New: Visitor Information Panel & Custom Profile Fields

At Olark, we believe human connections are essential to business growth. But to really connect with someone, you need to understand their context. What problem are they trying to solve with your product? How did they hear about your company? Are they considering switching away from one of your competitors, and if so, why?

Even if you use a full-featured CRM, and keep it updated, it can be hard to grab all that information quickly when a chat begins. It's even harder to keep entering new information in a separate interface as you learn more about your visitor during the conversation. But fortunately, we've been working on a better system, and we're thrilled to finally share it with you!

The magic starts with our new Visitor Information Panel — a complete upgrade to the Olark chat console sidebar. Agents now have easy access to a returning visitor's complete transcript history, including Notes, tags, and agents associated with previous conversations.

But we didn't stop there. We also added the ability to create up to 100 custom Visitor Profile Fields for every visitor. Now, in addition to storing your visitor's name, email, and phone number in the agent console, you can store and recall literally any information that's valuable to your business — you name it, we'll store it, and you can update it over time as you get to know your visitors.

Here are just a few examples of possible custom Visitor Profile fields, and how you might use them to win loyalty and boost sales:

Lifecycle: Tailor your sales approach to move visitors from awareness, to consideration, to purchase and upsell

Competition: Track competitor products that a visitor has used or considered

Feature requests: Note features the visitor has asked for, and update them on progress next time you see them on chat

Preferred agent: Avoid making your visitors repeat themselves; whenever possible, speed up chat by transferring them to the same agent who helped them last time

Birth month: Offer visitors a special discount if they chat with you near their birthday

Family: Upsell visitors by suggesting products for their partner, kids, or pets

The sky's the limit! If you're already subscribed to a paid Olark plan, log in to chat now to start experimenting! If you're on a free plan or don't have an account yet, kick off a 2 week free trial to explore custom profile fields and all the other goodness in this update.