[projektfu]

When I first learned about these I was interviewing with a company that was an early entrant/innovator. Their box was sales oriented but came up when you showed sales interest and told you if a salesperson was available.

I thought it was a really clever idea, especially for those interactions where someone is browsing at 9:30pm and wouldn't call but would feel fine texting with a salesperson who was just up watching TV.

Fast forward to the future and it's become dystopian like everything else on the web. It's an excuse to remove phone numbers and email addresses, it replaces support with bots, it's not truly async because you can't easily do other things while waiting for a response or they close the connection and you start over with another person and no history.