Using Live Chat for Correspondence and Document Sharing without sharing email addresses

I recently wondered how can one discourage people to communicate without sharing their email address. For instance, if you have a virtual assistant who must communicate with your clients but you need to ensure that everything is monitored.

It really is not the best solution, especially if work occurs asynchronously. After all, live chat infrastructure is designed for real time communication (and trouble ticketing). The only way to maintain complete privacy of email of both parties is if both parties leave live sessions running, at the same time.

Receiving correspondence from clients

There are 2 options. In both cases, when you log back into your live chat dashboard, you will see a new 'messaging' notification (as pictured below). 

1) Clients may find the first way more convenient because it occurs through the familiarity of his or her usual email application. Specifically, your clients can email you using the 'ticket forwarding email address' of your live chat webpage. While this option will keep your email address private, you will see your client's email address. If the email is re-directed to your inbox, you will not see the client's email address.

2) The second option requires your client to visit your live chat page where he or she can leave messages and documents, even without engaging in a live chat session. You will receive the message the next time you log into your dashboard. Regarding privacy, neither your client nor you will see the other's email addresses.

An additional consideration is that, if you have numerous clients using this option, consider a pre-chat form with the name field to avoid confusion over the sender's identity. 

Sending documents

Sending is the harder part. The only way to use live chat to send messages without either party needing the other's email address is to send the message to the client while he or she keeps a live chat session running. The minute he ends the chat, either by clicking 'end chat' or closing the webpage, the connection will be lost and he will never receive the message.

Although you can use the live chat messaging system to send email messages to offline clients, you can do so only if the email address is in the live chat account. This will therefore mean that you will see your client's email address but your client will not see yours.

Conclusion

You may need to rely on workarounds. You may need to accept that you can not easily control what others do. Even well established sites like UpWork can not prevent users from communicating directly.

Encourage users that your policies can be enforced to protect them only if they communicate transparently. Transparency may involve them emailing each other while sending you carbon copies. Your virtual assistants may also log correspondence that occurs outside of your infrastructure in your CRM, either and or a BCC forwarding address. 

If files need to be shared, an alternative to having your assistant sending emails, he or she may upload his work to a storage facility in the cloud like Google Drive to which involved parties (including yourself) have access to relevant folders.

Other options include creating company email addresses (using Zoho custom email for instance). However, regardless of your approach, there does not appear to be a perfect workaround.

CONTENT RELATED TO USING LIVE CHAT FOR CORRESPONDENCE AND DOCUMENT SHARING WITHOUT SHARING EMAIL ADDRESSES

•