All Hands Support is our way of getting everyone on the team to contribute to customer support. It means that every week, every team member, even me, the PR guy, logs on for a three hour customer support shift. 

Sometimes it's easy - a few questions about pricing or automated chat rules. Sometimes it means handling customer complaints effectively - using what I know about customer relations to ensure that a frustrated customer gets the help they need. 

I realize that might seem a little crazy - for Olark and for me - to hand over the ‘keys to the car’ for three hours, but in reality it’s invaluable, for both of us.

After reading our article on integrating live chat and a CRM, you're probably excited to get your CRM hooked up with Olark.

But what if you use a CRM or Help Desk platform that we don't "officially" support? No problem! to make that connection, you'll use a webhook, which happens to be my area of expertise :)

This is an image of a fishing line by Alan Bishop on Unsplash. It's not a webhook, but you get the idea.

Our former co-founder, Zach Steindler, alluded to this briefly in his article on CRM Magazine:

"Even if you're not using a big-name CRM solution, live chat platforms make it easy for developers to add basic push functionality with minimal programming."

At Olark, we're committed to making business human. Whether your sales team uses Olark Live Chat to increase leads, or provide exceptional Customer Support, creating personable, human connections starts with understanding your customers' needs.

That's why we're very excited to announce that the Olark and HubSpot CRM integration is now availble in HubSpot Connect.

Introducing the Olark and PeformLine integration

There are plenty of reasons why you want to review your transcripts. We've written before about how reviewing customer conversations can give you an advantage to overcoming objections in your sales funnel. It's also valuable in understanding where your chats are originating, so you can understand what pages may need optimizing.

Thank you, customers, for helping Olark win gold in the "Customer Service Department of the Year" category

If you're not familiar with The Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, they honor customer service, contact center, business development and sales professionals. More than 2,300 organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry were evaluated in this year’s competition. More than 75 members of several specialized judging committees determined the Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie Award placements from among the Finalists during final judging earlier this month.

How are you tracking live chat leads?

If your current system for tracking leads in your sales funnel or support queue involves a spreadsheet, or matching transcripts with emails, or post-it notes stuck to your desk - then it's time to try a CRM.

We'd like to introduce our newest integration partner, Nutshell, a CRM platform for small businesses, built by a team that shares our commitment to excellent Customer Support. (They're also our neighbors, just a few blocks down from our Ann Arbor, MI office.)

Build a company your customers love with more human, more helpful customer support tools.

The following article was written by Mat Patterson, Customer Evangelist at Help Scout. It coincides with a recent webinar we did with Help Scout and Denise Twum, Head of Customer Support, Issuu. You can see the full webinar conversation on the Olark Live Chat YouTube channel.

Happy New Year! In the past, we've talked about why it's important to connect live chat with a CRM: it helps keep sales leads and customer records in order; and will make future customer conversations more personalized, increasing the likelihood of closing a sale or keeping a customer. In short, a live chat CRM integration will help you achieve your business goals. If one of your resolutions this is to integrate with a CRM then it's best to start at the beginning, with a quick overview of the history of CRM software.

In our increasingly over connected world, there are more opportunities for business people to develop relationships with prospects, customers and their influencers than ever before. Therein, however, lies a daunting challenge: how do businesses cut through the noise to effectively develop relationships with customers, prospects and their influencers that help them grow?

How do you cut through the crowd to connect with the right customer?

Advancements in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software are helping us find answers to this question.

Can you believe that it's almost 2017?  At Olark we end each year with a reduced support schedule to give our entire team an opportunity to reflect and spend time with their families.

Starting Monday, December 26 our team will be taking time away from the computer to join family and friends for the holiday season. Our regular support schedule will resume on Tuesday, January 3.

We're coming to an end of a busy, busy year here at Olark Live Chat, but before we close the books on 2016, we have one more integration partner to add to our redesigned Integrations Portal.

Today we're announcing that we've teamed up with Front to launch a native integration that makes it easy to access all of your customer conversations and messages in one place.