I think 5 minutes is plenty of time, for example. As the saying goes, "You snooze, you lose."

And it has happened to me and everyone else, of course. BUT, and here is the cool thing - when I get back on the chat, I just say that I was chatting and got distracted...but then the tech support person can go review the notes and quickly get up to speed on the conversation.

I love chat.

luckylion3• 4 years ago

Emailing a large company can result in waiting for a reply taking 3-5 business years. Live chat gets me a response relatively quickly.

I've had the same experience, and I don't understand why. In both cases, someone needs to read what you write and reply to it with a message. Why can't the just treat email just like live chat?

I dislike live chat because it forces me to wait for their responses (I'm looking at you, Amazon, minutes to type 10 words?) and dedicate time to it instead of putting all the information into an email and sending it and communicating asynchronously.

Vanit• 4 years ago

Agreed that sometimes they can be too nagging, but I always really appreciate being able to resolve issues in a live-but-async manner. It also seems that chat agents are usually more empowered than phone agents when it comes to resolving issues, and it's an added bonus that it's all in writing so everyone agrees what happened.

nanidin• 4 years ago

I spent 20 minutes in live chat with T-Mobile on my mobile device. Eventually a device reboot was required. I then spent 10 minutes establishing context, then 20 minutes in live chat with T-Mobile. Another restart was required. Repeat. Ad nauseum, or at least until I determined it was no longer worth my time to pursue the promotion I was supposedly eligible for.

glasss• 4 years ago

I have never been pleased to see the chat bubble pop up on any site I've used. I do hope the people that use it enjoy it thoroughly, just to offset my disdain.

chucky1232• 4 years ago

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.

onion2k2• 4 years ago

They were astounded by the quick response time, which is simply not possible with contact forms.

I'm intrigued. Why isn't it possible with a contact form? The mechanism for routing a message to you could be literally identical whether it's a chat box or a form. You could get the exact same notification on your system. It'd take you the same amount of time to respond. The only difference I can see is that what you reply with would go to the chat window in their browser instead of their inbox. Perceptually they may see that as faster I guess but it isn't really.

However...

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.

What you presumably don't see, or at least ignore, is the number of times people didn't get an immediate response from you and were annoyed by it, or were annoyed by the chat option being there in the first place, or who didn't even see the chat option, or whose browser failed to load it, or... well... lots of things.

Your claim that users like it is simple survivorship bias - you're only focusing on the positive outcomes.

mschuster91• 4 years ago

I'm intrigued. Why isn't it possible with a contact form?

- E-mail always has a round-trip latency attached, even the best systems will have at least a minute, and you have to do insane amounts of work to keep up with "deliverability" as automated anti-spam systems can and will detect high frequency of incoming emails and downgrade your score, not to mention you have to deal with bullshit like contacting providers that downgraded or outright black-holed you.

- Uploading or sending attachments is a hit-and-miss, there still are providers limiting attachment size to 1MB (looking at you web.de) or with overzealous "security software".

- People will readily ignore the "do not reply below this line" and reply inline, which software like JIRA SD won't recognize or garble up.

- On mobile, people will have to switch between apps, which more often than not even on flagship devices leads to Android killing off the apps between switching for "memory efficiency" and 10+ seconds of load time after each switch.

On-site chat has none of these problems.

wruza• 4 years ago

Another factor is not everyone is a hacker who reads their email after sending a form or understands how all this works in the first place. Most people have {e|g}mail because it’s that sign-in thing that their hacker relative set up for them.

Another big chunk of people doesn’t get that they can tap on a chat button, that’s why it flashes and pops up automatically or after a timeout of inactivity, which means a user is probably confused.

I wish there were levels of accessibility in the web tech. So you could specify not only whether a user can see or hear at all, but also select from few levels of computer knowledge, from beginner to confident to 30 years of software development, so everyone could get a reasonable experience.

SamuelAdams• 4 years ago

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 <a lot of zeroes> 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.

troupe3• 4 years ago

If I'm browsing an SaaS and see a chat box that says someone is online. I'm much more likely to ask a question to the chat where I would otherwise just leave without trying to contact support in another way.

aussieshibe• 4 years ago

It seems to me that someone could just as reasonably (that is to say, not at all reasonably) argue:

I don't like hunting for information when I'm shopping online, and would rather get a personal recommendation from a staff member. If you need to fill your website with loads of text, you probably need to do something about your live support staff.

Our individual personal preferences prove next to nothing about what a business "should" do.

Maybe it's true that these popups drive more people away than they convert on average (although I doubt it), but to claim that with any credibility you need to give some evidence.

durnygbur3• 4 years ago

Chats are cancer and useless. Search (not ads, not suggestions!) and category-aware filtering is what I want. For customer support ticketing system, email, phone.

gwbas1c• 4 years ago

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.

princevegeta893• 4 years ago

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 just designed to generate leads through coercing visitors and customers.

kristopolous• 4 years ago

I wonder how many people just try to be chatty. "Hello! I'm so glad to hear from you! How is the weather where you are? How is the employer? Are you happy there?" Etc

ajsnigrutin• 4 years ago

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 actually want to see on the page.

Thiez• 4 years ago

I just type "No thank you, I have no questions yet!" in those boxes. Then shortly after you will something like "<Support person Foo has entered the chat.> <Support person Foo has left the chat.>".

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.

eastbound2• 4 years ago

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.

sureglymop• 4 years ago

I can recommend to you the open source tool ActivityWatch.

kevsim• 4 years ago

I think this is the default for services like Intercom and you can't stop it [0]. It's super annoying.

0: https://www.intercom.com/help/en/articles/5053699-how-do-i-s...

swyx• 4 years ago

Could we simply block it with an adblocker?

probabletrain• 4 years ago

I've found adding a live chat to my online creation tool invaluable for getting a sense of what people find confusing or unintuitive. I change or update ux flows based on often-asked questions, and know if the change worked based on whether I still get those questions.

dmje• 4 years ago

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.

yummypaint2• 4 years ago

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.

gnicholas3• 4 years ago

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!)?

naet• 4 years ago

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.

gnicholas3• 4 years ago

Oh, these people never have anything they want to accomplish, other than to waste the time of a person (or cycles of a computer)!

nuker• 4 years ago

This meant that we needed to respond immediately, which was a downside.

Isn’t the whole point of having chat on your site?

gnicholas3• 4 years ago

The hope was that more of the interactions would be ones that uniquely benefit from live chat. We found instead that it was just shifting our existing conversations from email to chat, typically with no benefit.

gorbypark2• 4 years ago

I would just advertise it explicitly as an actual human. “Click here to chat with a real, live human!”, etc.

subradios• 4 years ago

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.

causi• 4 years ago

Some are great some suck. Amazon live chat has always been helpful. Anything tech-related has been totally useless.

ranting-moth• 4 years ago

I think live chat is brilliant when I need it. But I partially agree with the article. Don't shove it it my face, that gives me the sleazy salesman feeling.

And I mean live chat. Me chatting with a bot is not a live chat.

gchokov• 4 years ago

What's going on recently with all the posts about "you don't need that" or "you don't want to be". Of course, I need a chat on my site - my whole business has been relying on this.

tibanne• 4 years ago

I like the live chat option when it's just there and doesn't bother me. I don't like writing emails to support.

atraac• 4 years ago

Only as long as the chat immediately connects you to a human and you dont have to click/write through 10 bullshit messages about nothing with some half-assed bot.

monkeydust• 4 years ago

Yes this. If your thinking of incorporating live chat then make sure it's backed by humans or at least a way to get to human easily (if your AI bot fails to address the initial question). When you don't have a human available such as outside normal business hours just hide the chat feature, people can use your contact form.

IMHO this is the only acceptable method for having a chat feature on a site.

dncornholio• 4 years ago

Live chat upped the conversion % like nothing ever did. It's massively useful, no matter how good your site is.

xnorswap2• 4 years ago

I recently had an excellent experience with live chat.

My logitech mouse1 button started doing that thing where it momentarily unclicks while dragging. If you're a heavy mouse user you've probably experienced it and how frustrating it is.

In this case, the mouse wasn't cheap and it was only 6 months or so old when this happened.

The automatic Amazon process told me to go to Logitech about it, so I did. The obviously automated chat bot was actually helpful (as long as you understood it was automatic), although it had a bug where it asked for a TOTP code but if you entered it into the chat box instead of pressing a "totp" button to enter it, it would say it doesn't understand and restart the whole long process.

Okay, so that's a frustratingly bad chat bot, but once I had realised what had happened I typed AGENT to get an agent and the live customer service agent was incredibly helpful. They understood my frustration with dealing with the automatic process and that it had gone wrong. They understood my complaint with the product. They were helpful in informing me that yes, the mouse was covered by warranty and that they could replace it if I could get a "notice to refuse service" from Amazon.

This gave then me what I needed to go back to the amazon process to get them to accept it as a return by saying I had spoken to Logitech and that Amazon needed to replace or refuse service.

Between the two chat boxes, the logitech one, despite being a more buggy experience, was far more helpful once I got to a person.

On the other hand, the amazon experience was miserable. They asked me if I wanted a QR code or a printed return label. I said, "Can I do both?" and they answered "Yes".

They then waited. A minute or so later I realised they were waiting for a prompt and said, "Okay, send me both please" and they said, "You have to pick one, QR code or printed label".

I don't know with Amazon if I was speaking to a human or not. This is very frustrating compared to the Logitech experience where I went from what was obviously an automatic process to obviously a human.

Overall, this was probably quicker and easier than had I tried to pick up a phone. Crucially though it still hinged on having a human in the loop who was very helpful.

lutrinus• 4 years ago

So, you went to the Amazon live chat. They sent you to Logitech. You chatted with their bot and had to "restart the whole long process" because of a bug.

Then you got connected to a human who asked you for a confirmation from Amazon. You went back to Amazon and asked them for a return, again.

You had a "miserable" experience with the process, there, but in the end got your return label.

Yeah, really sounds like an excellent experience.

xnorswap2• 4 years ago

Indeed it was, because I still got everything sorted in around the same time than I'd be on hold if I were to phone for example my broadband provider.

snapetom• 4 years ago

A live chat that isn't a live chat but instead is just a fancy interface to a FAQ or search is the worse. I always immediately bail and get a very negative impression of that company. Any company that spends money/time on such a useless feature deserves to whither away.

apexalpha• 4 years ago

I actually value live chats. I like them a lot if they connect me to a human.

They're faster than e-mails, which can take a few days to get a response to. And they're more convenient than phone calls where I have to stop other stuff while I wait to be connected.

I can also be more precise communicating things like bank accounts and order IDs, especially if I'm chatting in something else than my native language. Plus I can easily record and store the answers since it's just text.

So +1 for live chat from me! Bonus points if the company just uses WhatsApp rather than some box on the website.

qwertox• 4 years ago

Same for me, but only if they are opened through a button on the contact page. I find those auto-opening chat widgets on the main page really annoying.

gorbypark2• 4 years ago

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.

dewey• 4 years ago

I'd group them in two big segments.

1) Sales chat

2) Support chat

Both of them I prefer over emailing, calling or writing into some contact box and receive an answer days later. Live chat windows are in almost 100% of the cases I've interacted with them quicker, as they tell you if someone is online and how many minutes you are expected to wait.

Sometimes 1) can be spammy when they make sounds or open automatically but I still prefer to ask a quick product question before signing up for something via the chat than emailing someone.

yevpats• 4 years ago

yeah it is annoying especially if it opens up automatically which I think in most live chats like Intercom it is by default and there is no easy way to turn this off. But I guess it depends on what site it is exactly.

Interesting thing I noticed for dev tools is chats is useless because users start to paste huge amount of code or configuration into the chat which makes it super hard for both sides so basically just use discord or slack for dev support :)

butler142• 4 years ago

Shout out to supermetrics.com who have great live chat, and almost always resolve my issue within 5mins

And relatedly amazon who actually have a useful chatbot (i don't have much positive to say about amazon these days but 1 click purchase and chatbot implementation is still very strong)

luckylion3• 4 years ago

Is Amazon pretending their chatbot is an actual person? That would explain my experience with them. It's either that or somebody who barely speaks English but is only given a 1995-technology translation of my messages and can only respond with 15 pre-written text-blocks.

butler142• 4 years ago

i am actually not sure if amazon have live-human-chat behind the chatbot, as, in fairness, the chatbot usually sorts out our issue (often very quickly)

i presume they do, though, and i wouldn't be surprised if it's not so great!

dyates• 4 years ago

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 something else while I wait/chat, saves me from having to spell things out or repeat alphanumeric codes over the phone, and is way quicker than email.

Sakos3• 4 years ago

I've seen a live chat implementation that starts as a chat bot, but switches you to a person after a few clicks and you can't find what you need. I felt that was a perfect compromise.

Gigachad• 4 years ago

Yeah that filters out probably the 90% of trivial requests.

soco• 4 years ago

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.

halgir2• 4 years ago

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.

badwolf3• 4 years ago

This is the ideal scenario when building these out. Automate a lot of the low-hanging fruit that most people are going to be looking for, then seamlessly convert to a support chat with a human as needed

PaulHoule5• 4 years ago

It ought to be possible to closely integrate a chat bot with a human so that people don't even notice the transition... It is always fair for a human to say "let me talk to my supervisor" and it is the same for a bot.

yamtaddle• 4 years ago

The chat boxes that actually are chat don't bother me. Provided they don't try to pop-up unrequested or otherwise make themselves annoying, I actually like them. They can be really handy for asking a quick pre-sale question or getting support.

The ones that are just a shitty interface to a FAQ suck, though. I don't even like it when they're as you describe, because its eventually turning into an actual chat with a real person is kinda-hidden functionality.

thih9• 4 years ago

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.

jjice• 4 years ago

Absolutely agree. Don't give me a sales pop up when I look at your landing page, but if you have an Intercom chat on your support page, I'm all ears. Had to contact Stripe support a few weeks ago and they got to me pretty quick and were really good about it. I think the company I work for spams you on the landing page unfortunately...

drdaeman3• 4 years ago

I have used those chats, talked to humans, and had my issues resolved - but I can't say it was a great experience.

I had to keep the relevant tab open and actively watch it because there is no sane method to get the notification if it's in background. Can't get distracted for too long, gotta actively watch that stupid chat for when someone comes in or replies after "I need a few minutes to do something for you, please hold on".

Also, I was nervous that any accidental navigation actions (like clicking on some page link) I take in my browser would lead to loss of that chat session. Basically, I was trying to not breathe in the direction of that chat and hope that it would work. I mean, it shouldn't, but I've seen it happen.

Honestly, I'd rather see a bunch of links to various messaging platforms. Or a phone number I can send a text to. Humans or machines, short or long response times - at least I know the underlying technologies are reliable.

quadrifoliate• 4 years ago

I have had the same feeling – "this is okay, but could be way better"; I think a big part is in the lack of context.

Why on earth does the chat person need ask me my account number yet again? I am logged in to the website, they should be able to see that I am Account # 820914 and currently viewing Order # 788321.

Ensuring that this sort of context communication as the lowest bar for an in-app chat would go a long way towards making me prefer it to a conversation where I have to gather and route relevant information.

PaulHoule5• 4 years ago

I'd say sometimes those services are successful but sometimes they aren't. It's not unusual for those things to claim "I am a human" but the human is nowhere to be found. For me it is a general pet peeve that everybody wants to open up UI elements that cover up whatever it is I want to interactive.

There's a bad idea which keeps coming back which are attempts to replace asynchronous communications (web forums, emails, ...) with more synchronous communications such as chat sessions, discord, etc. I can't wait until somebody tries making you go to a waiting area in "the metaverse" and spend an hour looking like a dork waiting for help. Lately I have been appreciating how you can a question to a site like

https://www.dpreview.com/forums

probably get a bogus answer in an hour but have multiple great answers in two weeks.

elondaits• 4 years ago

I agree. I also had to use a chat that put you on hold until an operator became free, while the site itself had a auto-logout if you didn’t click a box after X minutes waiting.

CaptainZapp2• 4 years ago

Or a phone number I can send a text to.

Or a phone number that you can actually call and which is picked up by a human within a reasonable time frame and who is actually empowered to solve your problem.

And to my surprise that actually still exists.

Just recently I had a stellar experience with the support of my hosting provider.

30 seconds wait, a person who knew what I'm talking about. Solving the problem instantly by mailing the relevant form, while we still chatted. All resolved in less than 5 minutes.

For what it's worth: that was hostpoint.ch. I'm not invested in any way. Just a very happy customer after 2 really good support experiences (one by email)

basch• 4 years ago

It's time for this to be a protocol, and built into the browser.

wintermutestwin• 4 years ago

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

Key point here. Chatbots are a universal "please despise my company" tool.

If you don't have a live human available - don't show me the chat button.

troupe3• 4 years ago

If it is clear I'm talking to a chat bot, then I have the option. But if you make me jump through hoops to get a human and then give me a bot, I'm going to be pretty annoyed at you.

JTbane• 4 years ago

The one time I used the live chat (to attempt to cancel my Economist subscription) they immediately left the chat

KIFulgore• 4 years ago

I agree. A live chat support option, appropriately staffed, is often the most expedient way to get help.

I work configuring contact center software. Chat agents are often more experienced, "tech savvy", and less overloaded than phone agents too. And Chat is harder to ignore than Email, which Agents can just give a token reply to punt it back to the pending queue.

hedora• 4 years ago

I’ve found they are particularly effective when the chat option only pops up on the “contact us” page, and it goes direct to a human (with a max of one question to route the request).

Amazon gets points for having the worst implementation I’ve seen. Although it doesn’t pop up and spam you, if you click through on the website or app, it connects you to an incompetent chat bot.

Third parties provide direct links to Amazon’s competent chat bot that can actually handle basic requests.

Seriously, WTF are they thinking?!?

tinus_hn• 4 years ago

It’s way over the place, sometimes it’s great, sometimes you have to wait in a queue for half an hour, sometimes it’s just a cheap bot shield in front of the customer service representatives.

smoe• 4 years ago

Overall I had very mixed experience with chats for support, because it is impossible to get past the bot. Or if, it takes age for a human to show up, then they disconnect if i don't respond immediately.

But my bank, which is horrible is many ways, has implemented it exactly right and the chat has been my main way of interacting with them for a year or so. It starts out with a chatbot listing common FAQ topic but also says that at any point I can just type "Asesor" (Advisor) to be connected to a human, which usually takes little less than a minute. They can then trigger authentication from within the chat so they can actually do basic things related to the products (but not things like e.g. doing transfers).

mafiaboi• 4 years ago

You can leverage the current users by opening up the chat to any user or the member of the website/app. They can bring their messages to any other website as well.

In this way, your visitor community could help you manage customer relations and also talk about your product live.

wink• 4 years ago

You're describing every customer forum with answers like "I reinstalled Windows and that fixed the problem!!!"

osrec• 4 years ago

I personally love live chats, both as a user and a developer. Yes, the pop-ups can be annoying, but still the overall experience has been really good for me.

I especially like how chats are asynchronous, yet feel immediate. And you can think about what you want to say, much like an email, without feeling like you might need to wait 3 days for a response.

lucumo• 4 years ago

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.

charlieyu1• 4 years ago

Even phone is annoying, am I expect to wait 30 minutes to 2 hours to wait and talk with someone to resolve an issue, when it could be an email?

alldayeveryday2• 4 years ago

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).

ho_schi2• 4 years ago

    * Live Chat
    * Cookie Banners
    * Newsletter-Offers
    * Java-Script moving things around

What do they have in common? No benefit for the user.

Remove the entire EU-Regulation upon Cookie-Banners. I would be thankful. A service is allowed implicitly to store Cookies or any other mean of "remembering" when a login is used interactively by the user. If the user doesn't login itself you aren't allowed to store any data about the users.

And if they want do something for the environment, battery-runtime, reliability and user experience. Require that any public founded website must work without Java-Script.

878654Tom• 4 years ago

That Cookie-Banners are so annoying is because companies want to anger customers against them. I have seen many websites that have easy cookie-banners or none at all as they only use functional cookies.

The legislation is fine, it literally is, if you want to track someone you must tell them.

ho_schi2• 4 years ago

Anger is an interesting term. They make it so huge that you want to get them out of the way and click "Accept"? I don't like the regulation for another reason. Cookie-Banners are a business model:

https://usercentrics.com/

Draws a dark shadow on the regulation. Smells like lobbying. They gather and store user data from other websites. The opposite of what should be done.

xigoi• 4 years ago

What do they have in common? No benefit for the user.

The benefit of cookie banners is that you know to stay away from the website if possible.

projektfu• 4 years ago

When I first learned about these I was interviewing with a company that was an early entrant/innovator. Their box was sales oriented but came up when you showed sales interest and told you if a salesperson was available.

I thought it was a really clever idea, especially for those interactions where someone is browsing at 9:30pm and wouldn't call but would feel fine texting with a salesperson who was just up watching TV.

Fast forward to the future and it's become dystopian like everything else on the web. It's an excuse to remove phone numbers and email addresses, it replaces support with bots, it's not truly async because you can't easily do other things while waiting for a response or they close the connection and you start over with another person and no history.

cebert• 4 years ago

If you block LivePerson, you can eliminate a lot of these annoying chat agents. The appear to be one of the more prominent providers of this service (https://www.liveperson.com).

qwertyzxcvmnbvw• 4 years ago

It can be fine, but man is Intercom ever an irritating little widget. Always in the way, too small to see context, history of chats is uninformative, emails are messy. Any suggestions on a better implementation?

mtkd• 4 years ago

They come at a cost, one of the popular ones is 300K+ minified JS and they are common on retail sites with very high mobile traffic -- severely impacting Lighthouse score

Also they often overlay and can block a cookie consent acceptance button etc.

There is no reason for them to fire on every page, isolating them to a support page is surely enough

Yuyudo_Comiketo• 4 years ago

And almost every time I see this “nagging” I want to leave the website Well, just do leave, what's the problem?

sudo_navendu• 4 years ago

This is a good argument. A lot of problems that live chat aims to solve can be solved by documenting and making sure that the documentation is discoverable. I’m definitely talking to my team about this.

jack335• 4 years ago

I think that depends heavily.

Yes if the live chat window is annoying you that you should buy something or sign up for a newsletter that is super annoying.

But if you really need help and there is a human within one second on the other hand this is amazing.

Also vice versa. If I'm online on Crisp or Intercom it is super easy to understand what my customer tries to do and help them within a second.

Not everything is negative about live chats, as always :D

Lightbody• 4 years ago

My startup uses live chat and our human median response time is sub 60 seconds. Our customers love it.

esher• 4 years ago

Intercom client here. We use the tool for our client support (only). The website is therefore just the point of contact for something else. We do not 'engage' our clients. We do not want to 'drive sales' from leads. It's open for unregistered users as well but rarely used by them.

Humans answer. We learn a lot by speaking to our clients about how they perceive our service.

mabbo• 4 years ago

Especially true if the person/bot you're chatting with can't actually do anything they claim.

My car needed it's winter tires put on (in Canada, you need different tires when it gets too cold because rubber compounds are weird). I went to the website to find the phone number but hey there's a new pop up offering live chat!

I chatted. It was obviously pretty quickly it was a bot, as it mistook my last name for my first name and despite repeatedly asking it to correct that it wouldn't. Eventually it had taken down my information and said someone would call to confirm.

No one called.

day later I called them to ask what's up. The person on the phone said that no one who can actually book appointments ever receives any details from the bot.

Some executive decided it would be great to have a bot to book appointments, and so the software team just added a fake one.

agopaul• 4 years ago

Live chat widgets are a great tool at the beginning, as they help get in touch with more people looking at your website.

That said, especially in Saas, I think it hardly makes sense to keep it on after reaching a certain point.

I can see how it could make sense in eCommerce though.

qwerty456127• 4 years ago

Live chat often is the fastest and easiest way to contact a human without having to register.

nonameiguess2• 4 years ago

I get that a lot of responses are out there "hey, think from a prospect's perspective" or whatever, rather than as a developer. But, as a developer, most of what I'm looking for is information about products I'm already using. It's a matter of where these chat popups are placed. If you place them on the support/contact page, fine. But if you put them on every page on the entire site, then I click through from a search engine straight to a blog post, knowledge base, or FAQ that has exactly what I want, try to read it, and am immediately blocked by a modal I have to close first.

That is annoying as hell. "How can our company help your company?" You already do! You don't need to convert your existing customers. It's even worse when it's my own company. No, you can't sell a support contract to yourself.

Yes, I can go solely through internal knowledge bases, or only ever seek information through our existing support rep. But why would I do that when the exact information I need is already on the public Internet? Just let me actually see it without nagging me to buy something I either already bought or can't buy. The vast majority of information I seek out is for products I already use, not products I might use if you can get me to talk to a salesperson.

I get it from the perspective of the business. Hey, if a conversion rate goes up after we do this, then we should have done it. Full stop. But it's a locally optimal solution that ruins the web globally. They've done the same thing to e-mail. My work e-mail is nonstop flooded with small businesses that think they can solve a problem for my business. I'm just a developer! I can't sign a support agreement with you. I don't care if your project management software is better than whatever we're already using. I don't care if you can help us hire people. I'm not a project manager and I'm not HR. To you, it seems costless to just send out bulk emails to every employee of a company, knowing at least some of them will actually be interested, and any non-zero conversion rate for a zero-cost cold call strategy is worth it.

But you've poisoned the commons! E-mail is now an annoyance rather than useful. I spend more time deleting spam than reading anything. I spend more time closing popups than consuming the content from you that would be useful to me that I was already trying to consume.

This is Moloch in action. Is it worth it for the world to turn every form of information transmission into more annoyance than utility so that some tiny percentage of small businesses can survive a few years longer than they might have otherwise? I see how it is worth it to the owner of the business. Is it worth it to the rest of us who make up the overwhelming majority of humanity?

rob• 4 years ago

I use the live chat on 1-800 Contacts exclusively to have the agent price match to another website. The entire process takes 10 minutes or less. It would take way longer to email them all of the details and wait for a response, have them confirm my address, etc.

hnarn• 4 years ago

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.

alldayeveryday2• 4 years ago

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.

josefresco• 4 years ago

Competent live chat for a paid service is amazing. I pick it every time over support ticket, email, & telephone.

rgavuliak• 4 years ago

I've encountered a couple of those on career pages which I feel is extremely unnecessary.

mirzap• 4 years ago

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.

Sohcahtoa82• 4 years ago

Most people don't mind the ads as well.

In my experience, non-technical users dislike ads as well, they just don't know there's something you can do about it.

zorrolovsky• 4 years ago

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.

codazoda• 4 years ago

I used a chat app on a technical blog and loved chatting with users (who often didn’t believe I was real). I didn’t nag, however.

chrsw• 4 years ago

"Our web experience is so poor even aggressive nagging about a useless chatbot isn't going to make using this site feel substantially worse. Welcome."

jFriedensreich• 4 years ago

I cant overstate how important sane defaults are for tools. most average integrator will leave options enabled that tools have to show all their features and get exposure. this is extremely relevant for playing toxic welcome sounds and showing nag messages as well as marketing triggers to offer something. Unfortunately tools like intercom have these features to be able to sell to marketing departments and they also want to get exposure to their customers users otherwise they would hide these features behind giant warning messages that these features will upset users if used inappropriately. on the other hand if a discrete chat button is easy to find without sounds and without nag and obstructing other UI this is a godsend to quickly resolve issues without having to deal with entering email adresses, navigating support forms and finding the help on the buttom of some menu or faq.

thelock85• 4 years ago

unintrusive live chat that I chose to enable.

After living in South America for a stint, I have an entirely new appreciation for WhatsApp for desktop and sites that include one-click integration.

IsaacSchlueter• 4 years ago

Take the data point for what it's worth (ie, not much). I have never found these chat popovers useful, I have always found them obstructive, and I have always been seething with resentment when forced to use one for an interaction with a company. It's just slightly less painful than being forced to use ye olde telephone, and I will only use live chat if that is the only other option. Most likely, I will simply give up and use a competitor instead.

In any chat I am forced to use, I guarantee I will do my absolute best to radicalize the chat employee against your company and try to convince them to get a different job, or quietly and safely sabotage their employer if they cannot leave. I will make the interaction take as long as possible while doing this, in an effort to drive up costs as much as possible.

I am not alone.

logic_probe• 4 years ago

CHat sometimes works. I like _real_ live chat, not those boxes that pop up where you're most likely talking to a bot and can't get a real person.

If I'm on a company website for tech support, or have problems with an order, I've seen real live chats, where there's a person on the other side, be useful. It's better than, say, abandoning a complicated order, calling in, and seeing if the agent can find you cart, etc.

dpcan• 4 years ago

Hmm, I disagree, and I also have a few clients that swear by its success.

Many times it’s not that you didn’t show enough info on your site, it’s that you purposely withheld info on the site to force a live chat requiring a name and email or you can provide good service in the chat and ask for it.

What the consumer wishes were true and what it requires to make a sale are unfortunately at odds in many businesses. It’s still not a perfect world.

citizenpaul• 4 years ago

I don't think I've ever disagreed more with an opinion on here. I think chat support on sites is one of the best things to happen to customer support. It's become my preferred way to contact companies for problems.

Some Benefits I've noticed to chat support.

1. You have auto documented your case.

2. You can get service asynchronously.

3. Wait times are IME almost non existent on most chats.

4. Better sites have some really good auto support functions in the chat. I've gotten refunds from nothing more than a few mouse clicks.

5. Chat support doesn't have the "not my department I'll transfer you" nightmare.

The main downside is chat support is not consistent across sites some do it really well some do it just OK. All are passable though since most of these chat functions were developed recently its mostly just the company implementation that is bad. Either way I have a better experience than the phone or in person support most times. I suppose the other problem is if the chat support is bad they just ask you to call on the phone anyway but that has been rare for me.

Customer support is and always will be a low paid job where you are interacting with people that basically don't care and are putting in minimal effort. They have no authority or power to do anything but follow a script anyways 99% of the time so there is no point in wasting time talking. The chat allows you to get straight to what they are allowed to do. Anything that makes it quicker to a resolution without waiting is a win for me.

I do agree that I despise when a site uses the chat as an advertising vector. That is easy to solve same as sites with various types of popup and interstitial ads. I just don't patronize the business.

ChrisArchitect• 4 years ago

Anecdotally there is a sizable portion of customers that want to ask a question without reading much or doing anything or worse having to call or fill out a form, so the prompt and connecting to a person on chat is very effective and quickly gets them to next steps / answers.

It comes down to implementation and the gripe about nagging is fair, but the utility of the thing is still valid and like another commenter mentioned it's a great thing that's happened to customer service.

gspencley• 4 years ago

It reminds me of going to a clothing store and before I’m able to get inside an employee asks me if I need help finding anything.

I hate that as much as live chats on websites and it makes me want to leave the store.

The worst is when retail employees are paid on commission, then you will get harassed endlessly by different employees asking you if you need assistance when all you're trying to do is look at a damned rubber spatula (I'm looking at you Williams Sonoma!) I go out of my way to avoid shopping at those types of places. I want to get in and get out with as little disruption as possible.

conductr3• 4 years ago

I've learned to just ignore them. Like a beggar asking for change, I just don't make eye contact and keep on with my business. It's awkward in a store but I'm okay with that and it doesn't take long for them to realize I don't need help. The normalization of always-worn-earbuds has been a great enabler of ignoring people in public.

f1codz• 4 years ago

I agree that it popping it on its own is irritating. But having a live chat feature I have found to be very useful. Recently I have had to do a lot of purchasing for my House renovation project remotely (from a different country). It was useful feature, to enquire about specifications, book replacements etc. So much so that on the websites that didn't have this feature, I really missed it.

bighorseflap• 4 years ago

A year ago I probably would have said that live chat is superfluous and annoying. After moving to Europe I have found them useful.

The mix of language/cultural differences and legal/social uncertainties sometimes makes it hard to know what I need to apply or register for something. Information may not available on websites, sometimes because the answer depends on your personal circumstances, sometimes because the websites are just old or incomplete.

I like sending e-mails. But e-mails are just not taken as seriously; I might wait a week for a response, only to get a curt "That is not possible", which doesn't clarify my situation or point me in the right direction.

If I call, I might have to wait a minute, or I might have to wait an hour. I don't get the freedom to wait that long for a call during work hours, and customer service might not be open late at night. In a phone-call I am also limited by my ability to speak a different language on my feet; I often cannot fully express what I want without some considerable forethought.

An in-person appointment would be good, but that might have to be booked weeks or (during Covid) months in advance. It may require travelling across the country. And I may not even know what I actually need or want from the appointment, so I don't know what supporting documentation etc. to bring.

Live chat solves all these problems. It is asynchronous, so I can stop, think about, and re-read the conversations. Where the language barrier becomes a problem, I can look up definitions. And I get a fast response, which can be followed up with additional questions if my problem is not quite solved. This is much better than waiting days or weeks only to get a non-answer because I asked the wrong question.

Intrusive live chat pop-ups are obnoxious, as are "robot menus", but I love the option to chat live with a human. It has helped me many times.

butz• 4 years ago

If your manager or boss insists on adding live chat to website, offer an alternative: facade (https://developer.chrome.com/docs/lighthouse/performance/thi...). Website will load faster, won't nag visitors, but chat will be readily available for visitor that actually needs this functionality.

And don't forget to measure interactions (how many visitors used live chat and on which pages). That might help to convince stakeholders that live chat is useless, especially if you are using paid version of third party live chat.

johndhi• 4 years ago

I work in this industry and it's interesting to see all of the different perspectives here: chat bots are ok if passive and not proactively engaging, chat bots should support authentication, chat bots are evil and shouldn't access cookies at all.

People (and customers) do hold all of these different opinions and it's sometimes hard to please them all. As a business, should we try to cater to everyone, or just a certain group? In Europe it's different from America.

Personally I do think there's a weird inflection point where once your chat bot gets so fully featured it becomes a website within a website which seems... Unnecessarily small.

Traubenfuchs• 4 years ago

Have you done ux testing with real users of real websites? Is there really anyone who wants to use chatbots? I have never had a good experience with one. Always a waste of time. It has always been a negative-value product to me.

throw__away7391• 4 years ago

Yeah, this "marketing" chat is pretty annoying, especially when the person on the other end can't do anything more than follow a basic script.

Customer support via chat on the other hand is amazing.

dsaavy• 4 years ago

We have a simple chat window that only shows on exit on specific pages of our website (consulting firm). It's been a really efficient way to potential clients to start conversations with us and for us to get them quick and helpful answers. Saves both parties a lot of time and helps both qualify/disqualify each other a lot faster.

wharfjumper• 4 years ago

We started offering live chat on our marketing website about 10 years ago at my previous business. It was staffed by the same humans that worked in sales and support. Customers and prospects loved it. Highly recommended.

harel• 4 years ago

Perhaps I do not need live chat to sell or market me something. But I am very grateful and appreciative to services that provide support as an existing customer in the form of a live chat. It saves me hold time on the phone, it's more immediate than email, and it usually very efficient.

r4v3n• 4 years ago

I can't be more agree with it

bcx• 4 years ago

I think there is some nuance here that is helpful to unpack.

We'd almost all agree that:

1. Things that get in the way of solving customer needs are annoying. Most modals, popups, proactive notification that don't happen at the right time. This could include chat, email capture, cookie banners, chat bots, popovers.

2. For almost every business there are some sets of customer needs that require a conversation with a human. This could be building trust, conveying nuance of someone's situation, dealing with an exceptional case, helping someone make an ambiguous decision, etc..

3. Doing customer communication well requires investment and commitment from the business. (In almost all businesses you are serving customers at scale, where 1 representative at the company is serving anywhere to 100s to 1000s of customers, this ratio is important and varies based on LTV / productivity support etc)

I have some experience here. I cofounded Olark live chat (https://olark.com) in 2007. We've seen customers see significant boosts in building trust as demonstrated by chats leading to repeat shoppers and increased retention (this holds across SaaS and e-commerce) when support is done well. This trust also translates to front of the funnel lead growth and word-of-mouth as well (linking to case studies seems like too much for HN).

Where customers suffer is when chat is seen as a cost savings device at companies not committed to service, or when marketing thinks you can just spam the heck out of customers and see results -- notably there are results -- but they tradeoff customer goodwill -- these are often the same folks who love popups - and interstitials -- or kind of face customer service with qualifying bots.

Love seeing this conversation on HN btw.

geocrasher• 4 years ago

You might not, but I do. Live Chat is my primary means of talking to my customers, doing support for them, and doing sales. It works fabulously. Without it, the business would never have grown to what it is.

wy35• 4 years ago

Another opinion that is basically "well I don't like it so it must be bad for everyone!!!"

From the company-side, live chat has generated tons of leads for us vs. just an email address. It's also easier to manage these leads inside live chat software vs. a messy inbox.

From the customer-side, it's very annoying to do quick and frequent back-and-forth conversation via email. Replies take way longer and I want to see the entire conversation at once vs. in an email thread. Live chat fills the space of being as fast as phone calls but as convenient as email. There are times when I need instant support but can't call (e.g. if I'm in a noisy cafe and I need to resolve something while I have information pulled up on my laptop).

Waterluvian• 4 years ago

The only thing worse than this, for me, is when it detects your mouse heading for the back button/address bar and it starts trying to interrupt you.

Rastonbury• 4 years ago

That's just an opinion. It's almost like a chatgpt 3 response for "write short blog with hot take on trendy Web thing". Was expecting some data on how this backfired when implemented or something.

I like chat when I need it, no digging through a dark pattern looking for support contacts. It also tells me that customer service is at least somewhat of a priority for this company. Otherwise I just ignore.

BrotherBisquick• 4 years ago

I once had to use the live-chat window on my bank's website (Ally, in this case) after I tried calling them and encountered wait times measured in decades.

It went perfectly well but to this day I'm not sure if I was speaking to a robot or not.

sfhh• 4 years ago

Gdsggvfd

You don't need live chat on your website

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