Checkouts

History panel and smart suggestions
Voice command results
Send payment screen
Embed chat conversation and payment notification
Fill out card information
Chat transaction completed

Inspiration

I wanted to build a better customer engagement platform that lets both startups and enterprise companies talk customers in a more meaningful way. Checkouts lets agents send discounts, payment requests, signup requests, and trial requests - all through the chat. There is no need for the user to navigate to any other part of the site. Agents already have the attention of the customer, why not do it within chat itself?

What it does

Checkouts lets you grab a script and put it in your site. Once that's done, you're now powered by Checkouts. As an agent, you're able to make voice commands to your own APIs, check the history of a user, make suggestions based on that user's browsing history, send trials, send discounts, and payment requests.

How I built it

I built it using the MEAN stack, as MEAN is really good at handing real time data.

Challenges I ran into

Not too many, I think one of the most challenging parts was choosing a name.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I was able to write a chrome plugin script that injects my chat into expedia's site. That way I was able to demo how this product would behave in a real time multi-million company.

What I learned

I learned a lot about chat applications, specially in the market:

U.S. online retail sales 200+ Billion dollar market
An ATG Global Consumer Trend study found that 90% of customers consider live chat helpful and an emarketer.com survey found that 63% were more likely to return to a website that offers live chat.
Within the online channel, the chat feature has become the leading contact source, as 42% of full-service customers indicate using a live online chat feature vs. email (23%) or other social media forum (16%). Additionally, online satisfaction is highest among customers who use the chat feature