LibraryH3lp Blog

Let's say that you are a library offering chat in a research environment like your catalog search results page. Patrons might miss the in-page chat entry point if they are feeling overwhelmed. There's tons of search results staring them in the face and maybe they're struggling in their research. Adding a timer-based offer of help in the form of a proactive chat invitation can be a welcome life preserver -- especially if the patron knows there's a human librarian on the other side offering immediate assistance.

When LibraryH3p first offered proactive chat invitations about 10 years ago, we had several libraries do pilots to gauge effectiveness. Though many years old now, we wanted to again share the results of those pilots here because our customers found proactive chat to positively impact engagement. We invite you to follow that link and take some time read through what other LibraryH3lp customers have experienced with proactive chat invitations with real guests.

You can turn on proactive chat invitations on any of your existing chat snippets. We recommend keeping the messaging of your invitations concise, friendly, and, well, inviting. For example, "Welcome! Have questions? Get real-time help from real librarians." 

We recommend setting the timer for your invitation anywhere between 15 to 45 seconds. By waiting at least 15 seconds, a guest has had some time to scan the content of the page. But you don't want to wait too long before offering up help because guests tend to move quickly through pages rather than sitting on a particular page for minutes at a time.

Let us know how it goes! We're always eager to hear feedback on features and are happy to help if any questions pop up or if you hit any snags.

To help you maximize engagement, we developed some questions you can ask yourself to see where you stand. In this post, we'll tackle the last two questions.

1. Is chat available to guests?
2. Do guests notice your chat widget?
3. Is it easy for guests to start a chat?
4. Do guests know they're chatting with a human?
5. Do guests have enough room to chat?
6. Do guests have to wait a long time to connect to an operator?

5) Do guests have enough room to chat?

If your guests are trying to chat with you in a cramped chat widget, they may get frustrated and give up. Cramped chat widgets are probably ok for short, quick conversations but if guests are spending even a moderate amount of time chatting with operators they'll want more room so they can easily review the conversation if needed and see any images the operator may share with them. 

Use the chat widgets on your web pages as a guest would and see how it feels. Try short text, long text, and send some images. Make sure you do all of this using different devices -- desktops/laptops, tablets, and phones.

We strongly recommend using pop-out chat widgets since they generally work best for mobile and also give the guests the most room for chat. Importantly, pop-out chat widgets are NOT subject to pop-up blockers so no worries there.

If you're using embedded chat widgets, make sure you've set the width of the chat box to 100% so that it is responsive.

6) Do guests have to wait a long time to connect to an operator?

Let's face it. Everyone's attention span is short and getting shorter all the time. If guests have to wait too long before they get an initial response from an operator, they won't stick around. 

We recommend taking some time to review the average wait times for your operators in 2024. The reports page of the admin dashboard includes a "Chats Per Operator" report that let's you know the number of chats answered by each operator along with average, median, minimum and maximum wait times. Analysis of this data is a great way to identify if any corrective action need to be taken with staffing either on an individual basis or communally. 

That wraps up our list of questions! If you missed or need to review the first four questions, take a peek at Part 1 and Part 2. And if you have any questions or hit any snags, please contact LibraryH3lp support. We're always happy to help.

To help you maximize engagement, we developed some questions you can ask yourself to see where you stand. In this post, we'll tackle the next two questions.

1. Is chat available to guests?
2. Do guests notice your chat widget?
3. Is it easy for guests to start a chat?
4. Do guests know they're chatting with a human?
5. Do guests have enough room to chat?
6. Do guests have to wait a long time to connect to an operator?

3) Is it easy for guests to start a chat?

This item is important if you've opted to include an entry form in your chat widget. By default, guests can enter a question in to the chat box and they're off and running with chat -- it doesn't get much simpler than that. However entry forms add an extra hoop the guest must go through before the conversation begins. If guests have to provide too much information up front for a simple question, they won't start a chat. 

Take some time to review the questions in your entry form to ensure a balance exists between the work a guest needs to do to start a chat and the importance of having that information for each and every guest that chats. Information can always be obtained from a guest during the course of the chat depending on the nature of the chat. You may find that some entry form data is better collected on per guest basis. Ad hoc collection can be made easy for operators with canned messages.

4) Do guests know they're chatting with a human?

With the rise in the popularity of bots, we've seen that more and more guests assume they'll be connected to a bot rather than a real person. You may want to touch up your chat box title or add a greeting so that you clearly set the expectation for the guest that they can expect to get quality real-time help from a live person. You just might find that guests are more apt to engage if they know there's a person on the other side.

That's it for now! Stay tuned for our next post where we'll tackle the last two questions designed to help you achieve better engagement for 2025. If you missed or need to review the first two questions, take a peek at Part 1. And if you have any questions or hit any snags, please contact LibraryH3lp support. We're always happy to help.

One awesome and simple way to increase the effectiveness of your chat widgets for 2025 is to review how you use LibraryH3lp on your web pages. Maybe with a few tweaks here and there you can enhance visibility and make the widget more usable for your guests. 

We've developed some questions you can ask yourself to ensure you have your chat widgets customized to maximize engagement. In this post, we'll tackle these first two questions.

1. Is chat available to guests?
2. Do guests notice your chat widget?
3. Is it easy for guests to start a chat?
4. Do guests know they're chatting with a human?
5. Do guests have enough room to chat?
6. Do guests have to wait a long time to connect to an operator?

1) Is chat available to guests?

First and foremost, if operators aren't staffing chat then chat won't be available to guests. For example, if chat is only available for an hour a day you probably won't get many chats unless that happens to align with the busiest hour of guest traffic. 

Take some time to review your chat scheduling to ensure folks are online and available to help guests as much as possible. Similarly, you'll want to review the offline options you offer guests when chat is offline to ensure no inquiry goes unanswered.

If you are a library and need help staffing chat, we recommend contacting our partner Chatstaff to see about boosting chat availability for your patrons. Chatstaff is not a co-op and is staffed by carefully vetted MLS-level librarians.

2) Do guests notice your chat widget?

Even if chat is available, you won't get chats if your guests don't notice your chat widget. Makes sense, right? You'll want your chat widget to be visually appealing and aligned with your branding. Most LibraryH3lp customers do a fantastic job with this right out of the gate. Let's take that a step further.

When designing a theme for your chat widget, we recommend selecting colors that contrast with the most common colors used on your website's to ensure the chat widget stands out. You want to draw the guest's eye to the availability of chat. And don't worry. You don't have to go outside of branding guidelines to get contrast. Just look through your branding palette and choose the colors that contrast best against the page. 

Once a guest knows that chat is available, they'll naturally look for chat in the same place as they navigate around your web pages. We recommend placing the widget in a prominent, easily accessible location, such as the header, sidebar, or bottom corner of your webpage.

Proactive chat invitations are another great way to draw a guest's eye and let them know that chat is available. You can customize these so that guests are invited to chat after they've spent some time on a web page. The animation of the invitation appearing after the timer expires draws the guest's attention. And you don't have to worry about annoying your guests with proactive chat invites. There's a built-in politeness cookie so that the invitation is suppressed once a guests declines the invitation.

That's it for now! Stay tuned for our next post where we'll tackle the next two questions designed to help you achieve better engagement for 2025. If you have any questions or hit any snags, please contact LibraryH3lp support. We're always happy to help.

Example of an entry form that a guest would see to start a chat

Once the "Start chat" button is clicked, the guest sees a chat box populated with the question from the entry form as the first message in the conversation. 

The guest sees the chat box after clicking the "Start chat" button

Now, let's talk about the operator's side of the entry form. From the operator's point of view, the question from the entry form pops up as the first message in the conversation just like any other chat. A big difference, however, is that the operator sees the guest's identity (name and email) during the chat instead of the usual anonymous guest ID. The guest's name and email are also saved as part of the chat metadata in Chat History.

What the operator sees after the guest submits the entry form

Maybe you don't need both a guest's name and email. No worries! It's possible to hide name and/or email, or you can make either or both optional for the guest to fill out. Only the question is required because this becomes the message that kicks off the conversation with the operator.

And if you would like to collect other sorts of information from the guest, you can do that too! For example, you can add a drop-down menu for the guest's status, such as undergrad, grad, staff, unaffiliated, etc...  Just like name and email, custom metadata is shown to operators during the chat and also saved to Chat History.

Entry forms are enabled on a per chat skin basis. Administrators will find the entry form editor within the chat box skin editor of the administrative dashboard. When editing a chat box skin, administrators will see a "Require guest to complete an entry form before chat" checkbox that creates or removes the entry form for the chat box skin. Once the entry form checkbox is checked, an "Entry Form" tab appears between the "Branding" tab and the "Wicked CSS Hacks" tab.

Chat Skin Editor in Administrative Dashboard ("Entry Form" tab appears when checked)

In the "Entry Form" tab, administrators will find a visual editor where they can design an entry form. The default is a basic entry form that asks for a guest's name, email, and question. If desired, administrators can provide instructions, re-order fields, and add custom fields to the entry form. 

Entry Form Editor

Updates to 3mail

 Did you know that LibraryH3lp provides resources to help you promote your services to guests? We sure do!

We offer both printable and social media materials that you can use as-is or as a starting point for your promotional campaign. You can find it all on the LibraryH3lp FAQ.

Image for use in Meta Stories

Guest chat box