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Comment by mywittyname | Hacker News Reader

Are chatboxes actually effective?

I hate them with a burning passion. They take up half the screen on mobile, hiding the content I want to see, they often have annoying sounds & animations, and they are always present on pages where I don't expect them to be. A chatbox blocker would be a killer addition to the ABP browser on mobile.

Why not create a "Chat with us" page that loads the chatbox instead of force feeding it to every user who comes to your site, wasting bandwidth and load performance?

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Agreed. I block them with https://github.com/bcye/Hello-Goodbye/

Add the following URL to your uBlock Origin filter lists and most of those chat bubbles are gone:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bcye/Hello-Goodbye/master/...

Thanks for linking this, I never realised other people were annoyed enough to create a blocklist specifically for those god-awful chat popups.

I help run a SaaS for developers and we receive several pre sales questions and support questions per day. We try to send the support questions to forums or docs pages. People seem to like the chat. I personally hate annoying chat widgets but ours is just on the pricing page and gets good engagement.

I personally think this is a awesome strategy. Or, better than alternatives. I always go to pricing page when evaluated SaaS for my former company, but I NEED to get some grasp of the product before.

Interrupting my observations about the product on the welcome page just makes me angry and harshier against the sale.

This is why I avoid some clothes stores where the first thing you meet is a salesperson. Just say "welcome, I'm here IF you need" is the best approach.

If your product is maybe useful I will ask things against the perceived value, so the pricing page.

Yes, especially for quickly resolving support problems. It's a much more efficient way to communicate complex issues in both directions. Imagine how long a 10 message email chain takes in real time to resolve in comparison. Assumes you have responsive and knowledgeable operators though.

I think what you are referring to is different from what is being referred here. This comment is about the chat box on landing webpage which is generally for lead generation/sales

I don't see the difference or where they mention that. Messaging a question you have via a chat box and getting a fast and knowledgable answer is useful and way more convenient than writing an email.

Sounds + pop-up messages are bad though.

I reluctantly[0] concur. Absolutely agreed that the chat responder must be an actual person and also competent. I get the impression that many sites just use a chatbot for the initial interaction and then maybe escalate to a human (competent or not) if you are persistent enough.

[0] I don't know why exactly. Maybe it's because I abhor phone convos, so I get similarly nervous around chat... but I really shouldn't because you do get a tad more time to actually formulate responses.

10 message email chains aren't the only alternative. There can be a prominent "I need support" button that pops up a chat widget when clicked. Or a "chat with us about pricing" button that pops up the widget when clicked.

Instead what we get is an always-on button that takes up mobile screen real estate.

There's no perfect solution but a small floating mobile button in the corner doesn't seem like a big deal if you know most of the time people on your site are going to be looking for support or sales info.

I don't think anyone is advocating a chat window popping up automatically if that's what you're getting at.

> Why not create a "Chat with us" page that loads the chatbox instead of force feeding it to every user who comes to your site, wasting bandwidth and load performance?

Presumably because having an obnoxious pop-up that follows you around their site is effective. See also Annoying subscription pop ups and annoying "Allow our site to send you notifications" pop ups.

I just wish everyone would standardize on one super annoying pop-up/ follow you everywhere behavior instead of applying all 3+ to their site layered on top of pop up video adverts which stay in sight.

I love them if they're sequestered behind a support link so that they don't get in my fucking face and if the person on the other end is empowered. I'd much rather load up a quick chat than spend 20 minutes on a phone call that requires me to either navigate or punch through an automated menu. But I don't want to see them until I need them.

I love the possibility of chatting, but the chat bubbles are a bad user experience everywhere. The best solutions I've seen just opens a small popup window with the chat inside, and that's it. Native cross-tab-chat, can easily keep an eye on the chat while doing other things, etc.

I hated it until the day I have to go through every SaaS service vendors that I have and this is the quickest way I can actually "chat" with a real person about some questions. Help desk support tickets took 24hrs turn-around, and emails took even longer.

The problem I think it is harder and harder to reach to "real person" for support and questions these days.

To add to this, is cutting load time to one second (or half a second) going to impact the efficacy of the chatbox compared with doubling, tripling that load time?

Certainly there's an upper limit I, as a user, would wait to interact with someone, but load time seems like a pretty non-limiting factor. Since presumably something has pushed me to click this button, I'm going to have to type something into the box that will take more than five seconds to type, and then wait for (hopefully?) a real person to respond, or else play with the chatbot to find the right keywords to redirect me to a real person.

With that, I don't think waiting three to five seconds would hugely impact my experience in the scheme of the conversation that's going to follow it. However - since this is a 3rd party add on to my site, I would certainly appreciate it having a smaller footprint. Can't argue with that.

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