Hi Everyone,

If you’re on the fence about Provide Chat, then this post is for you. I’m going to explain a little bit about the philosophy, where the product is headed, and why you should choose Provide Chat.

The Philosophy
Most live chat software is too expensive and too complex. Provide Chat is the exact opposite, it’s easy to use and easy to set up.

When we first designed Provide Chat we wanted it to be as easy as possible for you to get up and running. From the moment you sign up all you have to do to begin using Provide Chat is copy a few lines of code (two to be exact), and paste these lines into your website. Once done, you’ll be ready to chat live with your visitors.

What’s more, while a lot of products have many more features than Provide Chat, these features are poorly implemented, making them difficult to understand and use. Provide Chat’s interface is designed with simplicity in mind. It’s extremely easy for anyone to use. Whether you’re using it to further customize the application or you have a support team logging in as operators, Provide Chat has a very easy to understand user interface. You and your operators will be using it quickly and easily in a matter of minutes.

Finally, Provide Chat is affordable. You can have a single user trial account for free. If you need up to three operators you can be using Provide Chat for only $9. Many live chat companies charge $30, $40 or even more for just a single user.

Where the Product is Headed
Since launching Provide Chat in late December 2009 we’ve been working hard getting the foundation of the product as solid as possible. We’ve made huge improvements to quality, reliability, and speed. The truth is, the number one reason why you need a live chat product like Provide Chat is because you need to chat live with your website visitors. While there are products out there with an insane amount of features, we’ve made sure to spend our initial development focus on one main feature – the live chat itself. Provide Chat’s main feature, live chat, is reliable, rock solid, and uses the latest internet technologies to make chats between you and your visitors as seamless as possible.

While focusing on this feature, we’ve had the chance to make many other smaller improvements, as you can see from previous blog posts. These include: typing notifications, chat transcripts, chat invitations, custom operator images, interface improvements, and more. All of this completed over the last three months!

While we’re generally mum on what we’re working on, I can tell you we have a huge feature in the works that’s never before been used in a live chat application. What I can say is this feature will greatly increase your sales/conversions, even while you’re offline.

With that in mind, over the next six months we do plan to add many other live chat features (on the fly translations, multiple website/domain support, reports/statistics, etc) that haven’t yet been made available in Provide Chat.

So Why Choose Provide Chat?
Simply put, because it’s the easiest system out there to use and most competitively priced.

Sure, there are other products out there that have all the bells and whistles, but often those products are overly complex. Features were added without much thought to how easy they would be to use. With Provide Chat you get an extremely solid foundation that does its core purpose extremely well, and that’s chatting with your customers.

As new features are added, they’re thoughtfully put in to make sure things are simple and easy to use. Also, one of the benefits of being a Provide Chat customer, new features will instantly be made available to your account, and you’ll get the full service at the same great price. So while other site owners will be paying $30 per user, you’ll get new, well planned features at a highly competitive and affordable price.

If you have any questions about Provide Chat please email me at luke@providechat.com.

Ready to get started? Sign up to Provide Chat here and be on your way to chatting live with your site visitors.

Cheers,
Luke Holzken

Hey everyone,

Just a quick note to let you know that we have updated Provide Chat with some improvements to the General Settings.  On the surface it doesn’t look like much has changed but the three new configuration options reveal some great improvements to the software.

Here is a quick overview of the new options:

1. Operator Session Timeout - You can now set the specific time that an operator’s session will last.  This will be helpful for those who might be logged into the software for several hours without much activity and in the past their session would timeout.
2. Operator Response Timeout – Previously this was a default value of 1 minute. You now have control over how long a visitor will wait for an operator to accept their chat before being sent to the unavailable “send an email” screen.
3. Inactive Visitor Removal – Previously this was a default value of 5 minutes. You now have control of this setting as well.  Basically this controls how long a visitor will continue to be displayed in the chat monitor after the visitor has become inactive. A visitor becomes inactive after their chat has ended or they leave your website.

Please take a look and change these settings if neccessary. By default we’ve set them to what we feel are the best recommended values.

Cheers,
Derek

Hi Everyone,

We’ve just released a new feature, Smart Invites. This is an optional feature that you can either enable or disable. When enabled, every visitor on your website will receive an invitation after they have been visiting your site for a predefined period of time or page views. Visitors who have spent a reasonable amount of time on your site are clearly interested in the services or products you’re offering. With Smart Invites you can instantly invite these visitors to chat with you.

The benefit of this feature is you can increase your sales. Visitors are more likely to purchase if you can answer their questions in real time. If you can get your visitor to chat with you the higher the likelihood you have of closing a sale with that visitor.

You can access Smart Invites from your dashboard by going to Settings -> Proactive Chat. This feature is currently in beta but is solid enough to begin using.

To make use of this feature simply set the “Proactive Chat Overall Status” to enabled. Next, select the number of seconds or page views you would like your visitors to be instantly invited to a chat.

Invited visitors can choose to chat with you or simply close the invite and continue browsing your website.

Over the coming weeks we’ll be fine tuning this feature, ironing out any potential bugs, and making the Proactive Chat admin area more user friendly. Additionally, we’ll be adding a Visitor Targeted Invitation feature to the Chat Monitor. This will allow you to individually target specific visitors and invite them to chat with you.

In the mean time, if you have any questions about this feature or discover anything that doesn’t quite work right, please let me know.

Cheers,
Luke

Good news, we’ve just launched a great new feature which makes your Provide Chat even more customizable, Custom Operator Images.

With Custom Operator Images you can upload a unique operator image for each of your customer service agents. For each operator you can now choose to use the default female image, default male image, or your own custom image.

This feature is made available to paid subscriptions only.

Here you can see how you can add a custom operator image using the admin dashboard:

Once you’ve added your own operator image, site visitors will see it in their chat window:

Yes, that’s my photo

And to update you on the latest regarding Proactive Invitations and Smart Invitations, we’re currently working on that feature right now and it should be available for you in the coming days.

In the mean time, if you have any questions about this or anything else Provide Chat please let me know.

Cheers,
Luke Holzken

Hey there,

just wanted to let everyone know that we have just added a new feature that is available to all Basic, Professional and Ultimate accounts.  This feature allows you to upload a custom operator image, so you no longer only have the two default options.  We hope this feature will help you connect better with your website visitors.

This update also included some minor bug fixes and overall performance enhancements as we are always striving to improve the software and thus give you and your website visitors a better experience.

Finally, a word on the upcoming Chat Invite feature.  We are in the final stretch now and expect to launch the beta version to all paid accounts later this week.   You will already see the configuration option for the “Proactive Chat” feature on the Settings menu.  Please watch the blog for an announcement once the feature is fully deployed.

Cheers,

Derek

Hi Everyone,

Just wanted to give you a sneak peak on the chat invitation feature that’s currently in development.

This feature is going to be unique in that it will give you two options for inviting your visitors to chat with you, Proactive Invitations and Smart Invitations.

Proactive Inviations: With this feature you’ll be able to individually target a visitor to chat with you. Using your chat monitor you can select a visitor and then click an invite button. The visitor will instantly receive an invitation to chat with you.

Smart Invitations: This will be an optional feature that you can either enable or disable. When enabled, every visitor on your website will receive an invitation after they have been visiting your site for a predefined period of time or page views. Visitors who have spent a reasonable amount of time on your site are clearly interested in the services or products you’re offering. With Smart Invites you can instantly invite these visitors to chat with you.

Below is a screenshot of what an invitation will look like.

We’ll likely be releasing this feature in two stages, with one of the two invitation options being made available first. Chat Invitations  will be available in beta to all accounts in approximately one week.

If you have any questions or suggestions please don’t hesitate to contact me at luke@providechat.com.

All the best,
Luke Holzken