Chat with your customers in a live session online. If you have our Show Baskets module
(version 4.59 or newer) 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. Both the Show Baskets and Talk Back modules are
required in order to transmit messages from the store admin to the customer in a chat session.
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 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.
The module uses 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 check 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.
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.
MACs using IE or Camino are not compatible with the chat features.
Required companion modules:
1) You must have
Show Baskets version 4.59 or newer in order to use this module.
2)
OpenUI must be installed in the store.
Online overview
and initial setup instructions for our MIVA Merchant modules. This module is installed in conjunction
with the Show Baskets module.
