{"id":5713,"date":"2013-06-04T10:03:40","date_gmt":"2013-06-04T00:03:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/?p=5713"},"modified":"2016-02-23T16:19:26","modified_gmt":"2016-02-23T05:19:26","slug":"managing-new-tools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2013\/06\/managing-new-tools\/","title":{"rendered":"Managing and turning off new tools like online chat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We need down time, even from our favourite things.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_5844\" style=\"width: 210px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/boy_tools_123rf.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5844\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-5844\" alt=\"Young boy holding new tools and a mobile phone\" src=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/boy_tools_123rf-200x300.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/boy_tools_123rf-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/boy_tools_123rf-100x150.jpg 100w, https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/boy_tools_123rf.jpg 267w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-5844\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Like a young child playing with new toys, we all like to play with our new tools and gadgets. Are we also like young children that we need a rest from our toys\/tools?<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Having done the <a title=\"Online chat solutions in review\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2013\/04\/online-chat-solutions-review\/\">research into online chat<\/a>, I was introducing it to some of my client&#8217;s employees the other day.<\/p>\n<p>One of the employees &#8211; let&#8217;s call him Simon for simplicity &#8211; liked the idea of offering it to their customers but asked some really good questions.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Won&#8217;t we need a dedicated person to manage the online chat? None of us have time to take that on.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">What happens if the online chat person is on the phone or something when someone wants to chat?<\/p>\n<h2>\u00a0Managing a new feature<\/h2>\n<p>There&#8217;s no doubt that adding a new feature or tool can create extra work in the short-term. It takes time to set up and learn how to use it, and you may have to explain it to a number of people before it becomes fully effective.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t think <a title=\"Adding an online chat feature \u2013 good idea or not?\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2013\/04\/adding-online-chat-good\/\">adding online chat<\/a> means getting an extra person into the workplace. Even in a busy customer service business, the online chat should reduce the number of phone calls and emails which would free up the time needed to answer chats.<\/p>\n<p>For Simon, I was able to explain that a little pop up window will show to all relevant staff when someone wanted to chat so any available staff member could answer.<\/p>\n<h2>Ability to turn the feature off<\/h2>\n<p>Another reassurance for Simon and his team was that<strong> online chat doesn&#8217;t have to be on all the time<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>While there are variations between online chat systems, my client will have a choice between making the chat feature invisible or showing as offline to collect an email address when staff are unable to accept chats.<\/p>\n<p>I think that&#8217;s important.<\/p>\n<p>So many great new tools are offered to businesses but we need down time &#8211; to do our work, to undergoing training, to <a title=\"Taking breaks makes you more productive, less overwhelmed\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2013\/04\/taking-breaks-productive\/\">have a break<\/a>\u00a0and so on. Whether it is joining social media, online chat, a eShop or other tool, we need to be able to turn it off in some way.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How often do you turn off social media, emails and similar communication tools?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What if you had online chat on your site &#8211; would you turn it to offline even if you are physically present? Turn it off out of business hours, even if you can use it while mobile?<\/p>\n<address><a title=\"123RF royalty free images\" href=\"http:\/\/www.123rf.com\/#avsuper\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">* Image courtesy of 123RF<\/span><\/a><\/address>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We need down time, even from our favourite things. Having done the research into online chat, I was introducing it to some of my client&#8217;s employees the other day. One of the employees &#8211; let&#8217;s call him Simon for simplicity &#8211; liked the idea of offering it to their customers but asked some really good [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[1640,1639,1638,554,1641],"class_list":["post-5713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-info-tools","tag-chat","tag-downtime","tag-new-tools","tag-online","tag-turn-off"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5713"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6489,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5713\/revisions\/6489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}