Olark

Olark is a live chat and customer support software as a service which is available currently in four plans. The solo trial is what I have just activated and logged into. I have been researching several live chat and customer support softwares recently so I was particularly interested to finally learn how Olark stacked up against them. There are a few features I like a lot which definitely differentiate it from their competition. Specifically, the co-browsing feature is totally awesome because it allows you with your customer's permission only to view their screen and even use their mouse and fill in form fields to help. And you can do it on the fly within seconds and there is no additional software to install. It blurs out any sensitive information so you do not have to worry about third parties viewing credit card data or anything else sensitive in nature which is amazing. The call to action image functionality which you can use to display small pop-ups which appear on your website visitor's screen sliding in and definitely attracting attention each time they do. You can embed text, a link or a video in there so that's cool. I find this feature annoyingly useful in that without a doubt it has me notice it every time I click to a new page in my trial account, because they have it enabled with a different message on every page. The user interface itself is very minimalist and simple to learn and use which is good. It's easy to navigate around and get everything setup quickly. You have good customization options for your account and your live chat display so that's good. This feature is surprisingly rigid in some other popular live chat softwares even though their displays look great it is nice to have the option to have more control overall multiple aspects to suit your brand and message. Overall, I think the native integration of remote support through internet browsers is brilliant and should be standard across live chat software solutions but it's not the case. This is the only one so far in my research to do so and I have checked out at least half a dozen of the most popular and several other help desk software, customer support software, hybrid proposal and support software and several hundred business software in general over the last few weeks and this is the first to utilize remote support technology natively within it as a feature or component of a core software. I have not researched exclusively based remote support software yet at all.

The only feature I do not see available which is like an indicator to me as to whether it has the ability to send images and screenshots attached to your chat window, so you don't have to obtain an email address and then login into your email account to send it and then verify it was received and so on. I have had to do this many times in the past and it is odd to me that I have only seen this possible in one live chat software I have learned about so far. Of course Olark goes beyond this and enables full on remote support which is terrific. And I know I am comfortable with utilizing remote support as I have had a few techs assist me with things over the years. But to assume every single customer is going to be okay with it is simply not practical in my opinion. The easiest, most streamlined, practical fix is to have end users be able to upload images and screenshots. It's a middle ground between the long way around manually and full blown helpful and secure yet invasive remote support.

Overall, Olark is outstanding. The customization options are great too. The pricing is reasonable because of the co-browsing feature. It is slightly more than others per month although there are significant savings with their annual plans. But with remote support built in you are essentially saving yourself the cost of having to pay for this as a third party SAAS. And ultimately your return on investment is going to be excellent because of the value you are able to offer customers through the lifecycle of their purchase. This commitment to your best customer user experience is the single greatest quality direction any business can take in order to create your most sustainable, successful business.