I saw a recent post where someone was asking about integrating live chat with HelpSpot. I found myself wishing I had the feature tonight, but not for assisting a client. I was assisting another support tech with a request assigned to her and I could see by the new "<insert name> is editing this request" feature. I wish I could have clicked on that and conducted a chat with her. So I needed it more as an internal tool when collaborating in real time on a request.

Most people just use a third party instant messaging client for that. Something like iChat.

But maybe HelpSpot could make the staff person's name a link to open an external chat program with a session to that user.

Yes, long term some type of chat in HS is likely. It is tricky because as John mentions many people use IM's for internal chat and when it comes to customer chat those tend to be sales oriented tools more than support (though HS is often used in the sales process as we do ourselves).

We actually use 37sigs Campfire currently for internal chat, but an integrated version would have many advantages. The chats could be logged with specific requests for easy review, they could be a click away within the HS UI as you mention, etc.

So while this isn't something coming right away, it is something we're considering for the future.