Webchat

One important decision for every business considering a chatbot is what channel they should deploy it on. By channel we mean the chat application that the bot will be used on.

Examples of channels are Facebook Messenger, Telegram, SMS, Kik and Webchat.

In this article we discuss why a business might decide to use Webchat.

Webchat is a chat application that pops up in the browser on top of the web page (or on mobile as its own web page). Webchat can therefore be used by anyone with a browser.

Advantages over other channels

Webchat has the advantage that every user is guaranteed to be able to access webchat whereas whether a user is able to use a particular chat platform depends on whether that user uses that chat platform or not.

Webchat is anonymous and therefore customers and potential buyers may be more inclined to use it versus a channel on which they can be identified.

For customer service queries that have a short lifespan, a webchat solution can be a good solution.

Webchat is also more controllable and potentially secure than third party chat channels.

Disadvantages

Webchat, however, does have issues in that it is not easy for average mobile users to use the browser at the same time that a Webchat is running, and if a Webchat is closed the history is lost.

In some cases the history being lost is a good thing for the customer, for example in the case that they were making a general inquiry to a website upon first arriving at it. They wouldn’t want information about every question they asked on a website stored.

There are other cases however where they would like to go back to this information. In that case it is possible to link Webchat to SMS or email.

In general, Webchat is ideally used for short interactions as opposed to long running interactions.

Conclusion

Webchat as a channel is growing in popularity, mainly because of the data privacy issues and because it is guaranteed that every user can use it. Webchat is a key component of any chatbot platform.