Businesses seem to be focusing on customer support services more than ever before. No doubt the most effective platforms being are social media forums that have made it a lot easier to reach out to your potential customers. Pick any successful brand and you are sure to get impressed by the top-notch customer support service it offers. Let us take the example of the ever-growing and competitive cable industry. With so many providers competing for attention and a stronger customer base, Charter customer service seem to successfully occupy the front line and gaining maximum customer attention. The rule is quite simple. Customers are looking for validation that they will get instant help in case they come across a problem regarding a product or service. And this is when live chats, phone calls, emails, texts, and other modes of customer care play a critical role in lending out the much-sought support to the customers.
When it comes to communicating with people over the internet, chatrooms, and forums are the most popular platforms to do so. The chatrooms and forums are both meant to allow real-time communications. Forums are meant for discussions where all the participants can go online and interact. A common term we come across while describing forums is “threads” which refer to organized and separate topics. This makes it a lot easier for people to follow and participate in discussions based on their topic of interest. You are also likely to find relevant information in these threads. Let’s proceed to a detailed comparison regarding the key differences between chatrooms and forums. Keep reading
The Aspect of Moderation
The chatrooms are more difficult to moderate as compared to forums. This is because chatrooms are a fast pace. They do often have filters that can help block any inappropriate content. But it is still quite impossible for moderators to keep a check on every message before it is posted. This may also slow down the entire conversation. Quite often the participants are warned about posting any inappropriate content. Users can also be banned from chatrooms if they post any unsuitable content. The slow pace of forums makes it much easier to moderate and posts are usually checked before they are displayed on the forum. This ensures that nothing unsuitable is being posted on the forums that deviate from the topic of discussion, in any way.
Community Perspective
For avoiding any spam posts, the forums usually require registration with the help of an email address. This is done to make sure that the people who are part of the forum are interested in the topic under discussion. The moderators can remove users who do not follow the rules of the chat group.
Forums users, on the other hand, keep a check on their threads with the topic of their interest. Forums usually post the date of registration, the signature and give a count of the user’s post to create a better sense of community as compared to chatrooms.
Longevity of Content
When it comes to the longevity of the content, forum users tend to be ahead of the chatrooms. The content of the forums can be easily crawled by search engines. Forums usually have an integrated search feature through which you can easily find content. Moderators also close any threads that have been inactive for a long. However, they remain archives for future references and also for search engines to crawl. This might not be the case with chatrooms where the content is usually not always available.
Greater Functionality
While the forums appear as ordinary websites on your browser upon search, the chatrooms do usually require a browser extension, Java or Flash. Microphones or webcams are supported by chatrooms. When chatting with other users.
In the case of forums, you mostly have to refresh the browser page to be able to see new posts on forums but in chatrooms, the messages are often updated and refreshed automatically.
You can post images and other attachments in forums but this function might not be provided by all the chatrooms.
Asynchronous or Synchronous
Forums are usually considered as an asynchronous mode of communication. It is an area of community for people all over the world to discuss and express their thoughts and ideas. Users read and reply to the various messages anytime and anywhere.
Chatrooms on the other hand can be regarded as an asynchronous mode of communication since conversations take place at a much faster pace. The discussions are also likely to be changed rapidly in the case of chatrooms but that might not happen in forums where users mostly stick to the topic of discussion in the thread.
Wrapping Up
The aforementioned pointers clearly describe the key differences between chatrooms and forums and give a clear idea of how chatrooms are different from forums.