[HN Gopher] Chat Bubble Blindness
___________________________________________________________________
Chat Bubble Blindness
Author : quickthrower2
Score : 238 points
Date : 2020-08-05 11:13 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlistmaps.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlistmaps.com)
| owenversteeg wrote:
| I really hate those live chat bubbles, and many people feel the
| same way. When I see one of those I instantly go looking for
| alternatives to your site. Sure, you might win more clicks or
| whatever, but it's also worth considering the goodwill lost.
|
| It's kind of like hiring a used car salesman to do your sales.
| Sure, perhaps he'll sell more in the short run, but if that's
| what you're after there are plenty of unsavory tactics out there
| you can use. Wouldn't you rather customers just had a good, clean
| experience they're happy to share with others?
| rsa25519 wrote:
| > When I see one of those I instantly go looking for
| alternatives to your site. Sure, you might win more clicks or
| whatever, but it's also worth considering the goodwill lost.
|
| I think we should keep in mind that HN readers are far from the
| typical internet user.
| chmod775 wrote:
| Some pretty lazy maths concerning the statistics:
|
| Assuming there was a 0.545% chance for visitors to start a
| conversation, and the chance didn't actually change between the
| tests.
|
| In that case you'd have an ~8% chance to get 34 conversations _or
| less_ for 8004 visitors, and also an ~8% chance to get 45
| conversations _or more_ for 6622 visitors, and there would be
| just a ~0.66% chance you 'd actually see a gap _that large_ (or
| more accurately: gap between any x <=34 and x=>45) by random
| chance, suggesting there was probably some change in p in between
| the tests.
|
| Mind I just played with a specific p of 0.545% here, and also
| halfassed it.
| monkeydust wrote:
| Personally i dont mind the in web chat features (intercom being
| one) but what I really HATE is when you click on it and it says
| 'Were not available pls send us an email'. So program the damn
| thing with your working hours and dont display a chat bubble if
| there is no one to chat with at that moment in time. If I want to
| email I will find your 'Contact Us' page. Sorry for the rant
| perhaps I am alone in this...
| ron22 wrote:
| I feel the same way.
| frou_dh wrote:
| That's a bit like when a site scolds you for putting spaces in
| your credit number, when it could just strip them
| automatically.
| ksaj wrote:
| I find them to be intrusive, and end up ignoring them in the same
| way I end up not noticing things that look like ads. And sites
| that overdo it lose my attention altogether - I just move on to
| greener pastures.
|
| Mind you, I used to mute the television when ads came on. The
| constant repetition drove me nuts. Radio is even worse, which is
| why I haven't used one since I was a kid.
|
| Its not that I try to avoid any and all advertising. I think
| Twitter actually does a good job of it - at least in my feed, as
| the ads I get are directly related to my interests, and have
| actually resulted in purchases from me.
|
| It's the constant unwanted disruption. Remember when people hated
| the <blink> tag in the 90's, or those ads that jiggled? They are
| all different variations on how to annoy people into thinking
| about one (generally unwanted) thing all day.
|
| You know who does chat very poorly? LinkedIn. Once those
| notifications show up on the screen, it's so hard to get rid of
| them! You have to save messaging to the last on that site if you
| don't want to see the name list covering the right-edge of the
| screen, or a chunk out of the bottom when you minimize it.
| golergka wrote:
| > it just seemed like the startup thing to do
|
| This motivation sounds like a recipe for disaster.
| mtlynch wrote:
| In the full blog post, they show that the numbers went from:
|
| * Chat bubble: 34 conversations from 8,004 visitors (0.42%)
|
| * Nav link: 45 conversations from 6,622 visitors (0.68%)
|
| It probably performs at least on par with the chat bubble, but it
| doesn't seem like enough data to say confidently that the navbar
| outperforms the chat bubble.
|
| I agree that it's a net win to remove the intrusive chat bubble
| if they're not sacrificing conversations, but the title is
| overstating the evidence.
| dbbk wrote:
| I don't think this is statistically significant.
| solumos wrote:
| I disagree, I think it's statistically significant. I ran a
| quick z-test:
|
| p0 = 34
|
| p1 = 45
|
| n0 = 8004
|
| n1 = 6622
|
| z = -2.0924
|
| p = 0.03662
|
| So, the improvement is statistically significant at 95%
| confidence (p < 0.05)
|
| As far as practical significance, that's debatable . . .
| qyph wrote:
| A z test relies on the normal approximation, no? I don't
| think that is appropriate with proportions so close to 0.
| steve-benjamins wrote:
| Hi, I'm the author-- this is 98% confidence.
| pottertheotter wrote:
| I think people are probably more concerned that it doesn't
| have economic significance. It might have statistical
| significance, but the effect is still very small, so does
| it really matter? That's a common trap people forget to
| consider. You see this a lot in finance research where some
| variable is statistically significant in a model, but the
| difference in the economic outcome is so small that it
| doesn't matter.
|
| In this case, these are indeed tiny percentages. But you're
| going from something that a lot of people dislike and that
| is more complicated (from a technical standpoint), so we
| can simplify things and user interaction with live chat is
| not impacted.
| zamalek wrote:
| You'd hope that the percentages here would be small:
| people need to be facing a problem with your product
| _before_ they are part of the sample population.
|
| There is a lot of potential economic impact here; during
| a major problem (which _WILL_ happen) the number of
| people looking for support would increase sharply. If
| people are blind to your support system, you could be
| saying goodbye to a large amount of customers. Ignoring
| stuff like this is a far more common trap. We spend a lot
| of money on firefighters, even though we hope they never
| have any fires to fight.
| steve-benjamins wrote:
| Hey I'm the original author!
|
| How much data would you need for confidence? According to my
| calculations this is 98% confidence. That feels like 'enough'
| to make a decision for my small startup.
|
| I'm pretty explicit in the blog post that this isn't meant to
| be universally applicable-- it's just what happened to us.
| fractionalhare wrote:
| First of all, kudos for quantifying your results instead of
| hand waving them. Yes, your results look like a ~60%
| improvement in conversion rate from the A to the B test, with
| a p value of 0.02 and a statistical power of around 80% for a
| two-tailed test. So that's good.
|
| However context is important - at this level of significance
| you'd expect to see a similarly strong, but ultimately
| spurious, effect going from the A to the B test about 1 in 50
| times.
|
| Since you're not working on something safety critical, that's
| probably an acceptable false positive rate for you. But
| generally speaking, and in particular here since the absolute
| numbers and changes are quite small, I would be wary of
| trusting such a result. It seems promising but inconclusive.
| Maybe run a few more tests with disjoint (or nearly so)
| samples of visitors?
|
| There are a few other things that could possibly confound the
| result - off the top of my head, your screenshots look like
| different pages between the A and B test. I'm not sure if
| that's how you ran the experiment or if you just happened to
| use two different page screenshots, but that would typically
| disqualify the result and require another test.
| im3w1l wrote:
| The way I'm seeing it is sure the error bars are huge. But
| it's very unlikely to be a regression. And team likes it
| better.
| cutemonster wrote:
| > screenshots look like different pages between the A and B
| test
|
| I was also wondering about that
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| BbzzbB wrote:
| I'm somewhat of a layman, but I'd wager A/B pages printed
| 50:50 (by IP for instance) could lead to a rather solid
| conclusion if ran long enough. On the other hand, eh, chat
| bubbles suck and you can quite confidently say they don't
| help, so might as well keep it this way. On a personal note I
| do feel like I would be much more prone to click a chat
| request as another menu option than a bubble.
| tqi wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. A couple things:
|
| 1) Why did the two groups have such different N sizes? If it
| was intended to be run as a 50-50, a large delta would make
| me wonder if there was an exposure bias
|
| 2) For the baseline rate (0.4%), this test is underpowered
| for even a 50% change, meaning you will have a high false
| discovery rate
| [deleted]
| dariusj18 wrote:
| I use the intercom style buttons to chat with sales reps all the
| time. It's the most convenient method for a few reasons,
|
| 1. I never know what forms of contact a website will provide
| until I navigate around the site to find it.
|
| 2. Finding the contact information can be difficult in the first
| place.
|
| 3. With the instant chat I either a) know I will get a quick
| response, or b) it tells me how long a general response takes.
|
| 4. I don't like having to use email for quick questions.
|
| 5. I DO like that the chat falls back to email as a response
| mechanism if the response time is longer than I am willing to
| wait for.
| tehabe wrote:
| I get this, I usually ignore this bubble on website and I ignore
| it even more when it pops up and pretends to chat with me. So,
| I'm glad someone tried to remove it and got even better results.
| ofou wrote:
| The main problem of those bubbles to me is that they break the
| UI. Sticking to your own UI gets more engagement as the article
| pointed out.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| I suspect that any effect is due to moving from an icon to text.
| We are inundated with icons. They become hard to see. They are
| harder to interpret. The meaning of text is much simpler to
| infer, in fact, it is the main purpose of text.
| birken wrote:
| Just as a note: if I ran an A/B test and one bucket had 8,004
| visitors and the other had 6,622 visitors, I'd be concerned about
| the way the test was setup.
|
| There are some valid possibilities to explain the discrepancy,
| but there are also a lot of possibilities in which the test
| wasn't setup properly and it isn't measuring the right thing.
|
| When you get a test result that confirms your suspicion, the
| first thing you should do is challenge those results.
| conradludgate wrote:
| It doesn't look like they A/B tested. More likely just switched
| to it 100%
| antipaul wrote:
| Even more of a problem for interpretation of these results...
| steve-benjamins wrote:
| Hey I'm the author.
|
| This links to an Indie Hackers post which doesn't have the full
| context. You can find the original post here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24060501
|
| Sorry OP-- just thought I'd point that out :)
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Thanks Steve - no need to say sorry. I was keen to post this as
| chat bubbles have been grating on me for some time and I am
| glad someone did some analysis on it!
| pbronez wrote:
| This thread should be updated to point to this link
| rocqua wrote:
| Normally dang (HN moderator) is willing to fix links to make
| things better. Should probably work here as well.
| steve-benjamins wrote:
| Is there any way to get his attention for this? That would be
| amazing...
| detaro wrote:
| email him. contact link is in the footer.
| steve-benjamins wrote:
| Awesome. Just did. Thank you!!
| jonnydubowsky wrote:
| Just wanted to let you know i enjoyed your blog post on Spotify
| earnings. You do a great job narrating your experiences!
| https://www.stevebenjamins.com/blog/music-in-the-age-of-algo...
| dang wrote:
| Changed now.
| ape4 wrote:
| On the other hand its a standard UI element that everyone knows.
| Of course, its often abused.
| bcx wrote:
| I think somewhere along the line the expectations for what people
| get when they click on a floating chat box changed.
|
| When we started Olark (http://www.olark.com) in 2009 it was novel
| to show status before you clicked on the chat button, and to
| float on the screen.
|
| I both were super important, because like you I hated clicking on
| a box, button, icon, for instant help and having it say "leave us
| a message" - and I didn't like having to dig around to find some
| way to contact a business.
|
| Now-a-days many chat/messaging products occlude presence in favor
| of collecting as much contact information as possible without
| letting you know if someone is actually there to answer the
| question --- or if you will be funneled to a bot.
|
| There are a couple of reasons for this: - the relatively high
| cost of having a person talk to you. - the allure of getting
| leads for low cost (i.e. chatbot < $$ than person) - it's far
| easier technically to ignore presence as boot-time or never even
| implement it. - the growing lack of user expectation for an
| immediate response.
|
| I think good human-to-human conversations are essential whether
| you are starting out or scaling a business. The trick is consumer
| behavior is changing due to dark patterns.
| dbbk wrote:
| There's not really a lot of context here, why was the bubble
| annoying him? Were they pushing messages upon the user landing on
| the page? The real value of the bubble is to engage prospects on
| marketing sites and landing pages.
| steve-benjamins wrote:
| Hey I'm the OP-- we give more of the story here:
| https://www.atlistmaps.com/in-good-company/chat-bubble-blind...
|
| Sorry. I didn't submit this!
| rezic wrote:
| I doubt this worked because it is less annoying but because it is
| now easier to locate the button in the first place and it tells
| you exactly what you need to know about its function.
| thomas wrote:
| Just want to say, I'm happy to hear this. That chat bubble is
| beyond annoying and many people abuse it to the point where it
| simply drives me away from the website. It can block screen
| elements and sometimes it bounces and/or updates the page title
| so that your browser tab titles changes in an incredibly
| frustrating way.
| mindhash wrote:
| Someone has finally got to it. I hated the bubble for such a long
| time because I don't think you need chat everywhere and in your
| face. It reminds me of credit card agents chasing me in malls.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| I have noticed some marketers have tried to fix chat bubble
| blindness by also adding animated popup messaging and sound
| effects to your chat bubbles. You can tell that consumers like
| it, because it drives up the interaction rate.
|
| I'd be interested in seeing an A/B/C test between a basic bubble,
| a noisy bubble, and the text link demonstrated in the linked
| article.
| aasasd wrote:
| Alright I guess -- but as an aside, disabling keyboard scrolling
| on the page is a really weird design decision.
| karldanninger wrote:
| Can you elaborate?
|
| Edit: I see now, that is not intentional.
| dawnerd wrote:
| Intercom was one of the first thing I put on my pihole blocklist.
| Since them I've had to add quite a few more. The one thing I
| absolutely cannot stand is making my tab blink like I have a
| notification.
| t0mmyb0y wrote:
| Chat buttons allow us to troll websites that have no idea what
| they are doing- most of them.
| ideal_stingray wrote:
| I don't have chat bubble "blindness" -- I have configured my ad
| blocker to hide them, as well as any other clutter I find
| distracting. I wouldn't be surprised if other users, rather than
| being blind to it, never even know the damn thing is there.
| egypturnash wrote:
| god I fucking hate chat widgets that sit there drawing attention
| to themselves and opening up without any interaction, sometimes I
| go so far as to use [an ancient page-editing
| bookmarklet](http://mrclay.org/2006/04/23/mypage-bookmarklet/) to
| get rid of particularly annoying ones.
| gcatalfamo wrote:
| Am I the only one that finds the automatic popup chat really
| intrusive? I generally leave the website shortly after.
|
| Give me the option, if I need it I will use it. Force it on me I
| will leave
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| I think whether or not this is true for a site depends heavily
| on the target demographic. Highly technical people with above-
| average focus would probably see it as an interruption and view
| it negatively.
| markosaric wrote:
| Same here. I end up blocking those that I notice using uBlock
| Origin so they never show up again globally.
|
| A simple "live chat" link in the navigation or footer like
| they've done works so much better than the intrusive popups.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Agree
|
| Automatic popups are like the annoying salesmen in stores
| asking you unsolicited questions.
|
| (The floating bubble doesn't help as well even if it's more
| discrete, and I believe not a lot of people associate it with
| "live chat")
| jrs235 wrote:
| Fake chatbot popup: "Hello and welcome, my name is Maria. How
| can I help you?"
|
| Me: "Go away."
| csmattryder wrote:
| As retail stores started to die, some smart cookie said:
|
| "Hey, remember those people who follow you around the store and
| intruded as you were just browsing? Those sucked! Let's bring
| that to the web". And lo, chatbots were born.
|
| The worst ones are the embeds that open a small window within
| the page. Hope you didn't want that content in the bottom-
| right.
| tehabe wrote:
| I think some believe this was the reason why Wal-Mart failed
| in Germany. They brought this "can I help you" with them and
| German customers rather went to Aldi & co where they could
| shop in peace.
| kissickas wrote:
| > "can I help you"
|
| Walmart? Are you sure? They are not known for being
| helpful, let alone solicitous.
|
| Ironically, the only grocery chain that I can think of
| where employees actively ask if they can help is Trader
| Joe's. I can't help but giggle at the fact that they're
| German-owned, even if this part of the culture came from
| the American founder.
| jackfrodo wrote:
| Those people followed you around because it led to higher
| sales overall. Or at least that's the idea. Pushy salesmen
| tend to move more product than laid back cashiers, even if
| the former tends to be more annoying.
|
| I worked at a Best Buy back in the day and the name of the
| game was upselling. My most annoying coworkers were quite
| successful.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| It's interesting that this apparently actually works,
| because I've never once been upsold anytime by one of these
| employees. Is it a specific type of person that it works
| on?
| antasvara wrote:
| Speaking from experience, you're most likely to be upsold
| if you don't know what you're looking for. For example,
| I've been upsold when I was buying a printer. I know
| nothing about printers, so much of the purpose of going
| to Best Buy was to see what they had and what the
| salesperson recommended.
|
| Most HN members are unlikely to be upsold due to high
| technical knowledge. You are probably more likely to have
| done research ahead of time and know exactly what you're
| looking for.
| CathedralBorrow wrote:
| Do you do a bit of research on your purchase before
| heading into a store? If yes, then that might be a big
| reason.
| eloisant wrote:
| it's like online ads, if they manage to upsale to 5%
| customers it's still a huge win.
| jccooper wrote:
| I'm sure it works for conversions of people already there.
| I do wonder how it affects traffic long-term because the
| store feels annoying. That's harder to measure.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Customers who leave don't show in either salesperson
| group's KPIs.
| me_me_me wrote:
| This is an American disease. In most European countries staff
| might great you, but they will try to discreetly shadow you
| and once you act like you need a help they will step in to
| assist.
|
| I absolutely hated the US diners with multiple 'are you ok?
| do you need anything?' interruptions during single meal. I
| know why it happens, I just find it really annoying.
| lobotryas wrote:
| And I absolutely love the extra care and attention. Dining
| out in other countries can be a complete hassle as you wait
| for the waiter to show up... whenever he feels like.
| EGreg wrote:
| It's not just annoying but they EXPECT you to stop whatever
| conversation you're talking, at ANY moment, like they're
| the pre emptive multitasking kernel. And then proceed to
| offer "specials" well into the meal. Dude I don't know you.
| You want a good tip? I would rather use an app to order
| whatever I need. I came to talk to a friend, family member
| or about a business deal. There is a time to interrupt and
| that's ONCE, when you're taking the order, and then when
| you're bringing food MAYBE.
|
| I would LOVE to have a restaurant where I can order from my
| phone at the table, signal waiters etc. And get a
| notification when food is ready so we can both choose when
| they will bring it out.
| leesalminen wrote:
| There's a Japanese restaurant in Boulder, CO that does
| something similar. There's a little cube shaped dongle on
| the table and depending on the orientation it notifies
| the server of "I'm ready to order", "Table service
| needed", "check please", etc. It worked surprising well.
|
| Here's a link if you're ever visiting and want to check
| it out: https://goo.gl/maps/5tiXvJDC9DBXoHYt8
| [deleted]
| gtfoutttt wrote:
| Bubba Gump shrimp has signs on the table that say run
| Forrest run or stop Forrest stop. Simple solution.
| clairity wrote:
| brazillian churrascaria rodizios[1] tend to have that
| too, for when you want more meat, and when you're "taking
| a break".
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod%C3%ADzio
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| I forget the name, but when I was in college there was a
| Mexican buffet chain that had a flag on the table if you
| needed refills, etc. I used to go there with my friends
| and the flag went up 5 minutes in and never came down.
|
| We ate a lot then. Me and my friends were the terrors of
| buffet lines all across town ...
| andrewzah wrote:
| America is way behind the curve here. It's typical for a
| South Korean restaurant to have a button on the table.
| The staff will only come over if you press the button.
|
| It's a much more pleasant experience overall.
| majewsky wrote:
| I was at a restaurant where each table had a QR code
| printed on it, containing the URL of a webpage where you
| could order food and drinks for that table. I was there
| with some friends who didn't notice the QR code. They
| were quite confused when the waiter came over to give
| them menus and me my first drink. :)
| thewebcount wrote:
| Actually, many chain restaurants in the US (Chili's,
| TGIFridays, etc.) now have a tablet at the table. You can
| do things like order drinks, dessert, etc. without
| flagging someone down. You can pay with credit cards.
| There are games for bored kids to play (for a fee,
| usually, though). I found it rather annoying because of
| course it has to advertise throughout your whole meal.
| Luckily there's no sound, but it displays other things
| you could be ordering. But it is really convenient for
| getting service more quickly and checking out without
| hassle.
| monkpit wrote:
| Every time I go to a restaurant with one of these ad
| tablets, I just turn it so that it's facing away from the
| rest of the table. I can use it when I want to pay or
| something, but I don't have to see all the ads.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I feel like those are way over-engineered though. I don't
| need a whole tablet with games and videos of the specials
| and the full menu. I just need the equivalent of a flight
| attendant button. That's it.
| clairity wrote:
| all the restaurants in LA's koreatown (and little tokyo,
| incidentally, because many are korean-owned) have those
| buttons too.
|
| i'm of mixed opinion--it's good when you want to be left
| alone to chat with your tablemates, but when you need
| lots of service, it can be annoying (and make you a
| little self-conscious). the nice thing is that you can
| usually still just flag down one of the usually abundant
| servers (back before lockdown).
| haraball wrote:
| That's a nice idea! I found a picture of the dongle you
| describe in the restaurant's photos:
| https://goo.gl/maps/H3C9HVxtpfihCntv6
| leesalminen wrote:
| That's the one!
| jdminhbg wrote:
| Thanks to Covid, I have been to multiple restaurants
| where you are assigned a table number and order from your
| phone (generally via the app they already have set up for
| take out). It's not as good as Michelin star service, but
| it's way better than bad service. And you never have to
| wait for a check.
| culturestate wrote:
| _> In most European countries staff might great you, but
| they will try to discreetly shadow you and once you act
| like you need a help they will step in to assist._
|
| This is even worse (to me) because most of the time there's
| nothing _discreet_ about it.
|
| I'd rather have someone ask up front if I need help - at
| which point I can politely say no - than just follow me
| around the store, silently watching, like a hyena stalking
| a wounded gazelle.
| Toorkit wrote:
| He's being a bit hyperbolic. As I'm also European, I can
| tell you employees are off doing their own thing. If you
| do need help, you have to go find one.
| culturestate wrote:
| In my experience, this is a global phenomenon that's
| probably driven more by management philosophy than by
| geography. It's endemic to e.g. luxury retailers and
| trickles down from there.
| II2II wrote:
| The other nice thing about being asked up front is the
| ability to say yes, but I will ask for help when I need
| it. The staff are usually much easier to find when you do
| have a question or need something to be retrieved, yet
| you don't have to deal with them if you don't need them.
| cameronbrown wrote:
| The stalking thing seems hyperbolic. In my experience as
| both shopper and employee, many seek to have as few
| conversations as possible.
| guitarbill wrote:
| Maybe a bit harsh, but it's still really interesting. I'm
| super glad some American supermarkets now have self-
| checkouts, and will use them where I can. Not only are the
| cashiers often unreasonably cheerful, but having someone
| bagging your stuff feels super weird. To be fair, it's
| possible having a bagger (?) is more efficient, because it
| increases throughput. But it still creeps me out to stand
| there passively doing fuck-all.
|
| Maybe chat bubbles are similar? Taking away someone's
| initiative might work well for things they don't want to
| do, but for people who know what they want or just doing
| research, it doesn't seem like a good plan.
| klyrs wrote:
| I only use self checkout in a pinch, in large part as an
| act of Luddism. Self checkouts take away entry level
| work. I have a choice to support the workers, so I take
| it. Not to mention how awful the interfaces are when
| you're buying fresh veg -- I find that it's usually
| faster to wait for an available checker. In a lot of
| grocery stores near me, I do my own bagging and some even
| have a second conveyer for that purpose.
| monkpit wrote:
| If you want to support the workers and actually make a
| difference in someone's life, get someone to take your
| bags to your car and tip that person. They get to take a
| break and walk outside, and make some extra cash under
| the table.
|
| I don't think opting-out of self checkout counts as
| "supporting the workers".
| chrisparsons wrote:
| I work in Grocery IT. We generally assume you have to
| have two self checkouts in order to meet the
| customer/item throughput of one staffed checkout. And
| even then, I'd tend to put my money on the staffed
| checkout.
|
| Some of it is just the limitations of a SCO, in that
| store staff don't have to wait for each item to be
| weighed by the lane before moving to the next item, but a
| lot of is that most people are not nearly as fast as they
| think they are.
|
| A lot of it depends on how hands-on the staff manning the
| SCOs are as well. The Costco near me implemented SCOs in
| the past year, but those might as well be full checkouts
| with the number of staff that are around them looking to
| help out.
| kevincox wrote:
| Part of the problem is that the self checkouts are super
| paranoid about preventing theft. If you put your bag on
| the output you get in trouble, your child puts their hand
| on the scale you need cashier assistance, you don't wait
| long enough after the last item for it to be weighed and
| you need to start . It's literally impossible to go fast!
| I don't know if it is justified. But it seems surprising
| as I could easily just put something in my bag if I
| wanted to steal it, I don't know why I would bother
| putting it into the scale.
|
| Of course the cashier will always be faster, they are
| familiar with the interface, know where most of the
| barcodes are and have the codes of most non-barcoded
| items memorized.
|
| But self-checkout could be much faster by removing some
| anti-features (from the customer POV). I have seen a
| couple of stores with a better solution where you pick up
| a scanner at the start and scan your items as you go.
| This has the advantage of parallelizing most of the
| process instead of clogging up on big expensive machines.
| In fact with the ability to check out on that device you
| could probably get by with just a "Customer Service" desk
| for when something goes wrong.
| saltminer wrote:
| I much prefer self-checkouts because of the forced
| conversations cashiers are forced to have and cashiers
| just being bad at bagging, but they really do slow down
| the process. The scanner locks for a couple seconds after
| an item is scanned (even if there is no weight check or
| other delay screen), presumably to prevent double
| scanning for slower customers, but it just becomes a
| giant PITA when I have small items I could scan and toss
| into my bag in 10 seconds if they'd just remove the delay
| and it ends up being closer to a minute since it'll
| probably pause to reweigh a couple times in addition to
| the normal delay.
| sethammons wrote:
| I avoid self-checkout at most stores because of this.
| Just too much a pain in the butt, never mind if I have a
| lot of items and they can't even fit in the baggage area!
|
| Walmart has this figured out. You just scan the item.
| Done. No scales, no anti-theft I can tell aside from a
| person watching.
| maartenh wrote:
| In the Netherlands, self-checkout doesn't use scales. I
| simply scan all the items in my basket, and put them in
| my backpack immediately. Once in a while, you are
| flagged, and a sample of your items are scanned to make
| the probability low that you are stealing something.
| Scanning the loyalty card helps to prevent too many
| checks over time. All in all, the total overhead next to
| scanning your items is a mere few seconds.
|
| This is a huge contrast with my experience in the UK.
| Those scanners are talking, are slow to move between
| states, require you to put everything from one to another
| scale. This is indeed often slower than a human worker,
| and amazes me to no end.
| kevincox wrote:
| That sounds way better, and quite possibly more effective
| at actually catching shoplifting. My experience in the
| UK, Ireland US and Canada has been the bad example as you
| have described.
|
| It seems to be a classic case of bureaucratic risk
| aversion without proper cost analysis.
| badwolf wrote:
| Purposefully slowing down every step of the checkout
| process is the biggest reason I refuse to use self
| checkout.
| wtracy wrote:
| I remember Food 4 Less back in the day (maybe twenty
| years ago) having a sort of hybrid system where the
| cashier scanned your items and rang then up, but you
| bagged your own groceries.
|
| Are you familiar with any similar systems today? How do
| they rate on throughput?
| im3w1l wrote:
| This is the it's always been done in Sweden. With space
| for two different customers to bag per cashier. A metal
| divider is put diagonally on the conveyor belt to feed
| items either left or right.
| bbarnett wrote:
| I'm in Canada, and we have all varieties of this.
|
| The 'metal divider, self bag' is a discount / bulk store
| I go to. Old-style 'casher + bagger' is another. And I've
| gone to stores with self-checkout, both with and without
| scales in them.
|
| Seems quite varied here, with of course that variance
| mostly along franchise lines...
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| Any grocery store that's understaffed/busy ATM. As
| awesome as H-E-B is, I've had to bag my own stuff once in
| a while. It usually feels a bit rushed and seems to annoy
| the checker if you're not super-quick about it.
| [deleted]
| watertom wrote:
| Car dealerships are the worst. Every. Damn. Page. Has. One.
| And. No. Matter. How. Many. Times. You. Decline. The. Bubble.
| Keeps. Popping. Up.
| jerf wrote:
| I was shopping for a used car a couple of months ago. I had
| an question about a car, and figured, what the heck, let's
| give it a try.
|
| No answer, of course.
|
| Brilliant.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| It's particularly frustrating since the pop up "Chat Bot" is
| almost always just a crappy search "Bot" which does a worse
| job than the normal search engine.
| Uninen wrote:
| You can block the offending domains with uBlock Origin or
| similar tool. It's a relatively small effort to block the
| most used ones after which you won't see most of the popups
| anymore.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Given the entire point of the OP, you are clearly not the only
| one, right?
| stmw wrote:
| It is really great to see this researched and documented. While
| not every A/B test is proof, it is compelling in this case - and
| confirms my long-head view that these chat bubbles are just bad
| UX. There is a lot of other recent "UX best practices" that are
| actually worst practices, but because every unicorn is doing it,
| teams often feel they should do the same - without asking whether
| this kind of "engagement" is really serving the core product
| management objectives.
| drivebycomment wrote:
| If they were to actually test "chat bubble blindness", you have
| to replace the bubble icon with the text at roughly the same
| position and compare. They didn't do that. Rather, they moved the
| chat to more prominent position - at the top of the page near the
| center, with bigger space, etc. So of course it increases the
| engagement.
|
| More important question is if they are getting spurious extra
| engagement (i.e. more chat traffic eventually costs more money),
| or they are getting the engagement they want.
| steve-benjamins wrote:
| Good luck AB testing things in the real world :p
| drivebycomment wrote:
| Indeed. I'm not saying they should do a perfect A/B test.
| Rather, in this case, their conclusion (of "chat bubble
| blindness") is not a logical conclusion you can draw from the
| experiment they performed.
| renewiltord wrote:
| No, that's not the conclusion. That's the portion that is
| explicitly speculation. There are tells in the language:
|
| > _The navigation link led to a 62% increase in live chat
| conversations...This felt like a win-- I like live chat but
| I hate chat bubbles...In any case, don 't expect to see a
| chat bubble on Atlist ever again. _
|
| That's the conclusion: "For this page, losing the bubble is
| okay. We're going to lose the bubble."
|
| > _And if I hate them, maybe users hate them too? Maybe
| users have developed a chat bubble blindness-- just like
| banner ad blindness._
|
| That's the speculation. You can tell because of the
| 'maybe's in there.
|
| This is actually quite well-written. The conclusions are
| written in clear language indicating fact. There is a
| potential "future work" description that speculates on
| possibilities while expressing the uncertainty.
|
| IMHO very well expressed, good text. But what you've said
| has made me think about why people sometimes read
| scientific papers the way they do. They'll say "They claim
| that this will make fusion power possible" or something
| like that when those parts are in the "Future Work" section
| and are therefore unsubstantiated and intended to be a
| "here are some distributaries of this river of fact".
|
| Interesting. I think the cues are adequate, but clearly
| they are not for many. I still think they should write the
| way they do and just accept that some in the audience
| aren't going to make it there.
| peacefulhat wrote:
| I leave the site immediately if there's intercom integration or
| similar.
| dbbk wrote:
| This seems like quite an overreaction.
| jtth wrote:
| This relative percentage stuff is silly.
| gumby wrote:
| An interesting question is whether they got .24% _more_ chatters
| or not. Would leaving the chat bubble _and_ having the link lead
| to .75% of visitors chatting?
|
| They had good reasons for getting rid of it (the "designing
| around it" issue is a real "tail wags dog" problem), so I'm not
| suggesting they made any sort of mistake! Just curious if one vs
| the other appeals to different kinds of ppl in a meaningful way.
| aogl wrote:
| I must say that I too have come to absolutely hate the chat
| popups. They're almost always bots and have some pre programmed
| rubbish responses. They are not "AI" and dont come close to
| helping me with anything. In fact, I've come to hate it so much
| that I have a chome extension that makes sure I never see another
| one! May I add that since that moment, I've had as much help on
| websites and I dont feel irate with one less thing popping up as
| I navigate!
| yarone wrote:
| I think the execution of the the chat bubble (a circle with a
| strange looking chat icon plus happy face) is not great.
|
| Perhaps "blindness" is an issue. But also the chat bubble
| execution itself. Do visitors understand what it is?
|
| I wonder what would happen if there were a persistent chat bubble
| with the text "live chat" or "chat now" "questions?"
|
| In contrast, "Live Chat & Support" in the primary navigation is
| extremely visible and clear.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I see that circle thing all the time but I had no idea what it
| did until this moment.
| projektfu wrote:
| It reminds me of the Lolwut pear more than anything else.
| Yizahi wrote:
| In my experience chat buttons are close to useless. First of all
| that's usually not a chat at all at first, there is some bot with
| a series of dumb checks and links. And if you manage to get a
| human on the other side they usually have a timer and if you dare
| to type your reply longer than 30 seconds they will just drop
| your session at any arbitrary moment with a comment "user didn't
| respond".
|
| My internal ranking of contact options is like this:
|
| Email - completely useless, won't even try. Nobody ever replied
| me on my email sent to the contact listed on a company website.
| (my address is my first plus last name at gmail, so nothing
| "weird" there)
|
| Chat bubble - almost useless, will try only when desperate, like
| when other channels don't respond or gated (e.g. phone number
| gated by ten layer deep voice menu)
|
| Telegram/Whatsapp chat associated with work number - almost
| always work and quick, but rarely made available for customers.
| Or available only after you've already contacted them some other
| way.
|
| Phone - always works but needs a lot of attention and
| interruption from both parties
| mderazon wrote:
| Twitter seems to work pretty well for me as well
| smeyer wrote:
| >Phone - always works
|
| "Always" seems excessively generous here. There are many times
| I've contacted a company and reach a human who says "sorry, I
| can't help you, but you can file a ticket on the website" let
| alone the times I've received "sorry, we're experiencing more
| than normal callers, please try again another time" without
| even the option to wait on hold.
| noahtallen wrote:
| Almost every phone support center I've called has been hot
| garbage even after getting past hold. From the automated
| options menu, which doesn't have what you're looking for, to
| the rep needing to forward me somewhere else.
| oehpr wrote:
| "And if you manage to get a human on the other side they
| usually have a timer and if you dare to type your reply longer
| than 30 seconds they will just drop your session at any
| arbitrary moment with a comment "user didn't respond"."
|
| I've personally never had that issue, but my formative years on
| the internet were on IRC, and as a result when I see a chat
| text box, I usually send chat messages tersely and fast.
| Hey I could use some help For some reason I can't
| log in. Not sure why? Looking at the network
| the login request didn't seem to send my password.
|
| ect.
|
| I've only recently learned that this is apparently not
| universal behavior. Two of my co-workers at my company actually
| fill out large, properly formatted, _paragraphs_ of text in the
| chat box.
|
| There was a point where one co-worker chastised me for
| continually interrupting them before they could finish writing.
| Funnily enough, when I talked to them about using a rapid style
| of fast terse messages, they immediately adapted to using it.
| So I think this is just a culture thing. It comes down to what
| your primary modes of communication are.
|
| So with that in mind, I suspect that when you fill out large
| chunks of text like this, it looks to the support staffer that
| you started filling out the text, then moved off the webpage
| and forgot about it. They were likely expecting a terse
| sentence.
| noahtallen wrote:
| I would actually put chat bubbles higher than phone. It's
| probably the primary way users are supported at my current job
| (with real humans in the other end) and it works super well.
| And when I see the Intercom icon, I can almost guarantee that
| I'll be talking with a real person (sometimes even the founder)
| based on past experience.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Email - completely useless, won 't even try_
|
| Huh? That's how I always reach out about something, and
| probably get a response 90% of the time?
|
| I don't think you're giving e-mail enough credit here. Not sure
| why you think it's useless.
|
| I detest all the synchronous waiting associated with
| chat/IM/phone hold, I much prefer to send an e-mail and get a
| reply the next day whenever possible.
| mojuba wrote:
| I too always find the Intercom or similar bubbles incredibly
| annoying, intrusive and distracting, especially when a bot pops
| up saying something that I absolutely don't need to focus on.
|
| I think the purpose of this bubble is to promote Intercom. It's
| for sales/marketing people who see it elsewhere first (but never
| use themselves) and think it's a great idea. Next thing you know,
| there's an order coming from the C-level to engage with Intercom
| and integrate it.
|
| The effect of the integration is that some people _will_ talk and
| it will seem like an improvement - compared to zero interactions
| previously, no doubt it is. As a consequence of this, nobody
| bothers to check if it 's the best way to integrate the chat
| functionality.
|
| (Although this is only one of the 1000 things that are wrong on
| the web today. All sorts of unnecessary things that you need to
| ignore, neutralize, refuse, dismiss etc. before you can get to
| the content.)
| grahamburger wrote:
| I have used them as a business owner of an e-commerce shop and
| they were surprisingly useful for our customers. I was
| reluctant to add one to the site but it was absolutely worth
| it. I did always wish that there was a way to integrate the
| chat window in to the page layout, though - I think that would
| be much less obnoxious than the chat bubble pop-up. I started
| trying to build one like that but never finished.
| munk-a wrote:
| There was an article yesterday about the lack of increased web
| page performance to match the constantly growing infrastructure
| - one item that came up was the fact that many sites have
| unnecessary features that no one asked for. This quote:
|
| > We first added Intercom when we launched Atlist-- it just
| seemed like the startup thing to do.
|
| Seems like a perfect example of a feature that wasn't born out
| of demand or a perceived demand - it was just one of the bells
| and whistles available as freebies in frameworks so why not
| throw it in there.
| nonbirithm wrote:
| Isn't it weird that we have entire companies like Intercom or
| Rasa whose value add is pushing automated, AI-driven
| "assistants" onto websites, and then the companies that buy
| into that entire value add and codebases hacked on by ML
| experts find that none of it even works better than how it
| was in 1998?
|
| I could understand the thought process at first glance. NLP
| is revolutionizing things. Startups want the lastest
| technology if it's backed by Arxiv papers underneath enough
| layers. There is the image of people working dead-end jobs in
| call centers answering questions that nobody wants to spend
| time on but need to get answered anyways. So why not just
| make all of that go away, by inserting this ready-made
| digital replacement into your package.json?
|
| I feel like the point is being missed though. Because even a
| call center employee working at Comcast is _still a human_. I
| think people are getting way too ahead of themselves in
| thinking code and "neural" networks (what a misleading term)
| can suddenly automate all of these things that could never be
| automated before, like dynamic conversations. And even before
| that the article proves that a single HTML form element is
| 62% more effective than a VC-backed GPT2-powered "solution"
| to a problem nobody had. Why require a dynamic conversation
| at all if e-mail works better?
|
| Maybe there's some property about human interaction with
| founders or call center workers that's fundamentally
| impossible to replicate with technology, at the philosophical
| level, and we'd be better off investing into human resources
| instead of spending all of this engineering effort trying to
| work around that fact. Or maybe there theoretically isn't
| such a limitation, but I have serious doubts that 2020 is the
| year we'd finally be ready to declare that we've gotten past
| them.
| jrumbut wrote:
| It's unfortunate because AI in its current form has
| properties that would be amazing for human labor
| augmentation, but I would argue that the kind of AI system
| you can get for less than $10 million/1-2 years development
| time is not really well suited to replace a human agent.
|
| The ML sprinkled over MS Office, Facebook's image tagging
| interface, GMail are often very useful to me, but I can't
| see anyone finding the suggestions so reliable they would
| be comfortable letting the systems silently work without
| guiding the process and approving changes.
|
| It's good to have someone keeping an eye on the customer
| interactions. If you have such a deluge of support requests
| that this is a problem, maybe the actual solution is a
| simpler process or better communication up front.
| jjeaff wrote:
| While intercom's advertising may like to tout bots and AI
| chat, I can't imagine that is why most companies use it.
| They have a plethora of other features, sort of like
| proactive marketing automation that make it useful.
|
| If it were just about the chat we would have dropped them
| for a cheaper solution long ago.
|
| They continue to roll out new features and charge more and
| more for them though, so they will eventually run us off.
| Just not yet.
| monkpit wrote:
| > 62% more effective
|
| This is the thing that is odd to me about this article.
|
| They increased the number of conversations, ok. But are
| conversations valuable? How about actual conversions (not
| conversations)?
|
| If conversions remained the same, but conversations went
| up, it seems pointless.
| gav wrote:
| I see this issue a lot with social media, everyone wants to
| have share buttons and so on, but few step back and think
| about if that even makes sense and if their customers even
| want to engage with them in that way.
|
| There's a perceived need for a Facebook page or Twitter, but
| how much value does it really add to either party. Especially
| in commerce where conversion correlates with speed, is it
| really worth paying that performance cost? As an example,
| last week I removed a bunch of integrations for a client that
| were adding no value and adding roughly 1.5s to First
| Contentful Paint.
|
| Though as a strategy, it sometimes pays off to hurt your
| competitors by focusing them on features that are useless or
| cost them money.
| xwdv wrote:
| I hate those Intercom bubbles and hope they go out of business,
| but probably won't for the reasons you listed.
| agentdrtran wrote:
| Wow, I love them. They can be annoying but it's super helpful
| to click one button for support on sites I use.
| joncalhoun wrote:
| The most frustrating experience is when I'm already paying for
| an app and intercom constantly nags me and gets in the way of
| me using the actual app.
| conductr wrote:
| I recently tried to buy an electric skateboard ($1000+) and
| couldn't get to the add to cart button because of the chat
| interface. A competitor had a similarly rated/speced board so
| I bought theirs.
| salusinarduis wrote:
| Why not just remove it with inspect element?
| ta17711771 wrote:
| Bit much to have to hack around on a website to give that
| website your money.
| HighlandSpring wrote:
| Why reward bad UX?
| conductr wrote:
| That was actually my line of thinking. I was on mobile
| and it didn't work. I jumped onto my laptop and still
| didn't work. I felt I had put in enough effort at that
| point. If I didn't have what I felt was a fairly perfect
| substitute in the competitors product maybe I would have
| tried harder.
| bitten wrote:
| maybe they were on their phone?
| peacefulhat wrote:
| Because fuck intrusive sales. Shouldn't need developer
| tools to buy a product.
| hapless wrote:
| I would never have known what this button did.
| techsin101 wrote:
| between chat popup, cookie notice, notification confirmation,
| email subscription box... there is very little left to
| imagination then that this website is obviously on drugs
| thecupisblue wrote:
| And with segment, hotjar, google analytics, heap analytic.
| Jesus, how much analytics do y'all need.
| draw_down wrote:
| That thing is a nuisance, a terrible idea. People should really
| cut it out with that thing.
| j45 wrote:
| I wonder if the conversions went up included a disproportionate
| amount of mobile users.
|
| The chat bubbles are far too big on mobile devices.
|
| I go out of my way to instantly close them and it does not
| delight me in the slightest to have to deal with them.
|
| Having a chat button to press that is unobtrusive is a far better
| layout.
| nicoburns wrote:
| This makes sense to me. I usually assume that there isn't a real
| person at the other end of those bubbles, and that if there is
| they'll only be trying to sell me something.
|
| We use Intercom in our product at work. But it's for customer
| support, and is always initiated by paying customers.
| karldanninger wrote:
| You'd be surprised how many chats start with "Can I talk to a
| real person please?" and get shocked when I answer swiftly
| (during working hours of course)
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