Top Olark Alternatives and Overview

Olark is an online live chat platform that allows you to chat directly with the customers that visit your website. It comprises of solid integrations and offers more than real-time chat options to its users. The platform provides you with strong data and robust customer insights while also allowing you to see what your clients are doing on their screens. It is one of the easiest ways for the conversion of sales, help solve the issues related to comprehending your customers’ behavior and keep up the healthy relationship. It provides simple customization with a variety of ways to make your appearance on the screen that others can view.

Headquartered in San Francisco, Caliornia., Olark was founded by Ben Congleton, Matt Pizzimenti, Roland Osborne and Zach Steindler in the year 2009. At the time of this writing, the company claims to provide click-to-chat customer service tools to over 5000 businesses in 151 countries.

Design Customization

Olark's chat window is available in a variety of themes and templates. Users can also customize the look and feel of the chat interface to match their website's overall theme. High-end customization may, however, require CSS edits. Besides being able to modify the colors and text in the chat window, users can also select the exact position and width of the window to provide a clean and user friendly interface to their customers.

Real-time Visitor Information

The software allows users access to real-time information about visitors on their site. Besides a visitor's name, email id, and location, chat operators are also provided with detailed information about their site browsing patterns, including the pages they've visited and time on site. This helps agents understand what a customer is looking for, and how they can be best assisted.

This feature makes the olark software stand out as an outstanding live chat option for the customers. It provides an immediate view of all sorts of queries and reports of the users which further support in framing better marketing strategies. It also provides insights into your schedule and plans your meeting accordingly, considering your habits. You can also know about your customer’s feedback and the topics they tend to talk about more in chats. Conversation tags allow you to see them that pop up often in chats.

Targeted Chat

Olark's Targeted Chat option allows agents to chat only with a select group of customers, for instance, those who visit a particular page or perform a specific behavior. This helps agents focus on the 'right' visitors, based on the goals and strategies of the business. It can also help a company pay more attention to its VIP or premium customers.

This feature includes a pop-up chat option that opens a pop-up chat window on the screen of the website to encourage customers’ interaction with company representatives. It also gives you notifications meanwhile the conversations continue, to both the sides.  There are targeted emails that are the automated emails sent to the clients to engage them in the discussion. The in-app messaging allows the users and clients for live chat to be enabled within the application for customers to help and seek queries if any.

Save the Cart

Often, users browse through the products available on a website, and even add a few to their cart. However, for one reason or another, they tend to leave the website without checking out. Olark's Cartsaver lets agents view the contents of a visitor's shopping cart in real time. This allows them to instantly reach out to assist the customer or upsell a product before the customer exits the website with an empty cart. This not only helps a business retain a sale, but it also allows them an opportunity to expand a visitor's cart size.  

Transfers and Groups

Small businesses tend to have fewer chat operators who respond to questions as well as upsell products. For larger teams, however, there may be dedicated groups of customer service agents and sales agents. Olark's software allows agents to transfer a chat to a colleague from a different department. This allows for a seamless transition between customer service and sales teams.

Cobrowsing

Sometimes customers may have difficulty in understanding a process, or may be unable to resolve a problem on their computer. Olark's CoBrowsing function allows the chat operator to view their customer's computer screen as well take control of their browser. This helps resolve the problem without any confusion and in the least amount of time.  

Helpdesk and CRM Integration

Olark can be easily integrated with some of the more prevalent helpdesk and CRM applications such as Salesforce, Zendesk, SugarCRM, Desk.com and Highrise. The chat software can be set up to automatically send your chat transcripts to your preferred CRM, which helps you to better manage your customer relationships. Olark chat can also be used from within an instant messenger platform such as Google Talk.

Internal use

This feature includes conversation archiving which archives the chats in separate locations for later references. The lead development enables the employees to denote potential customers that are close to conversions. Olark also provides a knowledge base for employees’ reference during conversations for understanding some internal queries or questions. Team inbox is the central location for the help requests where the responses are made sooner to help employees. At last, the customer profiles allows for the creation of profiles for contacts and customers’ relevant information.

Support

In addition to detailed FAQs and tutorials, Olark also offers chat and email support for its software. Users can also get quick answers to short questions via the company's twitter page.      

Good:

Real-time visitor tracking, customizable designs and templates, targeted chat option, CRM integration, quick setup, 'Cobrowsing', 14-day free trial.

Things to Improve:

Fewer analytics options.

Overall:

Olark's customizable and intuitive chat interface, along with optimized tools such as targeted chat and cobrowsing, helps companies engage customers and build their businesses.

Conclusion

Olark's chat software options help businesses expand on their goals and strategies. With a quick set up and a reasonably large number of design themes to choose from, businesses can get started quickly to engage with their customers. There are limited options for chat analytics, but seamless integration with commonly used CRM applications and the creative use of basic chat tools means that chats are more effective and successful.

Company Name: Habla, Inc.

Company Address: 76 South Park St, San Francisco, CA, USA

Founded in: 2008