FRISKA DESK review for Tidio Live Chat & AI Chatbots

Feb. 2, 2023

Storeowners beware! I seriously don't know how Tidio have so many good reviews, our experience is that it worked poorly and customer care was non-existent until we really kicked up a fuss, only then did they react as they should have in the first instance. Our issues with Tidio resolve around receiving the sound notifications when a customer has submitted a chat (or a new message) only about half the time which meant we missed a lot of chats. We reached out to Tidio several times for support, they were days, sometimes a week to respond and then we got a bland brush off that it must be a problem at our end with our equipment. Now we all work from home with different internet, routers, equipment etc., totally independent of one another with no central server and the issue was universal with all of our operators, which kind of gives a bit of a clue? Anyway, we eventually decided that the issue seemed to be mainly occurring if the app wasn't actually open and showing on the screen, we would normally get the sound notification if we happened to have the Tidio screen up in front of us but as we only get a couple of chats a day this resulted in us issuing a third screen to all operators to enable the chat to be visible at all times. This process was worked out ourselves with no further input from Tidio as all they could advise was for us to clear the cache and reboot (which we did on a daily basis at one point to try and make it work properly). All of the above was a 6 month process of trying to sort out what was happening without support. What we found in the end was that not only do you need to have the app open on a screen but you also need to clear your cache and reboot every single day and even then it was hit and miss on whether we would get a noise notification. We made the decision to leave Tidio and one more thing to watch out for, if you've paid for a years subscription and have uninstalled the app due to poor performance and service, you don't get a refund on the remaining 6 months subscription as they have a 'non-refund' policy and it's too small an amount to be worth all the time and effort suing them for. A lot of these chat apps are similar in that they appear to have everything that you need and would be great if they worked 100% but they seem to be a bit hit and miss in operation. Tidio is an expensive app for what it does, we decided in the end to employ a third party receptionist company (Pocket Receptionist in the UK), who charge 50% more than Tidio but this has freed us up and we don't have to worry about having to jump on the chat, it's not until we've done this that we realised what a distraction the chat is, even when it works OK. I would definitely recommend this cause of action to anyone as the customer has instant communication with your company (although they don't know it's a third party help), are reassured by professionals either with a simple script or the promise of a call back and you get emails pop through from the third party with all the details on, giving you time to respond when it suits you. It's very rare that the customer needs an instant response, but you get that choice on when to respond as soon as you get the email, so if you need to jump on it to secure an order you can, simple! If you're going to use a chat service though, do yourself a favour and give Tidio a miss! Update in response to Tidio's reply: There was no misunderstanding on our part and we were not offline, as exhaustively explained to you at the time, so please don't try and gloss this over and make it look as if this is our fault as incompetent operators. We had previously used Tidio for a couple of years prior to signing up last year, so were fully aware of how to operate the app correctly. Also, as exhaustively explained before in both chat and emails, there was nothing wrong with the pop up notifications, a tiny red flag popped up when a customer was on the chat, this was often the only way we knew that they were, so for the second time in black and white here, we've had to tell you that it was the noise notification that the issue was with, it seems like you are still in complete denial about it despite the overwhelming evidence proving otherwise, which is a shame because if you didn't treat your customers with such contempt you would be able to build a really good app if you were prepared to learn from your mistakes. Your chat agents were generally quite responsive, yes, support emails, forget it...a waste of time.