Show HN: Simplest chat for platforms and marketplaces | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Simplest chat for platforms and marketplaces

gaglers.com

47 pointsbevenky25 comments

Olark and other live chat systems work well when you want to provide all of your own customer support... you're basically in the middle of the transaction. This doesn't scale too well, especially when you have to query both parties to get answers and provide them. You have to become good at knowing the transaction, have good answers and information beforehand, and become good at knowing what questions to ask to reduce loops. Real time support on a marketplace this way is a challenge.

This system allows you to onboard all of the costs above onto the sellers in the marketplace.

My feeling is this would well in a marketplace where your supply side is tech-savvy. Otherwise you'll need a desktop client to keep them signed on.

Even if your sellers are tech savvy, they'll need to keep your browser window open all the time. Sure, you could build an app and push notifications, but it's hard to provide real time chat support on your mobile device. Integrating with Google Chat, Skype, etc... may be the way to go (this works well for me when using snapengage). I'd be really interesting in using this as soon as that ability is offered on the buyer-side.

Just to be clear. Sellers using Gaglers can be using any IM client or Gtalk as well. For sellers who do not want to configure an IM client, they can just use the browser.

On the buyers side, buyers have to use the browser to ask their quick questions. You can have the buyers use a IM client, only if you know the buyer ahead of time.

Can you explain how else you envision buyers using Google talk or any IM client? We'll be happy to collaborate with you to do this.

This is a wide open space, and I think a tool like this definitely adds a lot of value to engagement on e-commerce sites. Everytime I've bought an item on eBay, I've had questions for the seller, and getting the answers quickly on chat would definitely have helped me a lot. From what I understand, that is exactly the use-case that Gaglers is targeting.

Yes, that is exactly the problem we want to solve. Thanks Niraj!

Cheers for the MVP, but jeers for the copying of Olark's branding.

I used to work for a business chat company and I bet moderation will be your biggest challenge. When you put an open chat box online, the amount of times it ends up as sex chat approaches 100%. Think chatroulette, but text.

There is no copying of Olark's branding. As I mentioned earlier, the website is a template from themeforest.

You are also wrong about this being a open chat. This is a chat initiated with a seller of a product for a specific purpose. Can you please try to understand the product before commenting on it.

Very similar color scheme, layout, and design in general. Big no-no for me, but I applaud the effort.

The similarity is unintended. We are a group of programmers, and so we picked up a theme from themeforest for now. We are working on a better design for the site.

Why is the logo of such poor quality?

Sorry, that was a quick design work to get the product out. We are working on making the design better.

It's not so much the design. Rather, the image quality is very low, like it's a fully compressed JPG? Just save it as a GIF or PNG.

How would you embed this in a marketplace listing? Pretty sure that'd be a no-no on eBay.

eBay will have to deploy this for their marketplace.

Wonder why Olark didn't build it. I just didn't realize that this was missing.

The problem that they want to solve and what Gaglers solves are for different people.

People? I thought this was supposed to be for marketplaces right?

Yes, this is for sellers at platforms and marketplaces to interact directly with their prospective buyers.

Does it exist something open source like this?

How does this compare/contrast with ZenDesk?

Gaglers and Zendesk seems complementary to me. Do you think there is any overlap?

I don't know yet - I was hoping I could be lazy and let somebody just tell me.

I've actually been meaning to try the whole live-chat with customers, but haven't gotten around to it; it'd be interesting scaring the bejesus out of a few potential buyers.

How is this different from Olark?

Olark cannot be used by sellers at Ebay or at Etsy for instance. Gagler is for people who sell at other websites like marketplaces and platforms.

So it's different in that Olark can't be used by two sides of a marketplace without using a chat application like Adium and having accounts?

Yes. This can be used without any Adium or other IM accounts. Sellers could choose to use any IM client, if they prefer.

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