Text is the default for good reasons
Typed chat is searchable, asynchronous, easy to multitask, and leaves a transcript. It is the right default for the overwhelming majority of conversations. Voice, video, and co-browsing are escalations — powerful when the medium is the bottleneck, wasteful when it is not.
Reach for voice when typing is the slow part
Some things are simply faster spoken: an emotional complaint that needs a human tone, a complex back-and-forth where each typed round trip costs a minute, an accessibility need. Offering to switch to a quick call can turn a frustrating twenty-message thread into a two-minute resolution. Offer it; do not force it — plenty of visitors chose chat precisely to avoid a phone call.
Video for the moments a face matters
Video earns its place rarely but decisively: a high-value onboarding, a sales conversation where trust is the product, a demo that is easier shown than described. Because it demands the visitor's full attention and a presentable setting, treat it as opt-in and purposeful, never a default pop-up.
Co-browsing for "I can't find the button"
The single most maddening support pattern is guiding someone through a screen blind — "click the gear, no, the other gear." Co-browsing or a shared screen collapses that into "I see it; click there." It is the fastest path through navigation confusion, form errors, and setup walkthroughs, where describing the screen in words is the whole difficulty.
Escalate with consent and a clear exit
- Ask, don't ambush. "Want to hop on a quick call to sort this faster?" respects the visitor who chose chat on purpose.
- Keep the transcript. Whatever the medium, the conversation record and context should survive the switch.
- Make return easy. Some visitors will decline; the text chat should carry on without penalty.
Match the tool to the bottleneck
The discipline is simple: escalate the medium only when the medium is what's slowing the resolution. MyLiveChat supports voice and video calling and co-browsing alongside text, so an agent can lift a stuck conversation into the right channel in the moment — without asking the visitor to install anything or start over.