Chat with your customers in a live session online. This bundle contains Show Baskets and Talk
Back modules. With our Show Baskets module you can
identify and open a chat session for a specific basket. Then with the Talk Back module, the
customer can read and respond in that open chat session. The Show Baskets and Talk Back
modules along with the OpenUI are required in order to transmit messages from the store
admin to the customer in a chat session. If you already have the Show Baskets module, do not
order this bundle. Rather, order the individual
Talk Back
module and make sure you have the
latest update to Show Baskets.
You can use a module token to display a "Chat" button for the customer to page store staff. You
can limit the display of the paging button to only when specific store employees are logged into
your MIVA Merchant admin. When visitors click the button an email is sent to your predetermined
email address you use to notify staff that there is someone in the store who wants to chat live.
Additionally, a ? mark is displayed next to that visitors Basket ID in the Show Baskets display in
Merchant admin.
The store staff can open the session by posting a first message, either in response to a paging
requrest or just by browsing the Show Baskets activity and selectively choosing customers to chat with.
This latter usage is a handy way to interest customers in products when you see they are
placing other related products in their baskets. You can even use it as an opportunity to tell them
about sales, impromptu discounts, or offer coupons. Once the store begins the dialog, an alert image or text can
be displayed on the storefront (using
a token) which invites the customer to chat. If they click the invitation, their chat window will
popup. The store and customer can then chat live. On the admin side, the admin user's ID is
displayed next to the basket ID. This makes it easy to keep track of who is chatting with whom in
the event there are multiple store employees chatting with customers. That said, multiple employees
can chat with the same customer in the same session. In addition to visibly updating the
remote chat windows, an audible wav file can be used to prompt the user that a new response has
been added to the chat session.
The modules use the typical user interface of MIVA Merchant module installation and the
configuration screen is within Merchant admin. The refresh rate is set by the module's
configuration, as is the various buttons and text the customer sees. When product and category token
links are inserted in the chat by admin users, those product and category codes are checked to ensure
they are valid before the link is inserted into chat. For example, when putting the token
%product|ABC123% in the chat message input and clicking Send, the chat checks the products
database for the existance of product code ABC123 before it builds the link. In addition to page
links, the admin users can insert images directly into the chat session box. Visitors are not
allowed to insert html and potentially harmful links. As a standard MIVA Merchant module, the
Talk Back and Show Baskets modules are able to maintain chat sessions as part of the regular
Merchant admin rather than as a separate program. This intimate relationship also means that
actual store data is used in the functioning of this chat program; admin users logged into admin,
product and category validity, and session IDs compared. Unlike most chat programs, no
monthly fees are required to use this chat program.
In Show Baskets admin you can display all open baskets in a table format. This report
includes active and expired baskets. As a MIVA Merchant store
owner you are able to see how many people come to your
store and abandon baskets, even after placing items in the
basket. In some cases, customers get to checkout and then
abandon baskets and you can determine that too. You can
use the module to check basket activity before closing the store
for maintenance or deleting baskets in admin. As baskets
are converted to orders, they disappear from this listing.
Likewise, when expired baskets are deleted in Admin, they
also disappear from this listing.
- Basket ID - Number assigned when a customer visits your store
- Order No. - Incremented number (or retrieved from unused numbers) each time a customer enters their customer information at checkout
- Customer - Account info (if available) - Login, Ship To Name, Bill To Name (if different), Ship To Email, Bill To Email (if different)
- Product - Product codes in the basket at this time (may be empty or contain one or more)
- Expired - "Yes" indicates the basket was last refreshed more than the number of minutes for your basket timeout setting. A number indicates the number of minutes since last activity and
the basket is not timed out.
You have the ability to delete specific baskets. This feature was
requested by a store owner who found his competition was purposely putting large quantities of items
in the basket so they would be out of stock. By using this feature he was able to delete the basket
and the items were immediately put back in inventory. If you are using the
OpenUI version 4.935 the Show Baskets link can be found in the upper admin section under Current Shoppers (see image
below). While the OpenUI tells you how many unexpired baskets there are, the Show Baskets module goes further
by showing you the items in the baskets and specific number of minutes each basket was last
accessed.
Limitations: The module depends on the customer using cookies and that the cookie does not change
each time the customer clicks on a new screen. The cookie (session ID) needs to remain with the
customer as they shop in your Merchant store anyway or they would not be able to maintain items
in their basket. The customer cannot have popups blocked and they must have javascript enabled.
Some OS may have more problems than others, e.g. MAC.
Required companion modules:
1) Both the Show Baskets and Talk Back module in this bundle need to be installed
2)
OpenUI must be installed in the store.
Online overview
and initial setup instructions for our MIVA Merchant modules.
| Screen shot showing open baskets |
| OpenUI menu with Show Baskets link |
| Using Show Baskets and Talk Back modules in chat session (admin side) |
| Screen shot of saved session |
