[shortstuffsushi]

To add to this, is cutting load time to one second (or half a second) going to impact the efficacy of the chatbox compared with doubling, tripling that load time?

Certainly there's an upper limit I, as a user, would wait to interact with someone, but load time seems like a pretty non-limiting factor. Since presumably something has pushed me to click this button, I'm going to have to type something into the box that will take more than five seconds to type, and then wait for (hopefully?) a real person to respond, or else play with the chatbot to find the right keywords to redirect me to a real person.

With that, I don't think waiting three to five seconds would hugely impact my experience in the scheme of the conversation that's going to follow it. However - since this is a 3rd party add on to my site, I would certainly appreciate it having a smaller footprint. Can't argue with that.