Inside Offerchat: A Better Online Live Chat Widget To Ring In 2013

UPDATE (12/21/12): The new Offerchat live chat widget has been successfully deployed last night by the team. Check it out on your site! Log on to your chat panel to see more customization options. The Dev Team has also added a feature that lets your customers email the transcript of their chat conversation for record keeping. Happy Christmas!

Our dedicated Dev Team is currently at work with some very interesting improvements to the Offerchat live chat widget and the chat control panel. The goal before the holiday euphoria kicks in (Christmas and New Year is a big deal here) is to deploy the new live chat widget to existing and new users so all of you get a sleek and shiny present from us – still with a $0 price tag!

What’s Inside the Box?

The new live chat widget is currently in the staging process (means it’s up and ready to go but it’s undergoing a heavy phase of testing to make sure it looks and works flawlessly when it gets in your hands).

While I cannot disclose (yet!) other juicy details (really, I’d hate to to jinx our developers), I managed to get some screenshots of what the new widget looks like and I kid you not - it’s very good-looking and it’s coming very, very soon. They’re eyeing this week *wink, wink*

Hold tight while I spill the beans from the top down.

New Look for the Online Live Chat Widget

What’s new?

• Agent avatar image
• Agent label
• Time stamps

First up, the live chat widget and how it looks on your site from the customer’s perspective – it’s now more compact, looks more professional while maintaining seamless simplicity that makes it attractive and intuitive to your website customers and visitors.

The widget will automatically transform into an offline form during times when live chat is unavailable on your site. It allows for your customers and site visitors to still reach you and leave a message even when you’re offline. The message goes directly to your email. Enable the offline form by going to Settings > Click Offline Form > Tick Show offline form when no operators are online.

Customization Options

What’s new:

• Agent label field
• More color options
• Widget style options

Now going to your client chat control panel, you’ll discover more options under Widget Settings. Click Settings > Widget Settings.

Here, you’ll be able to customize the agent label that will appear under the agent’s name on the physical widget on your website which can then be viewable to a customer or visitor the moment chat is started with a chat agent.

There are also a bigger set of color palette you can apply to the widget on your website, enabling you to better match the look of the widget to your site’s color scheme.

And, lastly, there are 2 widget options for you to choose from (as seen on the screenshot). You can now choose the widget style that will let you decide the look and feel of the online chat on your site.

Pre-Chat Form

What’s new:

• Enable pre-chat form
• Select required information

Put a pre-chat form before a customer can connect to a chat agent. You can ask chat users on your website to fill out information such as name, email address and their inquiry before allowing them to chat with an agent. You can control which information is required and which are optional. Enabling the Pre-Chat form makes way for a more personalized chat conversation and better customer service. Getting their email addresses is also a great way for lead generation very much needed for your email marketing strategies.

What do you think of our new improvements? We’d like to hear your feedback. We’ve been developing this online live chat through user feedback and the collaboration just worked great! As thanks, we’re giving the chat tool for free.

Remember, you can always get your own premium live chat tool powered by Offerchat in time for the New Year. Join us today!

• Bio

Cheby Labrague

Cheby writes about live chat insights, improving conversions, epic customer service, online marketing and everything in between. She will take you by the hand in exploring how to extend your website's earning power through Offerchat's smart live chat tool, and even smarter live chat people.