It happens all the time. You're online, checking out products, maybe
looking for a holiday, or researching home loans, when all of a sudden
there's a pop-up.
"Live help is available! Chat now with a member of our friendly customer support team!" It's easy to dismiss these chat dialogues, but it's also easy to take them up on their offer to help. Only, if you do, there's something you should probably be aware of.
Specifically, even though support dialogues usually look like a series of sequential messages in time – where you ask questions, then wait for a response – that's actually a facade, at least some of the time.
Why? Because on some live chat platforms – particularly commercial ones like these geared to customer service – support staff can actually see what you're writing as you type it, even before you hit the return or enter key, or click send.
Scocca stumbled upon this discovery after chatting with a customer service representative on a website that offers various discounts.
After taking some time to edit and craft a specifically worded question, Scocca was stunned to receive a written response to his query – complete with a product suggestion and a link – just one second later from the customer service rep.
"I remembered that I had, for whatever reason, been tinkering with my message before I sent it. Apparently my thinking about how best to present the question was moot, because the agent had to have been reading both versions while I was typing them."
But at the same time, how many people are actually aware that this creepy casual snooping goes on all the time on thousands of websites across the world?
It's not like online chat apps advertise that they're actively surveilling the customer like this, and it's a strictly one-way window: we can't see what support staff are writing (although we're often informed if they're actively typing).
"Live help is available! Chat now with a member of our friendly customer support team!" It's easy to dismiss these chat dialogues, but it's also easy to take them up on their offer to help. Only, if you do, there's something you should probably be aware of.
Specifically, even though support dialogues usually look like a series of sequential messages in time – where you ask questions, then wait for a response – that's actually a facade, at least some of the time.
Why? Because on some live chat platforms – particularly commercial ones like these geared to customer service – support staff can actually see what you're writing as you type it, even before you hit the return or enter key, or click send.
Scocca stumbled upon this discovery after chatting with a customer service representative on a website that offers various discounts.
After taking some time to edit and craft a specifically worded question, Scocca was stunned to receive a written response to his query – complete with a product suggestion and a link – just one second later from the customer service rep.
"I remembered that I had, for whatever reason, been tinkering with my message before I sent it. Apparently my thinking about how best to present the question was moot, because the agent had to have been reading both versions while I was typing them."
But at the same time, how many people are actually aware that this creepy casual snooping goes on all the time on thousands of websites across the world?
It's not like online chat apps advertise that they're actively surveilling the customer like this, and it's a strictly one-way window: we can't see what support staff are writing (although we're often informed if they're actively typing).
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