Introducing Live Community Chat!

[KatieBT]

Hey Beauty Insider Community!

We are so excited to introduce you to a brand new feature launching today on Sephora.com, Live Community Chat! This new feature allows you to ask and answer questions with other Sephora shoppers directly on product pages. So if you’re searching for a new moisturizer, have a specific question about that Sephora Collection lippie you’re about to purchase, or looking for the perfect gift for your mom, you can ask another Sephora shopper your question and get advice from someone immediately.

Who are those “someones” answering the questions, you ask? Well they’re you! Real people browsing and shopping the site and hanging out in the Beauty Insider Community.

Because we know that our Community members give the best advice and have awesome experience with so many of our products, we are inviting you all to be the very FIRST to jump into Community Chat, answer (and ask!) questions, and try it out. This is your chance to share your knowledge expertise with people shopping on Sephora.com, so that they can get real opinions from real people, in real time!

To launch chat, just visit your favorite product page and click on the “Chat live with Sephora shoppers” icon at the bottom of the page. The feature is available on desktop and mobile web right now, and will be launching on the Sephora app in the next few days.

Have more questions about how the feature works? Check out our FAQ page HERE.

Also we’ll be hanging out in this thread with our feature expert this afternoon, so as you’re trying it out and coming up with questions and feedback, post them here! We’ll try to answer everything we can.

We hope you think it’s a cool as we do!

UPDATE 2/19/21: As of August 2020, Live Community Chat has been retired to make room for a new and exciting way to swap info about your favorite products: Questions & Answers! If you have questions - or knowledge to share with the Community - about a certain product, visit the product page on Sephora.com and click "Ask a Question" under the Questions & Answers module. For more information on Questions & Answers, check out this thread: Introducing Questions & Answers! For customer service inquiries, visit our Customer Service Help page here. 

[jozkid]

No problem!

[mnakashima]

How do you "follow" someone after you have a conversation/ask a question? I can't click on their profile pic within the tread or outside. Is there a way to follow a specific person?

[pedsNP]

where did all of our old posts go? I can't even find my old skin number - the one they did in store and i wrote down to put in my insider account. 

I'm pretty upset about that.

[suzyo]

@pedsNP When I click on your profile it says you have 59 posts, are you missing more? Your bio says your color IQ is 3R04.

[valeria0893]

This is soo freaking great

[Envimi]

Definitely a good idea

[Vancentar]

wow! you are pro! xD

[Beadshopgirl]

I've answered 1000 questions on Live Chat as of just now! Woohoo!

[alaynakim]

dang thats commitment!

[Mcakes]

Sweet! Congrats @Beadshopgirl!

[suzyo]

@Beadshopgirl You have so much patience lol, I gave up a few days ago when BIC was flooded with new users.

[Beadshopgirl]

@suzyo It's much easier to use the Chat through the TokyWoky app or site.

[suzyo]

They never emailed me, I wasn't sure of another way to sign up.

[Beadshopgirl]

@suzyo Have you answered more than 5 questions? Check your junk mail filter. 

[suzyo]

I've helped about 25 people (I'm not sure of total answers though) I check my my junk mail almost daily. I even googled them but I'm not sure how the website works. The only reason it matters to me is I can only respond once. If someone has a follow up question I can't answer it.

[Beadshopgirl]

Hmm, that's weird @suzyo. Maybe try logging onto the site anyway and see if your invite is there. Google "connexion Tokywoky", because if you try to go to Tokywoky[dot]com, you'll just see their advertising site. 

[suzyo]

HMMM Interesting. I went to sign up and it said I already was. So I changed my password and everything but don't see Sephora as an option for a website, only Clarins haha.

[ohheyitscindyk]

@suzyo I'm having the same issue, were you able to figure it out?

[suzyo]

Do you mean only being able to select Clarins as a website? No LOL, so I still can't see any questions being asked on Sephora from the TokyWoky site @ohheyitscindyk

[ohheyitscindyk]

@suzyo Haha how strange. Well, I guess we will have to use the feature on Sephora's site.

[MissPuff]

Reposting here since it sort of relates...

Hello Mods! First of all, thank you for all that you do! 

I had a thought about thread sorting, especially in light of this new flood of new users. On the website, there's an option to sort threads by most popular vs most recent. Now, I have no idea what the current algorithm is, but as of right now, it brings up super old threads (think 2014 or older). It might be more useful to define "popular" as threads with the most number of posts/hearts within a specific and narrow time frame. It looks like you've already done something similar with "top contributors/hearts leader board", you can see how many hearts people have received in the past 24 hrs, week, and month. While I think the leader board idea is a bit counterintuitive to a community (like some sort of popularity contest?) I think the concept as applied to the threads would be more productive. 

Threads with the most number of recent replies (filtered by 1 day, week, month) would appear at the top of the page; this shows active and meaningful participation by the community within a single topic, rather than 15 separate threads about which foundation is good for oily skin (which is a great question) with just one or two additional replies. These mini two post threads are neither helpful nor engaging; who wants to cross reference 15 suggestions across 15 threads? Not to mention that referencing this information later would be almost impossible, thus prompting new users to create yet ANOTHER thread with the same question. 

It seems like the beauty boards should be a complementary tool and resource to the live chat (which I think is quite cool, though I agree with several others that having a record of questions asked and answered would be even more helpful). If that is to be the case, it shouldn't just look like a permanent version of live chat. It looks like many of the new users really do want to engage with each other, but even they will get tired of answering the same question a dozen times for a different dozen users. BIC should be an actual conversation like the name says, not a thousand people yelling into the void.

Tagging @ShiraBT, @KatieBT, @candacebt