This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Have you ever gone to a website and been greeted by a little chat box in a corner and the chat box pops up and it's like, Hey, do you need some help? Well, of course you have. We see that all the time. All kinds of websites use a live chat feature. It's become quite common.
What do you do about this with your website as a side hustler or small business? Is it actually worth it to install this feature? Is it sometimes more annoying than actually helpful? Or does it create a lot of work for you, the side hustler, the small business owner? Is the juice worth the squeeze? That's what today's question is about. We've got
a side hustler considering adding live chat, but isn't sure if it will actually boost sales and engagement or just add unnecessary work. So let's break down when this can be good for your website and business. When it's a distraction, what is the role of AI in this? Because now so many of these things are run by AI chatbots and most importantly, how to decide if this is best for you. Stay tuned. My name's Chris Guillebeau bringing you the
detailed question and my answer in just 30 seconds. Hey Chris, this is Daniel calling. I run an online store selling specialty coffee equipment and I've been thinking about adding a live chat feature to my website. I've read that it can help increase sales and improve customer experience, but I'm also worried it might create extra work for me. I don't have a big team and I can't be available to answer questions 24/7. I've seen AI powered chatbots advertised as a solution, but I don't know if they actually
work or if they'll just annoy customers. Is live chat worth it for a small business like mine? Daniel, I feel like this is something that has changed a good bit in the past 10 years or so when the live chat feature first became available and some websites were using it. It was really cool at first because it felt really personalized. Like, wow, I can actually go and talk to somebody, the business owner or a support representative and so on. I get
real time support, not just by email. And so for some businesses, it actually made a big difference. And I think it still is helpful for really simple customer service kinds of things for the same kinds of questions that certain businesses always get. But now because of AI, most of these services are being run by AI chatbots and maybe they eventually transfer you to somebody else. I think there's just a lot of frustration and annoyance with them. They're not necessarily customer forward, which is kind of weird because
that was the whole point initially to provide like really great customer service by being really responsive. But now it's almost like an obstacle to get to talk to someone. Like if I go to a hotel website and I have a question, it's almost like this chatbot is designed to keep me from talking to a real person because that costs them money or takes their time and such. So I think you have to think about your business model, your customers, how is it going to help them and how is it going to help you? We've got a question coming up in about a week about high ticket products, like a business owner trying to sell something that's pretty expensive, maybe being really responsive and able to chat before someone makes a larger purchase could be helpful.
But if you sell low cost, straightforward products, digital downloads, whatever, chat may not be necessary. In fact, it may just kind of slow things down. So I think AI chat is going to get a lot better in the next couple of years just because AI and language models are advancing so much. So maybe in the near future, entire industries will gravitate towards that and actually make it a helpful service. But in the meantime, I think unless this is something that you really need or that you think is going to be a game changer in your business, I don't think most websites need this. That's just my two cents. As always, listeners, let me
know if you have a question, sidehustleschool.com/questions. We'll continue to feature them throughout the year, almost halfway through the year. How about that? But I'm excited for all that is to come. Notes pages for every episode are on the website. And of course, a new episode
comes out tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.
