Olark

Simple, easy and reliable chat tool that integrates well with CRM and other Help Desk software.

Olark has been a game changer for us, we now can offer support right in the moment as customers need it to keep them running smooth with our product. The Olark team also provides stellar support over live chat to their own customers.

There much more designed for smaller chat teams, and lack a few features. They've just now implemented file sharing with in chats, this has been a huge help, and is something we've needed. They also don't quite have a note feature yet which would be very handy for our internal communication.

It's a quick and easy setup tool that gets you chatting with your customers in real-time. It's very reliable and integrates nicely into the workflow we have for our other help desk software.

The cute little touches

You can't block pervs longer than a mere 24 hours

I really enjoy using Olark. I think it's fun. The bird with the its little birdhouse is so cute, and the way it turns to nighttime when you're not accepting chats--adorable!

It's super easy to use. I am a huge fan of the notification systems. I like how you get both visual and auditory notifications, and well as follow-up notifications to remind you, "Hey! Don't forget about me over here! I'm still waiting!" I like how you can tag chats with whatever tag you desire; we've really had some fun with those!

The co-browsing feature is pretty awesome, though I'll admit, some of our customers are rather paranoid, and the fact we can do something like that freaks them out quite a bit, so I avoid telling most people we have the ability to co-browse. Still, it's a really cool feature, and it can be SO helpful!

One thing I wish they'd improve is the length of time you can block a user. When I last used Olark, the longest you could block someone was 24 hours. Some of the people who visit chat prove themselves worthy of a significantly longer blockage period.

If you don't want to make it possible to initially block someone for more than 24 hours, perhaps after a particular IP address has been blocked X # of times, it is eligible to be blocked permanently? It;s not like a determined individual isn't going to find his/her way around the blockade anyway.

VERY easy to implement and customize. Great use experience.

Cons: Can't think of anything right now.

This is a very easy turn-key solution to customer website chat. Our agents find the software very easy to use.

Our customer really love the chat and ask us anything about our products and services, and often even place orders with our agents.

Olark has been an invaluable addition to our customer service philosophy.

Some things I wish Olark had the ability to do:

1. Block a user from entering a credit card number (yes, it happens) or custom RegEx matches,

2. allow customers to chat with us via SMS on their phones (our agents would chat in the same chat window that they currently do),

and 3. have an Olark Android app so our agents can chat with customers after hours if needed (yes, we would pay them :-).

Over all the experience has been very positive. Olark's customer service is caring and responsive. I would recommend trying Olark (really it's easy to implement or turn off). You've got nothing to lose, really. You can customize almost everything about it from the user's point of view.

I really can't imagine why someone wouldn't try it. There's really nothing to lose. Turn it on and if you don't like it, turn it off.

Ease of setup, user interface, reporting, and shortcuts (saves us typing typical responses)

Would prefer to see a smaller interface/screen, but not critical. Would love to see color coding, showing which IP addresses are repeat customers. Dream would be to allow user to tag IP's so instead of seeing IP address: xxx only, it would have in brackets (customer name).

Olark offers an additional level of support for our customers, many of whom would rather text/chat then pick up the phone, or craft an email. It amounts to instant support for our customers, and another benefit that keeps them loyal.

Compare getting your question answered instantly versus filling out a form, submitting a "ticket" and waiting for who know's how long before your question gets answered. Instant chat is the future, and Olark is paving the way.

Support is very responsive. Company uses Olark chat service itself for support - so you always end up getting a real person in real time during (West Coast) business hours.

Occasional service disruptions, but rarely longer than a few minutes.

We've been using Olark for two years on our website and usually perform at least 3 chats every business day with it. The chat interface and its behavior are nicely customizable to match our site's appearance and business workflow.

Favorite features include the integration (we use Sugar CRM) for passing records of chats back into our CRM and marketing automation system (inbox25) and what Olark calls its Targeted Chat capability, where we can have automatic behaviors initiated for certain types of visitors on certain pages of our site, e.g. automatically initiating discussions with website visitors from North America who spend longer than a minute looking at our case studies.

We're fans of Olark and recommend it. Try it out on our site if you haven't already - it integrates quickly and is easy to test.

Ease of use, ability to transfer conversations

Transferring a conversation should give the next operator visibility into the original question.

We relaunched our website in 2014 and included Olark. Ever since then, it has been tremendously helpful for both customer service inquiries and sales requests.

The ability for our clients to access our representatives within two separate departments within a single chat box really brings the whole story together.

Simple, Easy, Robust and customers love it

Cost, occasional availability issues, needs stronger reporting (perhaps with internal SLA's) and more integrations.

Olark is a solid platform that allows us to serve our customers in an immediate way that many prefer to email or phone.

Feature-rich and easy to use and configure, Olark allows us to respond quickly and simply to technical, marketing or customer service change requests.

It works and the vendor does not continuously pester us to upgrade.
Cons: I would like greater flexibility to change its appearance. This Christmas the festive themes were non relevant to Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere

We installed Olark pigin live chat on our first website and found it invaluable in assisting customers to choose the correct size of footwear and clothing. The most frequent question asked has been how much for postage?

Livechat is useful for getting lazy/unmotivated/ web illiterate online customers quick answers. Despite the increasing popularity of live chat now - Australian web customers are reluctant to chat when the conversation is instigated by the website.

Live chat does make a difference and small online retailers should install it as it allows them to put a more personal touch to the service they can offer on their online store.

easy to use and always improving

multiple operators can start a response to an inquiry and the first one to hit enter wins. Would be helpful if the operator who will deal with it can click on a button 'respond' so that other operators will know and won't

I work for All Seasons Weddings and we decided to try Olark on our website so that we can better help our customers. It's turned out to be such an amazing and helpful tool! The features are super helpful too once you know how to use them. Like forwarding an ongoing conversation and pre-loading some of your basic responses.

The customers also get to rate their conversation with you which helps you to improve where needed. The one thing that would be helpful for the users though would be an indicator so that we know if someone is already typing a response to an inquiry.

Maybe a button that the operator can click on to indicate the chat is being taken care of so other operators aren't also typing a response just to get kicked out. Still a wonderful customer service tool that really comes in handy and is convenient for the customers! I haven't had to contact the customer support yet, but they are always eager to help in any way that they can, so I'm sure that when I do, I won't be disappointed.

It's super easy to implement and customize in many ways. The folks at Olark are incredibly responsive to questions.

We integrated Olark with Venntive and our customers as well as we find it incredibly valuable in managing customer questions and impressing new website visitors.

Adding chat to your website really makes sense when it's integrated with your CRM and triggers a workflow for prompt follow-up. It's a great complement to our Tickets forms. We save our customers a ton of money over apps like Zendesk, UserVoice, and GetSatisfaction.

Try the free version but if you're really serious about creating an end-to-end marketing-sales solution, upgrade asap to a paid version and integrate it, ideally, with Venntive. ;-)