Improving the Live Chat experience continues: Pre-chat page troubleshooting recommendations & fix for pop up blockers

Since EMC introduced Live Chat as a support channel in 2008, we have received customer feedback that we continue to act upon.  Through the years we have implemented enhancements to improve the experience leading up to the actual chat session including expansion of hardware and software topics to chat about, hours of support coverage and ease in steps to engage with a Technical Support Engineer.

Earlier this month we released a few additional enhancements which include:

  1. Pre-chat troubleshooting recommendations
  2. Improved experience for when your web browser’s pop up blocker is engaged


You can access EMC’s Live Chat by logging into Online Support here.  From the Support drop down menu select Live Chat, this will bring you to the Live Chat pre-chat page.

New Feature: Pre-chat troubleshooting recommendations

In order to experience where the pre-chat troubleshooting recommendations content is automatically displayed based on what you enter in the Problem Details section complete the following steps:

  1. After selecting Live Chat from the Support drop down menu, you will complete Step 1 Problem or Question Type by selecting

    Technical Support – Systems issue, failure, break/fix.
  2. For Step 2 you will complete the Company and Product Information.
  3. On Step 3 in the Enter your question or problem section,  pretend you have a Symmetrix Hardware question.  State that

    you need information on testing your DMX-3’s power source.
  4. Select Problem Severity as 3-Medium: Non-critical problem and/or Product use questions

The pre-chat page leverages the power of EMC’s search capability—metadata– and offers relevant search results

to resolve your issues more efficiently.  This is provided as additional information to assist in troubleshooting – does not prevent or impede the Live Chat process.  You have the ability to resolve your questions more efficiently and confidently based on recommended solutions related to your issue.

You can select the article and the results will be displayed in a new window where you can review the information and see if it meets your search criteria.  If it doesn’t meet what you are looking for you  can view other articles or return to the original pre-Chat page to launch your chat.

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New enhancement:  Improved experience for when your web browser’s pop up blocker is enabled

From your preferred browser, first confirm that your pop blocker is enabled.  Next, complete all of the information in the pre-chat page steps 1-4 and confirm that the service line for the product you selected is open (a. displayed in graphic below) and select Start Chat.

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At this point your experience will vary depending on the browser you are using.  For some browsers even though your pop up blocker

is engaged, the chat window will launch.  In this example below, I received a message to Disable pop up blockers for this site and try again (a.) select OK.

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You will also have the option to force launch the chat window by selecting Launch Chat (b.).  With this fix in place, you have a guaranteed way to force launch the chat and engage with a Technical Support Engineer.

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For more details on using live chat, check out https://community.emc.com/docs/DOC-21652. We would also like to hear from you so feel free to reply to this blog with your questions or feedback.

Amy N. Fredricksen

CS Innovation, Live Chat-Senior Program Manager

Follow us @EMC Support on Twitter!

About the Author: Amy Fredricksen