Olark recently introduced Hummingbird, which is a mobile-friendly version of its live chat customer experience. Ben Congleton, CEO and co-founder of Olark, told Loyalty360 that he wanted to innovate more in the mobile space, which is fast becoming the key to so many customer interactions.
Loyalty360 learned more from Congleton about Hummingbird and the state of the live chat customer experience.
What factors prompted the creation of Hummingbird and how will it impact the mobile customer experience?
Congleton: There were a few factors at play: About 35% of all conversations on our network were originating from a mobile device. And while Olark on mobile before was adequate, we knew we could do better. We’ve been wanting to rework a lot of our existing code with React and Redux for some time. Hummingbird was a perfect opportunity to start in on that project.
We felt there was still a lot of room to innovate on the mobile experience. A lot of other platforms have tried to shoehorn a desktop experience onto a mobile device, which is less than optimal. As a company, we have renewed focus on product development, and we needed something to set the table for the rest of our product upgrades this year. Our mobile visitor experience was an ideal starting point.
The impact has been immediate.
About half our customers now have Hummingbird enabled on their sites, a significant increase from our previous beta version for mobile. This means that more businesses are able to field chats from mobile devices, and more customers can reach businesses on a mobile browser.
It’s a true live chat experience on a mobile device. It's not asynchronous messaging masquerading as ‘live’ chat. Visitors who want to chat know immediately whether the business is online and ready to talk, or offline and accepting emails instead. So we expect to see the number of conversations initiated on a mobile device continue to climb too (too soon to say how quickly that number will grow though).
How would describe the state of live chat?
Congleton: On one hand, live chat is arguably the strongest it’s ever been. Businesses no longer have to be convinced to integrate live chat in their omnichannel strategy. They understand live chat can be used for so much more than just customer service: increasing leads and sales, improving marketing efforts, grabbing qualitative data from customer conversations, and improving the overall customer experience.
The benefit of getting an immediate answer is apparent to consumers too, as evidenced by Forrester data, among others.
Live chat and messaging apps are no longer for early adopters. They are essential for B2C communication. Software Advice even says that in its 2015 report: “Tech ‘early-adopters’ aren’t the only ones who use mobile devices to seek service: even those who say they are “never first to buy new tech products” still seek mobile support more than once per month.”
On the other hand, live chat’s position is somewhat tenuous. There is a lot of hype around conversational commerce and chatbots, and some companies are hopping right over live chat to messaging apps.
It makes sense. An entire generation that has grown up using their mobile phones, more for text messaging than for voice communication, is now coming into the workforce. Even though most chatbots are far from intelligent, with the improvement to AI and chatbots, there are probably more eyes on the chat and messaging space than ever before.
What is being done well and where do the challenges lie?
Congleton: Businesses are doing a great job of meeting customers where they want to be met, and they’re moving faster than they ever have to meet them. It used to be only certain companies answered customer questions on social media. Now, nearly every company with a customer support plan has a strategy to respond to customer comments on social media.
It’s not a ‘hard sell’ any more to get businesses to use live chat to talk to customers. They get it, and they want to provide the best experience possible on it.
The same is true for mobile. Every business understands how vital mobile is to their customers’ success. So mobile-friendly websites and tools are rapidly improving.
Optimally staffing every channel that is now available for customer communication is now a major challenge, as is finding the right balance of human and automated interactions. Brands will have to adjust their customer service organization and tools so that customers who are using chatbots to shop can get human help if/when they need it.
What makes Hummingbird unique?
Congleton: Immediacy is vital on mobile. When you want a ride, you get an Uber within minutes. When you want dinner, you open Seamless and order it. If you have a question when shopping on your mobile device, do you want to wait for an answer?
Hummingbird is unique because it’s a true live chat experience on mobile, not an asynchronous messaging platform masquerading as instant. Customers can immediately tell if a business is online or not, instead of getting a message that provides a range of time in which the company was ‘last active.’