Blog
Blog Posts
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New: iPhone app
Our iPhone app just got approved by Apple! The application is free, and works with any paid LiveLeader account. Get it on the Apple App Store.
The interface will be familiar to existing LiveLeader users. To keep it manageable, only a single chat window will be displayed at any time.
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Using LiveLeader with Facebook
Internet users are spending incredible amounts of time on social networks. Facebook is of course the dominant one for now (but keep an eye on Google+, the search giant’s latest effort after a previous string of failures). Interacting with users on Facebook is becoming an important part of the marketing strategies of many companies. Many companies have created a Facebook Page to facilitate communication with their customers.
Facebook supports live chat, but only for personal profiles. So until now, it has not been possible for users to chat directly on a Facebook Page.
Enter the LiveLeader Facebook application. By adding this application to your company’s Facebook page, you can use LiveLeader to offer live chat to your customers with a single click. When LiveLeader is added to your Facebook page, your users will get the option to “Chat with us”.
We’ve put together a simple guide to show you how to do this. In our experiments, it only takes about 60 seconds. You will need an Enterprise account, however.
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New feature: end-user sound support
We just released a frequently requested feature: sound support for end-users (i.e. the customer end of the chat).
This is particularly useful when customers are waiting in line. Up until now, customers would have had to regularly check the chat window to check for a response. Now, they get an automatic sound alert, similar to what happens on the operator side.
The new feature uses the HTML5 audio API, if this is available. Otherwise, it falls back to Flash.
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New feature: visitor summaries
LiveLeader provides a wealth of information about visitors. Naturally, some bits of this information is more relevant than other bits. With the new visitor summary function, LiveLeader distills the most important information and displays it so it’s immediately visible to the operator.
Based on feedback from you, we’ve also improved the email transcript function so you can use many new variables in the transcripts.
The following variables can now be used:
- $transcript$ – the transcript of the chat
- $email$ – visitor’s email
- $name$ – visitor’s full name
- $firstname$ – visitor’s first name
- $lastname$ – vsitor’s last name
- $chatid$ – unique ID for the chat
- $date$ – date/time, in default format: 26 Jun 2009 3:45 PM
- $url$ – page on which the chat took place
- $ip$ – customer IP
- $keywords$ – search keywords, if any
- $referrer$ – referring site, if any
- $city$ – customer city
- $country$ – customer country
- $isp$ – customer ISP
- $org$ – customer organization
Many of these variables are most useful when used with email chat transcript copies, which is a simple way to integrate LiveLeader with any system cabable of capturing emails, like many CRM systems.
LiveLeader now also automatically converts internet addresses (URLs) entered by the operator into clickable links. However, when an operator enters a long URL, this can take up a lot of space in the visitors chat window. From now on, LiveLeader automatically shortens long URLs on the visitor side.
Another minor new feature is the ability to capture a visitor’s name with a single input field in our survey system. Previously, you had to use two inputs (firstname+lastname).