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Meebo Me Widget Redux

A reader writes about yesterday's entry about the Meebo Me widget:

Sounds great! Here's something to think about: Is there a way to make the Meebo interface visible to visitors only when someone's available to chat with them?

Yes. If you want to go that route, simply enable your Meebo Me Widget when you log into your Meebo dashboard and disable it prior to signing off.

He continues:

When visitors see a live chat interface but there's nobody home, I wonder if it's worse than not offering live chat at all. What would be cool is if there was a way to remotely turn the interface on and off so visitors would see it only when chat is truly available.

I agree there's a risk associated with advertising live chat and not being there when someone wants to chat. The last thing you want to do is flaunt a live chat feature if it's little more than the Web equivalent of "Your call is very important to us!"

But there are at least three things to consider about the Meebo Me widget that might inform your choice about how you'll use it.

Thing #1: Offline messages from visitors are saved.
If you are not logged into Meebo, the messages your visitors send you via your Meebo Me widget will appear the next time you log into your Meebo account. These offline messages will expire after 7 days.

Thing #2: You can customize your offline status message.
As pictured above (I made this change after receiving this reader's comments), you can modify your live chat status message to let visitors know about Thing #1. (My status message currently says, "I stepped away momentarily. If you leave a message with contact information, I'll get back to you asap.")

Thing #3: Your competitors might not offer live chat at all.
As long as you're committed to some regimen of signing into Meebo and monitoring messages, you can reduce the "nobody's home" risk while distinguishing yourself from your competitors. You could, for instance, commit to monitoring your live chat feature every weekday for 30 minutes. In this case, your offline status message could read:

Hello! We're available for live chat every day from 9:00am to 9:30am (ET) Monday-Friday, and we check messages every hour. If you leave a message with contact information, we'll get back to you asap!.

I'm not saying the Meebo Me widget is the solution for live chat. But it certainly has promise. And free is good.