Comparison of online consultants for the site: the torment of choice

I’ll immediately warn you that the article is not of an advertising nature. It was written solely with the aim of sharing its experience in selecting a high-quality tool for online consulting, as they themselves, while they were searching, could not find suitable material with detailed analysis anywhere.

When we decided to start online chat on our sites , we did not understand very clearly what functionality it should have. The only thing we immediately clearly understood was that this would not be a chat room, where any random visitor could write “hey, is there anyone alive?” And it’s not the kind where the consultant girl who does not really understand the technical features of our product will respond to messages from visitors.



We clearly decided that all the employees of the sales and technical support department will become the operators of the online consultant. After several meetings and brainstorming sessions with the heads of the marketing departments, Support and Sales, we identified a number of important parameters for us that the online consulting service should meet. Namely:

• Necessity to introduce oneself : each user who decides to write an online consultant must leave his name, e-mail and phone number (the latter optional).
• Choice of department : depending on the subject of your question, the visitor must choose the department where he wants to contact.
• Bilingualism and the ability to connect multiple sites to one account: we have more than one site and all are multilingual.
• Redirecting the dialogue to another consultant: even in perfect online chat, you cannot be 100% sure that the request will hit exactly the target.
• Ability to work with online chat with Windows / Linux: our employees (50/50) use both systems, and we did not want to change anything.

These were our basic ideas of what an ideal service should look like for online consulting our clients. According to these parameters, we analyzed more than 20 services, of which only 8 reached the semifinal (some fell away immediately after a visual acquaintance with the system).

The following services are among the eight finalists: Jivosite, p3chat, Livetex, Webim, Webconsultant, Krible, Zopim and Olark.

We estimated each of them by 20 parameters:

Indicator	Jivosite	p3chat	Livetex	Webim	Web consult	Krible	Zopim	Olark
Connect multiple sites	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+
Customer Information	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+
Departments	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+
Service Assessment	+	-	+	+	+	+	+	+
Conversation Translation	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	-
Consultant's chat log	+	-	+	+	+	+	+	+
Chat Dialog to Visitor Mail	-	-	+	+	+	+	+	+
Client Lock	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	-
Windows / Linux Application	Windows only	-	+	+	-	Windows only	-	Windows only
Web version available	+	-	-	+	+	+	+	+
Jabber client support	limited	+	limited	-	+	+	-	+
Request contacts before dialogue	+	-	+	-	+	-	+	+
Request contacts during the dialogue	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	-
The ability to send a message when the user is offline	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+
Design customization	+	-	+	+	+	+	+	+
Bilingualism	+	+	-	-	-	+	+	+
Going for a break	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+
Chat on the page (a separate window does not open)	+	-	+	+	+	+	+	+
Assigning priorities to operators	-	+	+	+	+	-	-	-
Ticket Creation	-	-	-	-	-	-	+	-
Approximate cost for 1 operator per month (in Russian rubles at the time of compiling the table)	800	850	1,700	500	400	2000	1500	1000

As a result, the top three services that we liked most reached the finals. We checked all 3 in practice during the validity period of the demo versions (all services of this kind, without exception, offer to test their system for free for 14 days), so we will tell you more about them.

P3chat: reliable, functional, not very beautiful

We started with this chat, as we decided that it was most convenient to bind an online consultant to the jabber clients of our employees. And p3chat has this function best implemented, as it supports a number of commands that allow you to translate dialogs, send a visitor to the black list, etc.

Pros:

• support for all jabber clients with special teams;
• unlimited number of sites and departments;
• multilingualism;
• the ability to prioritize operators;
• dialogue transfer to another operator;
• customer information (country, browser);
• does not slow down the site;
• the ability to draw your own “Start Chat” button.

Minuses:

• non-modern design;
• opening chat in an additional window;
• lack of ability to customize the design for yourself;
• You can not send a transcript of the dialogue to the mail.

Jivosite: fashionable, beautiful, not very serious

After p3chat, we decided to try something beautiful and convenient for both users and our operators. The service offers several options for working with chat: through the web version, through an application installed on a computer, or through a jabber client (but without the support of useful commands).

Pros:

• beautiful customizable interface design;
• unlimited number of departments and sites;
• chat on the page (does not open with an additional window);
• multilingualism;
• transfer of dialogue to another operator;
• ability to rate chat;
• detailed information about the client (up to the search query for which the author of the message got to the site).

Minuses:

• limited support for jabber clients (without commands like! help);
• the application works only on Windows / Mac Os (not supported on Linux);
• You can not send a transcript of the dialogue to the mail
• message history is available only to the operator who corresponded, and to the administrator;
• there is no way to prioritize operators: messages come to everyone.

Zopim: nice, smart, fully customizable

We came across this chat with a funny name by accident, when we were completely desperate to find some really good tool. We have already abandoned the idea of ​​supporting jabber-clients and the presence of an installed application.

We made the main requirements for the functionality (the requirements for which were formulated by both our operators and the customers surveyed) and appearance, so we were not even upset when we found a suitable service that works only in the web version.

At Zopim, we have already ended the free period, and we have extended the use of the service for another month. As it turned out, 2 weeks is not enough to evaluate all the features, advantages and disadvantages of the system.

It is possible that over time we will find even more shortcomings in this service (our appetite also grows with food). But so far this is the best, in our opinion, service of those that we reviewed.

And now more specifically about the pros and cons (insignificant for us) of the system we have chosen as a result.

Pros:

• beautiful and fully customizable interface;
• Good API documentation
• unlimited number of departments and sites;
• chat on the page (does not open with an additional window);
• multilingualism;
• transfer of dialogue to another operator;
• detailed statistics on users;
• the ability to bind a ticket system;
• the ability to configure the chat so that the user cannot send messages before introducing himself (integration with Facebook and Google+), leave an e-mail and select the desired department;
• sending dialogue history to mail (the function is available both to the operator and the user);
• ability to rate chat;
• the linked translator in the consultant's account;
• history can be viewed by all employees;
• the ability to enter information about the user and leave a comment, which is available to all operators even when the client re-contacts;
• unprocessed applications are visible to all consultants;
• the ability to remove chat from certain pages of the site (this was important for us, as some pages did not want to be overloaded additionally).

Minuses:

• availability of only the web version for the operator;
• it is impossible to set priorities for consultants, but there are not so many applications (because of the throughput system in the form of registration before sending a message), so that this could distract operators who are not able to answer right now.

If the article does not mention any chat parameters that are important for you, ask in the comments - we will try to answer, since we studied the systems very thoroughly.