Duration: 22:23
PART 1 — Analytical Summary 🚀
Title: Handle Live Chat conversations efficiently
Speaker: Austin Castaños (Functional Support Analyst, Odoo Belgium)
Topic: Practical tips and real-life workflows for the new features in the Odoo 19 Live Chat app
Context 💼
In this hands-on session, Odoo support analyst Austin Castaños demonstrates how the Odoo 19 Live Chat app streamlines customer interactions by combining chatbots, human operators, and tight integration with core apps like Discuss, CRM, and Helpdesk. The talk is grounded in Odoo’s own experience: the company recently rolled out live support on Odoo.com, and much of the v19 feature set stems from internal feedback and heavy day-to-day usage.
Core ideas & innovations 🧠
The session walks through three realistic use cases—each showing how Odoo 19 enhances agent productivity and collaboration.
First, Austin shows a visitor landing on an Odoo-built website and engaging a chatbot that routes the conversation based on intent (e.g., “Become a member,” “Product help”). When a human operator takes over, the agent handles the conversation inside Discuss, where a redesigned side panel centralizes context. This panel surfaces the customer’s open leads (if they’re a known contact), open tickets from Helpdesk, recent conversations, recent page views on the website, the sequence of chatbot answers chosen, and flexible tags for later reporting. Agents can also add internal notes and update the conversation status—“In Progress,” “Waiting for Customer,” or “Looking for Help”—to stay organized across multiple threads.
In the second scenario, Austin spotlights faster sales and support handoffs. Agents can convert chats into CRM leads or Helpdesk tickets on the fly using the UI or slash commands (e.g., /lead, /ticket). They can accelerate responses using canned responses (triggered by “:”) for common questions. A standout addition in Odoo 19 is skill-based routing: chatbot answers can forward a chat to agents with the right expertise (e.g., sales queries to sales specialists). The powerful /search tickets command helps identify patterns or ongoing issues by keyword—useful for incident triage.
The third scenario covers collaboration. If a question requires deeper expertise, an agent can mark a conversation as Looking for Help and either invite a colleague directly into the chat or rely on the new Looking for Help dashboard in the Live Chat app’s Sessions view. This queue centralizes all escalations, allowing experts to pick up conversations without manual invitations. It’s a practical way to cut handoff friction across teams.
Rounding out the talk, Austin notes you don’t need an Odoo website to benefit from Live Chat—a channel’s widget can be embedded in any external site. In Q&A, he clarifies that side panel data (like real leads tied to the contact) is actionable; notes are text-only; some slash commands are standard; portal users currently can’t see their past chats; and tag creation limits likely depend on access rights. There’s also a mention that a chatbot “script” step can collect contact info and create a lead automatically—useful for qualifying visitors mid-chat.
Impact & takeaways ⚙️💬
- The new side panel in Discuss puts rich, actionable context next to the conversation—reducing clicks and guesswork while improving personalization.
- Skill-based routing plus fast lead/ticket creation shorten handoffs between sales and support, keeping momentum during live interactions.
- Status tracking, tags, and notes make multi-chat handling manageable and measurable—especially when paired with reporting.
- Canned responses and slash commands accelerate response times without sacrificing quality.
- The “Looking for Help” queue strengthens cross-team collaboration by turning ad hoc escalations into a structured workflow.
- Embed anywhere: the Live Chat widget extends Odoo’s customer engagement to non-Odoo websites.
Caveats and opportunities: notes are currently text-only, the portal doesn’t yet show customers their past conversations, and tag governance may require refined access controls. Still, Odoo 19’s Live Chat is a notable step toward an integrated, operator-friendly, and scalable real-time support stack.
PART 2 — Viewpoint: Odoo Perspective
Disclaimer: AI-generated creative perspective inspired by Odoo’s vision.
What I love here is the continuity: you start with curiosity on the website, get quick guidance from a chatbot, and when a human joins, they already have context from CRM, Helpdesk, and page views—without any copy-paste. This is the essence of Odoo: fewer tabs, fewer clicks, more clarity.
The “Looking for Help” queue reflects our culture of collaboration. It recognizes that great support is a team sport. We built these features because our own teams needed them, and we believe the community will improve them further. Integration should feel invisible; the user should only feel simplicity.
PART 3 — Viewpoint: Competitors (SAP / Microsoft / Others)
Disclaimer: AI-generated fictional commentary. Not an official corporate statement.
Odoo’s Live Chat in v19 shows strong UX and tight integration across CRM and service—canned responses, routing by expertise, and side-panel context are well-executed. For midsize organizations, this offers rapid time-to-value with minimal configuration and an approachable operator experience.
For large enterprises, questions remain around extreme-scale chat volumes, advanced compliance (data residency, auditability for regulated sectors), and deeper workforce and SLA management. Omnichannel parity—especially voice, email, and social blending—and end-user access to full conversation histories are areas to watch. If Odoo continues maturing governance and enterprise controls without sacrificing UX, it will pressure incumbents on agility and TCO.
PART 4 — Blog Footer Disclaimer
Disclaimer: This article contains AI-generated summaries and fictionalized commentaries for illustrative purposes. Viewpoints labeled as "Odoo Perspective" or "Competitors" are simulated and do not represent any real statements or positions. All product names and trademarks belong to their respective owners.