We’re upgrading servers to provide you with better service. The upgraded server will be faster, more reliable, and improve on already great uptimes. As this is a major upgrade, please allow for between 1 to 3 hours where the Provide Chat dashboard will be offline. Additionally, the Provide Chat website may be temporarily unavailable.

Thank you for your understanding and we apologize for any inconvenience this might cause.

If you have any questions please feel free to let me know and I’ll be happy to answer them for you.

If you’ve used the chat monitor over the last two days you’ve probably noticed two new icons in the top right.

The “X” icon is used to close the chat monitor, while at the same time setting your status as offline. The “hammer and screwdriver” icon opens up a new set of features called “Your Settings”.

This area is used for settings that each operator can customize for their account only. The first group of settings your operators will be able to customize is their”audio settings”.

Some of you had mentioned over the past couple of months that hearing a sound every time a visitor came to the site was distracting. With this feature your operators will be able to customize whether they want to be alerted with a sound when:

• a new message arrives in the selected chat
• a new message arrives in an unselected chat
• a new visitor comes to the site

We’re always trying to find ways to make Provide Chat easier for you and your operators to use. Whether that’s giving you the ability to create your own Rapid Responses (out of beta two weeks ago) so you can respond to your visitors quickly and effectively, or a new feature like this where your operators can customize their audio settings,  you can count on us to continuously launch new and exciting features while making sure the product is available at the same great price.

If you have any questions about any of this please let me know and I’ll be happy to answer them for you. You can email me directly at luke@providechat.com.

Cheers,
Luke Holzken
Product Manager – Provide Chat
The smarter, easier, more affordable way to chat live.

In an ongoing effort to offer you unrivaled customization, the Rapid Response Editor is being moved out of beta.

You’ll notice some final changes. These include a font face that matches the style guide of the rest of the interface, the renaming of some fields, and the ability to delete rapid responses you no longer need.

If you’re new to this feature, the Rapid Response Editor allows you  to create  your own custom canned replies, or what we like to call Rapid Responses. This means when a customer asks you a common question your operator will be able to select a reply and send it quickly. This increases productivity, making your operators more efficient, and makes your customer happy, as they’ll receive a reply to their question much sooner.

This is the first in a group of customization features we’re adding to Provide Chat. In the next short while we plan to give you the ability to even further customize the chat window and the questions in the pre-chat questionnaire.

This next set of features will give you even more control over the design of Provide Chat. Customize the window to further match the look and feel of your website, or even translate the chat window and pre-chat questionnaire into a language other than English. Your chat window can match your site design or be output int the language you do business in.

In the mean time, if you have any questions please feel free to let me know.

Hi everyone,

We just wanted to let you know that we will be performing some routine server upgrades in order to provide a superior service. This will take place on Saturday, January 22nd at 1:00 AM EST. This will only last for about 15-30 minutes but during that window, the website may be temporarily unavailable.

Thank you for your understanding and we apologize for any inconvenience this might cause.

Sincerely,

Luke

it has been some time since we have last posted on the blog, but that is not due to any lack of activity on our end. In fact, we have been very busy in the last few months working on several new features and improving our back-end to ultimately deliver the most reliable service that we can. The feature we are launching today will be the first in a series of new features that we hope to deliver over the next couple weeks.

Today we have launched a new feature in beta that I know many of you have requested – the Rapid Response Editor. This will allow you to modify the Rapid Response menu on the Chat Monitor. Currently, this is a beta feature, which means there might be some kinks that still need to be worked out. Please let us know if you encounter any problems using it or if you have any suggestions for improving it’s implementation.

You also might notice some key features are currently missing, such as the ability to delete and change the display order of the Rapid Responses. Don’t worry, we are hard at work on these features and they will be available shortly. Over the next week you will see any missing features such as these gradually appear and we will also address any bugs that are reported.

We look forward to hearing from you and hope you enjoy this new feature.

Cheers!

Derek

I just wanted to let you know that we will be performing some maintenance on our servers in order to serve you better. This will take place on Sunday, September 19th at 4:00 AM EDT. This will only last for about 30 minutes but during that window, the website will be unavailable.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

Regards,
Derek

It’s been a while since the last update, but we’ve been working hard on many improvements to the application.  We’ve just posted a significant update this week that doesn’t change a lot visually, but improves important elements in the underlying architecture that will be important moving  forward.

A couple things that I would like to draw your attention to are the new “My Info”, “Manage Account” and “Contact Support” options are available from the admin.  The “My Info” link is a quick way to access your user details (the user you’re currently logged in with).  “Manage Account” is only available to the Super Administrator and there you will be able to access key information about your account and PayPal details (for paid accounts).  “Contact Support” is a quick and easy way to contact support from within the Dashboard, making it super easy for you to contact us.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about any of these new improvements.

Best Regards,
Luke

I’m excited to tell you about the latest update that we posted this week, which is an upgrade to the Chat Invitation feature.  This update now allows you to customize the look of the Invitation Pop-up window.  You are able to upload a custom operator image and also select custom background and button colours.  Here’s a screen shot showing the new feature in action:

If you’re looking for a specific colour that we didn’t include in this initial release, please let us know and we’ll consider adding it to the system.

In addition we have also improved the operator session management.  We know that many of you like to leave the Chat Monitor window open for extended periods of time and occasionally have had your session time out while you’re not watching.  Not only have we done some improvements to the session timeout reliability, but we now have a 30-second warning that will show up before your session times out.  This warning also plays a sound, so even if you don’t have the Chat Monitor in view, you will hear the warning.

As always, let us know what you think of these improvements and be sure to send us any suggestions you may have on how we can continue to improve these features.

Cheers,
Derek

Due to a rapid increase in the amount of users signing up for Provide Chat we’re going to be upgrading servers tonight at 12:00 AM EST (midnight). There will be a brief moment where the system is taken offline.

When we’re finished, the benefit for you will be a much more agile and faster service.

As always, we’re constantly looking for ways to improve the features, benefits, and overall service of Provide Chat. If you have any questions about any of this please let me know (luke@providechat.com).

Cheers,
Luke

Some of you have been asking for the ability to customize your text links. We’ve just added new feature that will allow you to customize the online and offline text for your live chat links.

If you’re using a text link rather than a button/image you now have full control of the text displayed in the link.

You can customize your text links by going to “Settings -> Image & Text Link” from the Dashboard.

If you have any questions about this new feature or anything else related to Provide Chat please email me at luke@providechat.com.

All the best,
Luke