Being 'human' is having a moment right now in the world of ecommerce marketing. 

After years of a full-on automation craze, and as the talk of chatbots heats up, savvy marketers realize we must be more personal in our customer communication. 

Now, instead of “SEO” and “automatic,” ecommerce managers are focused on terms like “customer experience strategy.”

The footwear industry is full of compelling and fashionable brands, as shoes have long been considered expressions of personality. Socks, on the other hand, might be considered the less glamorous counterpart to shoes in the footwear industry.

However, one company, Bombas, is out to raise the standard for style and comfort when it comes to the socks we slip on our feet every day. But Bombas’ ambitions go beyond developing the best socks in the world—through its “Buy-One, Give-One” model, the company is working to ensure that no human being in need of socks ever has to go without.

For too long, I ignored my closet. My pants situation was dire. Crotches were torn, knees were ripped, and I was bereft of any pants but for a single pair of jeans and one pair of khakis.

Yet all was not lost.

Scott Tran, one of the main organizers of SupConf and founder of Support Driven, and I have been doing monthly coffees for almost two years. Over our usual Philz orders, we would exchange ideas, opinions and suggestions: his from from a product and support perspective; mine from HR and culture. One of the most memorable collaborations resulted in me making drastic changes to Olark’s new hire onboarding process and sharing those ideas with the Support Driven community.

During one of these coffee collaborations Scott asked me a simple question, "What do you think about Support Driven doing a conference?" Thus started a year long journey of seeing this conference grow from an inkling of an idea to SupConf 2016, a conference for support professionals. Before the conference happened on May 23 and 24, Scott and I chatted again to revisit how this vision has come to fruition.

I met Richard Shapiro at a recent CX Meetup in NYC and was reminded that he talks at length about high quality customer service in his book, "The Endangered Customer: 8 Steps to Guarantee Repeat Business." As Internet talk of automated chat and messaging bots hits a fever pitch, I found this portion of his book prescient and, with Richard's permission, wanted to share it with you. -Karl

It all begins with hope.

It may sound obvious, but if you wish to make a human connection with a customer—in person, on the phone, or online—then the most important thing to remember is each individual’s humanity. Human beings come to you with hope in their hearts. They need or want something they haven’t found elsewhere, and they hope you have the answer. Perhaps they are looking for the perfect Valentine’s present, a watch for their son’s graduation, or a gift for friends who just moved into a new home. Your job is to give them hope that they’ve come to a place where their problem or desire will be addressed in a helpful, friendly manner.

One week every year I sit down to reflect on the state of the SMB SaaS market, and I thought I’d share my thoughts with you.

Before you read further, please take two minutes to read this in-depth article about Olark user, The Black Tux. The article shares insight from The Black Tux on using live chat to train new members of the Customer Service team, and how the team uses chat data to load balance its service efforts. When you're finished reading that article, you can read about my experience with The Black Tux Customer Service team...

I spend a lot of time telling people what it's like talking to businesses that use Olark Live Chat. A few months ago, I got to have that experience firsthand with Olark customer The Black Tux.

I got married on December 31, and YOU'LL NEVER BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED NEXT...

In today's guest post, Chris Pontine, owner and publisher at Creating A Website Today shares some tips on how to easily build an online store, and 13 things that should set your mind at ease about the process.

There are a lot of things to consider when building an online store. Sure, there are questions like, "Should I add live chat?" but in my experience these are the 13 most pressing things to consider first.

Without knowing much about a company and what they offer in the way of eCommerce solutions, it can be very difficult to feel confident in your decision to sell your goods online. By determining the answers to your most pressing questions, you, too, will be on your way to eCommerce success.

Let’s look at the 13 most important things to know when building an online store, shall we?

Photo by Roman Mager on Unsplash

Hi there! I'm Ben Schultz, Data Guru at Olark. In this article, I'm sharing some data and results that other Olark users have experienced by adding our live chat software to their website. Check it out!

We're surrounded by data here at Olark. On regular basis I'm combing our customer records in Looker, checking out event data in Segment, and keeping an eye on our search traffic via Google Analytics.

If you like cat gifs, you're going to want to read on...

Kendall Burke and the team at Acuity Scheduling want to change people's mind about contacting Customer Support. While support interactions can, at times, be a downer, Kendall is working to make every interaction at Acuity human and fun.