I think this is a valuable tool to help our visitors not get impatient or think something is broken, but the animation is so subtle that when combined with how long it takes for the ai to reply, people are getting impatient. We’ve done a lot of testing on our end and that is the main complaint.
Would it be possible to have options for how animated to make it? And also what can be done to provide a faster reply so the animation isn’t required as much?
Thanks in advance.
Hi there, @Wodobo 
Thank you so much for the feedback!
We have a guide featuring how to make the animation more noticeable - AI Chatbot: How to make typing animation more noticeable. Feel free to try it out and let me know if it helped 
As for the response time, could you please specify the average response time in your widget and send me a link to the page where it’s installed? I’ll be happy to look into this!
Thanks for the quick reply. I did try to add it to my widget in the custom JS location specified, but there was no visual difference so I’m not sure if I’m doing it wrong or if there’s something blocking it from propagating. Thanks.
I’ve checked the widget, where you’ve added the code and the animation works fine
Could you please double-check it? If it looks different on your end, please try to check your website in incognito mode.
The chatbot responded in about 17 seconds, which is within the normal range. Unfortunately, we’re unable to fully eliminate or reduce this delay, as it depends on our provider, OpenAI.
Please let me know if this explains things or if you have any questions left
Thanks for the quick reply. I was checking in the preview within the Widget Builder in Elfsight and it wasn’t working there, so it’s possible it was cached there? Anyway, I’ve confirmed that it’s working on my site. Thank you.
As for the response time, I’ve seen varying articles on standard/expected response times and I usually see 5-15 seconds for what most people expect for a moderately complicated question, but closer to 3-5 seconds for simpler requests.
I definitely understand the restriction though. If it means anytihng, if there was any option to pay more for that widget to get a more robust AI reponse I’d be interested. I know many ai chat services charge extra for AI resolutions, so if that would improve the experience/speed I’d be down…just mentioning this for a community vote in case that’s an option.
Yep, Custom JS code work only upon widget’s installation, not in the preview mode. This is why you haven’t noticed any changes when checking from the configurator
As for the idea to reduce the response time, I’ve added it to the Wishlist on your behalf - Reduce response time.
I am afraid, we can’t give any promises for now, since we completely depend on our provider in this case. However, if they have any changes on their end, we’ll try to implement them to the widget too
Thank you! This animation definitely helps the user experience!
In regards to the perceived response time, not sure if this would help…at least for the initial response, but Alisa from Customer Support sent me a CSS snippet that hides the initial response until after the form is served to the customer and then after the fill that out it reveals the previous response.
That definitely helps increase the chances of someone filling out the form, but it is still taking about 17 seconds for the form to appear.
I’m wondering if there’s a way that the form could appear programmatically after 3-5 seconds (while the 17 seconds for ai response is loading in the background)…and then it would take the user about 5-7 seconds to decide to fill it out and to complete the form…and then once they’ve completed the form, then that is already about 8-12 seconds into the 17 second wait in the background. Then it’s only 5 seconds after they submit their form for the initial response to show up.
I know that doesn’t speed up the 17 seconds, but multi tasks so that the customer experience thinks it’s faster.
Just a brainstorm. Thanks for all you guys do!
p.s. Here is the CSS snippet they had me add that I spoke about above to delay the AI Assistant’s reply until after the user submits the form:
To enable this, you can add the following Custom CSS to your widget’s General tab → Custom CSS section.:
.es-message-assistant:nth-child(3):not(:has([class*="dialog-message-dots__Container-sc"])) {
display: none;
}
.es-message-assistant:nth-child(3):has(+ [class*="form-success__Container-sc"]) {
display: flex;
}
.es-message-assistant:has(form) {
margin-top: 20px;
}
As far as I see, Alisa mentioned that the form will only appear once the bot has prepared a reply. That said, there is no way to show the form immediately, unfortunately.
Since the form appears only once the reply is prepared and the response time depends on our provider, unfortunately, there is no way to reduce this delay 