[rkho]

> A live chat window can be relatively ignored and checked once in a while.

Some live chat implementations have taken the liberty of requiring an input from your end every X minutes, otherwise the chat terminates. Support agents have literally told me "please wait a while while I look into this" followed by "are we still connected?" just a few minutes later.

[Sakos]

I hate this so much. I get the idea, but it's infuriating if I have to repeat the whole process just because I was distracted for 5 minutes.

[FrontierPsych]

I know what you mean.

However, you can't expect a company to tie up a support person for 48 hours on their screen and you get back to them 2 days later, that is ridiculous.

Where is that line drawn that is not too short and not too long? I don't know, but there has to be a line.

I do think it is my responsibility to continually check my screen to see if there's been an answer to my last message. There are two sides and both must be responsible actors. I think 5 minutes is plenty of time, for example. As the saying goes, "You snooze, you lose."

And it has happened to me and everyone else, of course. BUT, and here is the cool thing - when I get back on the chat, I just say that I was chatting and got distracted...but then the tech support person can go review the notes and quickly get up to speed on the conversation.

I love chat.

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

> Where is that line drawn that is not too short and not too long?

48 hours seems reasonable. Because that support person isn't tied up, they're answering other chats until you reply.

Otherwise, at least several times the time it took the agent to meaningfully respond.

[thesuitonym]

I find that if you just reply after their message, the chat status goes to "waiting on agent", so you don't get disconnected while they look.