Chats are described as a free channel. True in the sense that no money changes hands. The payment is time, and it is worth pricing before a plan is built on it.
Where the hours go
- Reading. To answer appropriately you need the thread above your answer. In an active chat that is dozens of messages since your last visit.
- Waiting for a reason. You answer questions in your field, and those appear irregularly. Standing by is the most expensive part.
- Context switching. Five chats are five conversations to re-enter, which costs more than the reading itself.
- The answer. Paradoxically the quickest part.
Why one person cannot cover many
Not because of typing volume but because presence has to be simultaneous. Conversation runs in real time: a reply three hours later is answering a closed question.
Hence the practical ceiling of two or three chats per person if the work is serious. More than that is either shallow or full of gaps — choosing chats.
What can be lifted off a person
Watching, and the first reply. A system sees a new message in every chat at once, judges whether it concerns your subject, and answers the routine part; a person joins where the conversation goes past general questions.
What cannot be lifted is judgement: disputes, edge cases, anything about price — when to hand a chat to a human and automated replies in chats.
What this changes in the numbers
Compare chats with paid placement by cost per hour, not by cash spent. Priced at your own rate, the "free" channel is frequently the expensive one — and the reverse when the watching is automated: traffic vs paid ads.
How Neurogram does this
Everything above is manual work that runs into the number of hours in a day. Neurogram does it on your own accounts and without you: it collects channels and audiences, writes comments and replies with a language model, and keeps limits and quiet hours so the accounts survive. See pricing or look at your case.