I think somewhere along the line the expectations for what people get when they click on a floating chat box changed.
When we started Olark (http://www.olark.com) in 2009 it was novel to show status before you clicked on the chat button, and to float on the screen.
I both were super important, because like you I hated clicking on a box, button, icon, for instant help and having it say "leave us a message" - and I didn't like having to dig around to find some way to contact a business.
Now-a-days many chat/messaging products occlude presence in favor of collecting as much contact information as possible without letting you know if someone is actually there to answer the question --- or if you will be funneled to a bot.
There are a couple of reasons for this:
- the relatively high cost of having a person talk to you.
- the allure of getting leads for low cost (i.e. chatbot < $$ than person)
- it's far easier technically to ignore presence as boot-time or never even implement it.
- the growing lack of user expectation for an immediate response.
I think good human-to-human conversations are essential whether you are starting out or scaling a business. The trick is consumer behavior is changing due to dark patterns.
When we started Olark (http://www.olark.com) in 2009 it was novel to show status before you clicked on the chat button, and to float on the screen.
I both were super important, because like you I hated clicking on a box, button, icon, for instant help and having it say "leave us a message" - and I didn't like having to dig around to find some way to contact a business.
Now-a-days many chat/messaging products occlude presence in favor of collecting as much contact information as possible without letting you know if someone is actually there to answer the question --- or if you will be funneled to a bot.
There are a couple of reasons for this: - the relatively high cost of having a person talk to you. - the allure of getting leads for low cost (i.e. chatbot < $$ than person) - it's far easier technically to ignore presence as boot-time or never even implement it. - the growing lack of user expectation for an immediate response.
I think good human-to-human conversations are essential whether you are starting out or scaling a business. The trick is consumer behavior is changing due to dark patterns.