One question I've been asked a ton recently, and seemingly 40% of all web projects is about adding an automated chat feature to a website.

1. Paul, does it work?

2. Paul, how should we do it?

The answer to the first question is, yes, it CAN work, but you have to nurture it just like your other digital marketing and customer service initiatives in order for it to work.

For example, an office receptionist can work, if he does his job well, paying attention to people who walk in, asking them immediately how he can help, offering them something to drink, asking about how their day is going, and then directing them to the right place, and even occasionally asking them for their contact information so they can follow up.

If you treat your chat bot initiative on your website in this manner, it can be one of the greatest customer acquisition tools in the history of digital.

However, if your office admin (in this analogy), is NEVER at his desk - always off doing something else - and when he actually is sitting at his desk he's too busy to look up from his computer, your chat bot initiative will FAIL.

To answer question 2, I'm fond of a third party service called TIDIO.com.

I've used many WordPress chat plug-ins, and none work as well as TIDIO, which works on any kind of website, all you have to do is insert a line of javascript code in your website.