The Best Customer Service Add On!

Our company (which is a SaaS), started using Olark after we had major issues with another website chat client. Olark is way better and is definitely more reliable. Apart from work, I also use Olark for one of my e-commerce side businesses. Right now, it can easily be integrated with WordPress. Not sure about other platforms, though.

Pros

1) User-Friendly: I've found Olark to have a very simple and user-friendly interface for both - the recipient and the sender. 2) Affordability: Olark gives you the opportunity to look much bigger and way more professional than you already are! All of this at a very nominal price, of course. As of April 2019, Olark has one pricing model that can either be billed monthly, annually or for two years straight. As you choose a longer commitment, the prices reduce accordingly. Also, if you're not sure about what chat client is best suited for your business, you can always try Olark for 2 weeks, absolutely free. What I like the most is that there are no "Starter", "Pro", "Enterprise" discriminations! 3) Intelligence: Olark allows you to pre-assign quick responses that keep your customers from having to wait for an answer. Our employees love this feature because they don't have to type the same response again and again. Another smart feature is the notifications that our employees get when they leave their workstations and forget to log out. Olark gives the customer a quick response, giving them an option to send the chat as an email instead. This is great for a future follow-up. 4) Reporting Feature: Olark gives the administrator the option to assess the quality of an employees' chatting capabilities as well as his/her productivity levels. An employee can also learn from any feedback that's left by their customer with regard to their chat experience.

Cons

1) No Image Sharing: This may not be a necessity for all businesses, however, we occasionally require our customers to send us screenshots of the issue that they are facing. This can help us serve them better. We have makeshift walkarounds for this, but having an image sharing option would be great. 2) One User At A Time: Unfortunately, only one user can be logged on to the agent at any given time. This could be a deal breaker larger businesses that have more than one customer care representative.

One of the easiest tools to connect with customers

I love that you connect and the UI is uncluttered. As you wait for chats, Olark welcomes you with a positive message. Then as you get the chats, it is very easy to use. It took me and my peers a couple of minutes to learn how to use it. Our customers love to chat and they also love how easy it is to get in touch.

Pros

It's simple, easy to use and allows you to store frequently used responses to speed up communication.

Cons

Visitors can send you files but you can't send files back to visitors. It is a bit difficult because if you want to send a PDF or a screenshot, you have to e-mail it or have it stored on a Web server and give the visitor a URL.

A good value for money tool

Pros

I used Olark daily while working at my first company. I used it almost daily and the good thing about Olark is it isk very simple, easy to learn/understand UI and gets the work done. It would be great for a small company/start up.

Cons

Overall, it does get the work done but I didn't see any advanced functionalities like getting analytics of usage. May be text analytics to understand the most common type of concerns etc.

Decent value but performance somewhat lacking

When Olark is functioning correctly, it's a decent tool. The service is affordable, and this has been the largest draw. Our organization uses it as an integrated chat support option and it has helped take our support to a higher level. Some issues arise however when our users contact our other support channels and report "not getting a response" which we determined to result from our rep's not receiving the text, simply open chats with no content. We have no way to determine when this is happening or why but it comes and goes sporadically. When the transcripts are later sent to our email inbox (another of their useful features) we see the conversation, but by then it's too late and our customers are already frustrated. We've kept it for over 2 years because we've built a lot of our other functionality around it, however the problems (such as not having accurate visibility of when other reps are online as another example) have continued and we will likely be seeking an alternative option.

Pros

Easy to use Through metrics and reporting Easily integrated with other ticketing and metrics tracking programs

Cons

Unable to post images (from the chat rep side) Performance/ functionality somewhat inconsistent Limited ability to create personalized macros Agent visibility (knowing when teammates are online) often unreliable/ not functional

A great website chat tool

Overal Olark is a great tool that will serve most website needs for a chatbox. It's geared for non-enterprise clients, from my experience, but is still a very capable chat tool.

Pros

Olark is a simple to use and simple to set up a website chat tool that allows any website to have a custom chat. Setting it up was super easy and took no time at all aside from installing a plugin (we have a Wordpress website) and getting up and running was fast.

Cons

Olark has some limitations around it's functionality that other competitors such as Drift have. Drift is designed for a B2B application, integrating with robust platforms whereas Olark does not. This is a pretty specific use case, but one that I noticed.