Author Topic: Website chat functionality  (Read 5182 times)

ober

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Website chat functionality
« on: November 20, 2013, 09:51:25 AM »
I have a client that is looking to potentially add limited chat functionality to his website so that random people could be on his site and open a chat conversation with him for limited hours during the day.  Is anyone familiar with any scripts or plugins that do this easily without all the bloat of a full ticket/help system?

I'm looking at this: www.olark.com/features

Seems like a good fit but I'm curious if there are better options?

Betazep

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Re: Website chat functionality
« Reply #1 on: November 20, 2013, 09:53:49 AM »
Do those ever get used... really?
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ober

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Re: Website chat functionality
« Reply #2 on: November 20, 2013, 09:57:38 AM »
That's not really my problem.  And I use them all the time with web hosts, time warner, etc.

micah

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Re: Website chat functionality
« Reply #3 on: November 20, 2013, 10:08:11 AM »
It seems like it might be something pretty easy to build yourself.  When I first learned what AJAX was, several years ago, my first "let me try this out" project was a chat room.  A table of messages, a table of users and a table of sessions linking users to messages.  Then a simple form and some XHR checks every few seconds to look for new messages.

The benefit of rolling your own would be a highly customized design that is truly integrated into your site.  Plus you could easily make it do other things like send your client an SMS message when a user attempts to start a chat session.
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ober

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Re: Website chat functionality
« Reply #4 on: November 20, 2013, 10:15:15 AM »
That's an option on the table and I'm not opposed to it.  But if there are options out there that I can throw in off the shelf for free and can do things like work directly with an IM client like the one above... I don't know. 

hans

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Re: Website chat functionality
« Reply #5 on: November 20, 2013, 01:37:32 PM »
Livechat is really the only other one I know of off the top of my head.
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webwhy

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Re: Website chat functionality
« Reply #6 on: November 20, 2013, 02:54:43 PM »
My old company used: zopim chat

IIRC it meets your requirements


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Re: Website chat functionality
« Reply #7 on: November 20, 2013, 03:56:43 PM »
Do those ever get used... really?

Yes, and fairly often in my case.

micah

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Re: Website chat functionality
« Reply #8 on: November 20, 2013, 04:10:34 PM »
I use them for big customer service sites like verizon or comcast.  If its something I can just send an e-mail for, I do that instead though.  Also, sometimes they're worthless and after wasting your time typing out your problems and going back and forth they ask you to call their 800 number.  dumb.
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ober

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Re: Website chat functionality
« Reply #9 on: November 21, 2013, 09:07:51 AM »
I think olark would probably be a good fit for him still.  Livechat is too expensive for what he needs and zopim doesn't have a free option with more than one concurrent chat, but that may work for now.  Their bump up from that is cheaper than Olark.

Perspective

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Re: Website chat functionality
« Reply #10 on: November 21, 2013, 10:00:24 AM »
Isn't there a way to just embed an existing free chat service like gchat? Maybe something like this:

http://www.embedded-chat.com

ober

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Re: Website chat functionality
« Reply #11 on: November 21, 2013, 10:30:07 AM »
That's more of a group chat thing.  He wants a one-on-one situation where he basically acts as a help-desk in a way.

Mike

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Re: Website chat functionality
« Reply #12 on: November 21, 2013, 10:46:16 AM »
Just thinking:  Setup an IRC server and when someone joins you create a channel just for them. Could strip down one of the many JS IRC clients.  Bonus is that it'd be easy to bring some additional help into the chat if needed (escalation)

ober

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Re: Website chat functionality
« Reply #13 on: November 21, 2013, 10:54:16 AM »
Eh... too much functionality and effort for what I'm trying to achieve.

ober

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Re: Website chat functionality
« Reply #14 on: November 21, 2013, 11:25:19 AM »
Ok, so I just talked to the Zopim people.  Seems like the better option but I offered my client custom, Olark and Zopim, pushing him towards Zopim.  Thanks for all the suggestions!