Guides and ideas for better customer support
Practical, no-fluff articles on live chat, support teams, ticketing and customer satisfaction — and step-by-step guides for getting Hodhod running on your site.
Setup guides
Announcements and Warnings in the Support Widget: When and How to Use Them
Payment gateway down or support closed? See how to tell customers before they ask with an announcement or warning at the top of the chat widget: writing the text, links and images, scheduling, three examples and common mistakes.
Hodhod Android SDK tutorial: native in-app support in 10 minutes
Add support chat and tickets to your Kotlin and Compose app with the Hodhod Android SDK: add the dependency, configure it, open the chat, identify users with HMAC, set theme and language, show unread counts, and fix common errors.
Building a Support Chatbot Flow with Handoff to an Agent or a Ticket
How to design a support chatbot flow: choosing the first questions, collecting information, a working-hours condition, handoff to an agent or a ticket, the simulator, and improving with drop-off analytics.
Pre-Chat Forms: Which Fields to Ask for Before a Live Chat Starts
Should you ask for a name, email or phone before a chat? How to choose pre-chat form fields, validate them and set the form up in Hodhod.
How to Add Live Chat to Shopify, Wix, Squarespace and Webflow
Add the Hodhod live chat widget to Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, Webflow or any site with Google Tag Manager: where to paste the code and what to check.
How to Add Live Chat to WordPress (No Coding Needed)
Add Hodhod live chat to WordPress or WooCommerce in minutes with the free Hodhod plugin, or with WPCode or your theme, plus fixes for common issues.
How to Add Hodhod Live Chat to Your Website, Step by Step
Add Hodhod live chat to any website in minutes: create a website inbox, copy the snippet, paste it into your site, and set the language, theme and waiting queue.
How to Connect Telegram to Hodhod and Reply from Your Support Inbox
Answer Telegram messages from the same inbox as your website chat: connect a Telegram account or bot to Hodhod step by step, and see how the two options differ.
How to Build a Website Chatbot Without Coding (Step by Step)
Build a website chatbot without code: plan the flow, add topics and answers, collect validated details, hand off to an agent and measure the results in Hodhod.
Customer support
Ticketing vs. Live Chat: Which One to Use and When
Live chat or tickets? How to choose, the situations where each works best, how to combine them by converting a chat into a ticket, and how to pick the widget contact mode in Hodhod.
Support Conversation QA Review: Checklist and Scoring
What support QA is, how to design a scorecard with weighted criteria, which conversations to sample, and how to give feedback that agents will actually accept.
Measuring CSAT, DSAT, and SLA in Customer Support: What to Track and How
How to calculate CSAT and DSAT, how to define an SLA, and how to read the three together to see where support is strong and where it isn't, with examples and a checklist.
Connecting Support to Jira: How to Get a Customer Problem to Your Engineering Team
Why copying conversations into Jira by hand fails, what a support issue should tell engineering, and how to keep the status of both systems in sync.
Issue Tracking in Customer Support: How to Tame Recurring Problems
What is an issue, how does it differ from a tag and a ticket, and how support teams track problems that keep coming back using occurrences, customer satisfaction, and resolution time.
Incident Alerts in Customer Support: When One Problem Suddenly Spikes
How to tell when a problem is blowing up in support, how to set the alert threshold and window so it's neither late nor noisy, and what to do after the alert fires.
Customer Support on Telegram: Setup Options and Best Practices
How to run customer support on Telegram well: account or bot, response rules, security, templates, teamwork and reports, all from one shared inbox.
What Is an SLA in Customer Support? Examples and How to Set One Up
What an SLA is in customer support, the three targets to set, a ready-to-use example by priority and how to apply and track SLAs in Hodhod.
Customer Support Peak Season Checklist: Black Friday, Holidays and Big Sales
A four-week checklist to prepare your support team for Black Friday and big sales: staffing, canned replies, chatbot, queue settings and live monitoring.
What Is First Contact Resolution (FCR)? How to Measure and Improve It
What FCR means, how to calculate it with an example, what a good rate looks like and 8 ways to solve more customer issues on the first contact.
What Is a Ticketing System? Tickets vs. Live Chat, Priorities and SLAs
What is a ticketing system and how does it differ from live chat? The ticket lifecycle, prioritization, SLAs, and how a conversation becomes a ticket in Hodhod.
What Is CSAT? How to Measure and Improve Customer Satisfaction
What is CSAT (customer satisfaction score)? The formula with an example, CSAT vs. NPS and CES, when to survey, how to ask, and 7 ways to raise your score.
New Support Agent Onboarding: A Checklist for the First Two Weeks
An onboarding checklist for new support agents: accounts and security, product and tool training, tone of voice, practice scenarios, shadowing and key metrics.
After-Hours Messages for Live Chat: 15 Examples You Can Copy
15 ready-to-copy after-hours messages for live chat — evenings, weekends, holidays, busy periods — plus what a good away message includes and how to set it up.
What's a Good Live Chat Response Time? Targets and 8 Ways to Respond Faster
What's a good live chat response time? The metrics that matter — first response, reply and resolution time — realistic targets, and 8 ways to answer faster.
How to Handle Angry Customers in Live Chat: 6 Steps and Example Replies
A 6-step method to calm angry customers in live chat: phrases that help and phrases that hurt, ready-to-use replies for common situations, and when to escalate.
10 Customer Support KPIs Every Team Should Track
The 10 customer support KPIs that matter — first response time, resolution time, CSAT, SLA compliance, workload and more — what each means and how to track it.
How to Choose Live Chat Software for Your Website: 12 Criteria and a Checklist
12 criteria for choosing website live chat software — widget speed, shared inbox, channels, chatbots, tickets and SLAs, reports, security — plus a checklist.
30 Canned Responses for Customer Support (Copy-and-Paste Templates)
30 copy-and-paste canned responses for live chat and email: greetings, holds, orders, refunds, apologies, escalations and closings, plus personalization tips.
