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Comment by gwbas1c | Hacker News Reader

The problem isn't live chat, it's nagging.

A lot of the chat bubbles that I see flash in the corner, and make the title of the page flash as well; with lots of annoying bleeps and bloops.

I also find that sales is very trend driven. Currently they're trendy, but I hope that sales websites learn that you can't just stick things in people's faces all the time.

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Fuck those chat bubbles that automatically open when I visit websites. "Hi, Thank you for visiting. Please look around and let us know if you have any questions"

I'm gonna really reach out to you if I run into questions but don't automatically expand the chatbox and ruin my experience here. I vividly remember car dealership websites being the worst of them all. They all use the same software more or less and it is just designed to generate leads through coercing visitors and customers.

I wonder how many people just try to be chatty. "Hello! I'm so glad to hear from you! How is the weather where you are? How is the employer? Are you happy there?" Etc

Yep, especially on the first page you ever visit, and it covers 60% of the contents.

Also, you usually have to close the "subcribe to our newsletter" popup first, to even see the chat window, covering the content you're interested in.

Then you scroll half a screen down, and a new popup with a survey, asking you how much you like their page.

Basically, they actively try to discourage you from seeing the content you actually want to see on the page.

Well, I guess this is what happens when a business operation is placed under the control of marketing.

It's a very old-fashioned attitude; back in the early noughties, many companies thought of the web as essentially an advertising billboard, so the website was placed under the marketing team. That's counterproductive, if the website is actually a core business operation.

It's pretty sad that even little startups these days are ending up doing it. They usually have two or three people "available" through chat but the chatbox punches you in the face even when you're just a visitor trying to check out what the fuck their startup does.

If they could, they'd trigger something on your phone or computer that causes a knife to stab you in the face the first time you open their site. But alas, their power is limited to rendering the site unusable and unreadable.

I just type "No thank you, I have no questions yet!" in those boxes. Then shortly after you will something like "<Support person Foo has entered the chat.> <Support person Foo has left the chat.>".

If everyone would do this then eventually the company would be forced to remove the initial chat bubble since their support is wasting 90% of their time looking at bullshit "No thank you!" answers.

> If everyone would do this then eventually the company would be forced to remove the initial chat bubble since their support is wasting 90% of their time looking at bullshit "No thank you!" answers.

or they'd get worse since someone would somehow figure out a way to prove it's "customer engagement" and therefore valuable.

Whenever it nags, I click on it and ask how to remove the chat.

Then I say it doesn’t work, because, clearly it doesn’t. At one point they give me a real person to talk to.

That’s what in-product char is for, right, resolving UX issues?

I’ve been looking for months for a time-tracking tool on MacOS and I never subscribe to any because I throw the ball when opening the pricing page and the chat opens. I’m so annoyed I insult them, I really need a time tracking tool for my team.

I can recommend to you the open source tool ActivityWatch.

I think this is the default for services like Intercom and you can't stop it [0]. It's super annoying.

0: https://www.intercom.com/help/en/articles/5053699-how-do-i-s...

Could we simply block it with an adblocker?

Firefox has and addon called "Hello, Goodbye" that does: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hello-goodbye...

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