We've built our own live chat. A chat box sits on your website, and an app on your phone rings when a visitor uses it.
Why build another one
Plenty of chat products exist, and several of our clients have used Pure Chat for years. Before we started, we read what people say about Pure Chat, tawk.to and Tidio. The complaints weren't about missing features. They were the same four, over and over:
- the alert arrives late, or only if the app happens to be open
- the app signs you out in the middle of a conversation
- it gets stuck "reconnecting"
- notifications go quiet and nobody notices until a customer complains
A chat box is only as good as the person answering it, and that person can only answer if they know someone's there. So we built ours around those four.
What it does
When a visitor starts a chat, the phone of everyone on your team who's set to Available rings. That works even with the app closed and the phone locked, because the alert goes through Google's and Apple's own notification services. If nobody accepts, it rings again 30 seconds later, and keeps going until someone does or the visitor is offered a message form instead. The first person to tap Accept has the chat; everyone else sees it's been taken.
In the app you see:
- the page the visitor started on, and the pages they've looked at since
- their email, if they gave it
- whether they've chatted before
You can send and receive photos, use your saved replies, pass a chat to a colleague, and close it with an outcome. Every chat is kept: search them by name, email or anything said, and send a transcript from your phone.
Whoever owns the account runs it from the app: adds staff (they get an email with a password link and the app), makes owners, chooses who answers which website, and changes what visitors see: the name, the greeting, the colour, and how long a visitor waits before being offered the message form.
You stay signed in until you sign out. Open the app and it fetches everything fresh, so there's no waiting on an old connection. If you're ever not sure notifications are working, there's a button that sends a real one and tells you why if it can't.
The first one in
Hot Tub Tastic in Scarborough went live on 19 October: the chat is on every page of their site, and the owner manages it from her phone.
What it costs
£19 a month per website, with no limit on staff, or £39 for Chat Plus, which shows visitors from a business's own shop or customer login as verified customers with their order. Both come included with our Care plans. For comparison, Pure Chat's Growth plan is $49 a month for four users and one website.
There's an Android app now. The iPhone app is on its way; until then iPhone users can use the web version, with alerts.
Try it
The chat bubble on our website is it. Ask it anything. How Eightlegged Live Chat works
Want something like this for your business? We're in Scarborough - websites start at £49.
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