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Comment by Cliffsides | Hacker News Reader

Anyone have a recommendation for the simplest, easiest solution to solve for "As a user, I'd like to express some concern, frustration, feedback, or questions about your product". Intercom seems like the most well known, but there's a lot in that tool that we just may not need or use and I'm not sure we're looking for something so "robust"... Then again, just slapping a support email alias throughout the product and expecting users to find it and use it doesn't quite solve the problem and it's not scalable. I intend to check out Crisp, Intercom, Drift, hubspot, smooch, pipedrive, and Tawk judging by responses below, but wondering if anyone can help cut through the noise with some personal anecdotes. Just want to make sure users have a way of reaching out and feeling that their voices are being heard

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For a Web app where I wanted as much feedback as possible, I embedded a 2-line expandable text input box (and submit button) in the footer of every page.

At different times, the surrounding copy was something like “Question? Suggestion? We’re at your service.” or “How can we improve this page? We’d love to know.”

It worked great and I’d do it again for any new app. People brought up issues large and small. The goal wasn’t to “engage” or “nurture” or whatever. We just wanted to respect visitors’ time, which meant being as easy to reach as possible.

We use Olark for years and it's free and it also has an JS interface where your website code can interface with it (populate user info if logged-in, etc.). It is far from perfect but it gets the job done when you want the customer to quickly contact you.

I see now they put some more "unlock to get" things on their website but still their free offering is good enough. The only limit is after 20 live chats you get emails instead.

For us we use it mostly for getting the initial question (in offline mode) and then we take it further via email.

What about a "Feedback" link, in the header or footer, which leads to a page with a text box, and a "Submit" button? That's what we had back in the 1990's, and it worked perfectly well. It can be anonymous, or you can ask them to leave an email address so you can respond to them individually.

Also: how about a feedback@ or support@ email address, and link to it on your webpage? (The form mentioned above can work by sending email to this address, even, so everything goes to the same place.)

RFC 2142 defines "webmaster@" (alias: "www@") as the standard email contact. I think it was a good idea, but I don't know how common it is any more.

I like to report bugs whenever I find them, but it's surprisingly difficult to find any sort of feedback mechanism for most webpages. Half the time, "tweet sarcastically in frustration" is actually the best option.

I’ve personally rolled out a Freshworks implementation, and am quite happy with their products.

They offer Freshdesk for a customer support portal/ticketing system, and Freshchat for live chat. Total cost is a fraction of what you’d pay for Intercom, and the products are continuously adding new features.

If it's just feedback you want then you might consider creating a slideout sidebar survey using kwiksurveys (disclaimer: my company). The survey code partially preloads the form so it appears quickly when the button you attach it to is clicked.

Price went up 3x for me. Shifted to Freshchat from Freshworks and really happy I made the move.

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