You don't need live chat on your website

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Privacy Button

#User Experience #Privacy #Customer Communic... 2 social mentions

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Olark

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.

#Customer Support #Help Desk #Live Chat 1 social mentions