Providing a quick and convenient service is essential for operating a business that interacts directly with customers. According to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2023, 72 percent of customers desire immediate assistance. As customer communication preferences continue to change, it becomes vital for businesses to adjust and meet customers on their terms. By utilizing live chat software, companies can go above and beyond in meeting customer expectations and delivering an excellent overall customer experience.
What is live chat software?
The technology responsible for instant messaging platforms used by organizations to communicate with prospects, customers, and employees is known as live chat software. These platforms enable real-time and asynchronous conversations between agents and end users, which can take place on a brand’s website, social media channels (such as Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Twitter for Business), through text messages, or within a company’s mobile app.
In a broader sense, live chat software often incorporates chatbots, automation platforms, CRMs, analytics, messaging apps, knowledge bases, help desk software, and other tools through APIs and native or third-party integrations. These integrations enable live chat apps to:
- Improve first contact resolution and reduce operating costs by deploying chatbots to handle repetitive customer requests, so more complicated issues can be handled by live agents.
- Enable companies to provide faster, more personalized services by pulling in relevant data from CRMs, HRISs, and analytics software to trigger workflows for use by chatbots and live agents.
- Build rapport between the company and prospects, customers, or employees by conducting conversations in the messaging channels end users prefer (like WhatsApp for Business, Twitter for Business, Facebook Messenger, Instagram Direct, etc.).
In simple terms, the presence of live chat software enables you to provide interconnected conversational experiences across your web, mobile, and social applications. Its automation capabilities make it effortless to adjust and expand according to the requirements of each user. Moreover, agents can offer assistance through mobile live chat applications on Android and iPhone, even while on the go.
1. Zendesk
Zendesk provides a live chat solution that is packed with features, quick to set up, user-friendly, and effortlessly adjusts to businesses of all sizes.
Combining our messaging platform with Zendesk live chat software creates richer conversational experiences. Live chat improves immediate interactions, while messaging enables conversations to continue at different times and channels, offering more convenience to customers.
With Zendesk Agent Workspace, agents can effortlessly switch between channels and access all the necessary context to personalize interactions on a larger scale, as all user interactions are consolidated into a unified view.
In addition, the software provides user-friendly automation tools that are built-in and easy to use.
- A bot builder: Use the drag-and-drop tool to design custom, interactive conversation flows—no coding skills required.
- Zendesk bots: AI-powered chatbots help users self-serve by providing direct links to help center articles. If they can’t answer a customer’s question, AI bots will hand off the conversation to an agent (along with any existing context).
Zendesk provides the capability to link all of your business systems, such as payment processors and third-party bots, to every conversation. By upgrading to Sunshine Conversations, an advanced interactive messaging integration, you can access enhanced functionalities. Sunshine Conversations includes features like personalized AI chatbots, outbound notifications for proactive customer engagement, and group messaging for connecting relevant individuals.
Characteristics:
The features mentioned below are only the beginning. Explore the complete list of features here.
- Proactive chat and visitor list
- Routing (based on agent status, capacity, skills, and conversation priority)
- Auto-translation
- Omnichannel agent workspace
- Pre-canned dashboards and real-time tracking
- Industry-leading ticketing system
- Messaging across web, mobile, and social
- Easy-to-set-up automations and workflows with additional options
- AI-powered automated answers
- Reporting and analytics (prebuilt and custom)
Pricing:
- Suite Team: $49 per agent/month
- Suite Growth: $79 per agent/month
- Suite Professional: $99 per agent/month
- Suite Enterprise: $150 per agent/month
You are entitled to a 14-day free trial.
2. Ada
Ada offers businesses the opportunity to implement automated live chat with an AI chatbot that offers more than just standard FAQs. While using a chatbot specifically designed for FAQs can be a fast and budget-friendly approach to live chat automation, Ada caters to companies seeking a more tailored and specialized chatbot solution.
Ada’s chat software for businesses is designed to serve various industries, accommodate companies of any size, and facilitate communication in multiple languages. Ada’s automated chat platform effectively utilizes customer information, objectives, and preferences to provide customized responses, offer proactive discounts, and offer relevant recommendations across more than 100 languages.
In order to incorporate a chatbot like Ada into your live chat strategy, it is important to ensure that it is compatible with your CRM or customer support software. By integrating Ada with a platform such as Zendesk, teams can ensure a smooth transition from bot to agent, which is an essential part of a positive live chat experience. Additionally, they can handle chatbot conversations alongside other channels and gain access to advanced routing options and analytics.
Characteristics:
- Proactive chat
- Offline forms
- Customizable branding
- Integration capabilities
- Website visitor tracking
- Auto-translation
- Omnichannel agent workspace
- Pre-canned dashboards and real-time tracking
- Knowledge base integration
- Shared inbox tools
Pricing: – Please rephrase the following sentence while maintaining the same meaning: “The cost of the product.”
- Contact Ada
There is no free trial option.
3. LiveChat
LiveChat is a customer service software that operates from the cloud, providing live support, a ticketing system, and analytics. Similar to other live chat solutions, LiveChat aims to enhance customer satisfaction and boost sales by minimizing customer emails and calls. The software is bundled with a live chat app and offers various features such as notifications, inactive chat messages, chat tags, chat archives, and file sharing.
By integrating with platforms like Zendesk, LiveChat enables the creation of tickets directly within a chat. This feature facilitates the monitoring of customer engagement, quality control, and agent supervision for businesses. Additionally, it helps to consolidate all customer insights in one location, thereby enhancing customer service capabilities in handling customer requests.
Characteristics:
- Proactive chat
- Canned responses
- Offline form
- Chat tags
- Customizable branding
- Integration capabilities
- Chat routing
- Website visitor tracking
- Auto-translation
- File sharing
- Omnichannel agent workspace
Pricing information:
- Starter: $20 per agent/month
- Team: $41 per agent/month
- Business: $59 per agent/month
- Enterprise: Contact sales
You can enjoy a 14-day free trial period.
4. Acquire
Acquire, a digital customer engagement platform, encompasses various features such as live chat, AI chatbots, secure co-browsing, and video calling. By utilizing Acquire’s platform, teams can promptly address intricate sales, service, and support problems in real-time through multiple channels.
Acquire, like other chat software, allows businesses to offer support and gather customer information at any time. The software provides automation choices to enhance sales and enhance the customer experience. Additionally, Acquire allows users to initiate video and voice calls, share screens, and co-browse through the live chat messenger.
Characteristics:
- Proactive chat
- Canned responses
- Offline form
- Customizable branding
- Integration capabilities
- Website visitor tracking
- Skills-based routing
- Auto-translation
- Omnichannel agent workspace
- Voice and video calling
Prices:
- Standard plan: $2,000 per month (billed annually)
There is no free trial offered.
5. Genesys
Genesys guarantees business empowerment by enhancing customer engagement, increasing visitor conversion, and improving efficiency and effectiveness of support teams. The live support software provides standard live chat features, such as customizable options to enhance the appearance and user experience of the live chat widget. Genesys enables proactive targeting of website visitors and includes surveys that can be used to collect contact information prior to initiating a chat or to assess customer satisfaction following a live chat session.
Genesys stands out with its ability to transform any live chat into a video session, facilitating visual demonstrations or consultations. Nevertheless, its reporting capabilities are rudimentary, and it offers only limited configuration options for specialized reports. Furthermore, the software has limited capability to integrate with downstream systems.
Characteristics:
- Proactive chat
- Canned responses
- Offline form
- Customizable branding
- Integration capabilities
- Website visitor tracking
- Asynchronous conversations
- Secure business and customer data
- Skills-based routing
- Auto-translation
- Omnichannel agent workspace
Cost:
- Genesys Cloud CX 1: $75 per month
- Genesys Cloud CX 2: $90 per month
- Genesys Cloud CX 2 + Voice: $110 per month
- Genesys Cloud CX 3: $130 per month
- Genesys Cloud CX 3 + Voice: $150 per month
You can enjoy a complimentary trial period for a duration of 30 days.
6. Userlike
Userlike enables teams to have real-time communication with customers through its cloud-based live chat software, which can be accessed via website, Facebook Messenger, or Telegram.
Userlike offers various features such as the option to create personalized chat buttons and customize the chat window to match your website’s appearance. Moreover, you can actively invite visitors to chat, seamlessly transition from customer chats to video calls and screen sharing, configure pre-defined messages for frequently asked questions and common scenarios, and receive feedback on the quality of your service.
Userlike is a chat and messaging software, not a ticketing software. You can integrate live chat into your current business tools, customer support system, or CRM as an extra channel. Userlike can be connected to external ticketing software through its add-ons or the API. By integrating Zendesk and Userlike chat, you can transform conversations into Zendesk tickets, allowing you to monitor all customer interactions.
Characteristics:
- Proactive chat
- Canned responses
- Offline form
- Customizable branding
- Integration capabilities
- Website visitor tracking
- Skills-based routing
- Auto-translation
- Omnichannel agent workspace
- Multimedia messaging
- Pre- and post-chat surveys
Cost:
- Team: $90 per month for 4 seats
- Corporate: $290 per month for 10 seats
- Flex: Contact sales
The free version is accessible.
You can enjoy a 14-day free trial.
7. Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk is typically included in the list of leading chat providers. Its live chat platform, equipped with an embeddable chat widget, allows businesses to promptly address customer inquiries as soon as they make contact.
The features provided encompass customer satisfaction ratings displayed within the chat window, pre-written responses, and chat widgets available for each of your brands. In cases where customer concerns require further handling, chat conversations can be transformed into tickets and assigned to the most suitable department for resolving their requirements.
Characteristics:
- Proactive chat
- Canned responses
- Offline forms
- Customizable branding
- Integration capabilities
- Skills-based routing
- Auto-translation
- Omnichannel agent workspace
- Pre-canned dashboards and real-time tracking
- Help center chat widget
- Convert chats to tickets
The cost of the product or service:
- Standard: $14 per user/month
- Professional: $23 per user/month
- Enterprise: $40 per user/month
Trial period of 15 days, free of charge.
8. Podium
With Podium’s Interaction Management platform, you can directly collect leads from your website. One noteworthy feature of Podium is its capacity to convert web chat conversations into text messages. Nevertheless, this also implies that users are compelled to communicate through SMS, even if they prefer to prolong the conversation on your website.
Podium offers a user-friendly live chat app that comes with several benefits. These include automated responses to frequently asked questions, such as business hours or store locations. The platform also allows for easy transfers of conversations between different business locations. In addition, you can personalize your chat widget with a customized greeting, avatar, or after-hours reminder.
Characteristics:
- Proactive chat
- Canned responses
- Customizable branding
- Offline forms
- Integration capabilities
- Skills-based routing
- Omnichannel agent workspace
The cost of goods or services offered.
- Essential: $249 per month for up to 3 agents
- Standard: $409 per month for unlimited agents
- Professional: $599 per month for unlimited agents
You can enjoy a complimentary trial period of 14 days.
9. Birdeye
Birdeye’s Webchat solution serves as a comprehensive software for customer experience and reviews, specifically designed for businesses with multiple locations. As per Birdeye, their live chat feature empowers companies to interact with website visitors as soon as they arrive. Each conversation commences with the provision of a name and genuine phone number, eliminating the need to search for contact information and allowing the company to solely concentrate on assisting the customer.
With webchat, you have the ability to send text messages to customers after they exit your website; the software will direct these messages to their mobile phones to ensure you don’t miss out on their communication. Additionally, you have the option to personalize chat icons, colors, and greetings in accordance with your brand. Moreover, you can utilize Google Analytics to gain insights into the behaviors of website visitors using your web chat. Birdeye also offers a live chat application.
Characteristics:
- Proactive chat
- Canned responses
- Offline forms
- Customizable branding
- Integration capabilities
- Website visitor tracking
- Skills-based routing
- Omnichannel agent workspace
- Surveys
Costs:
- Contact Birdeye
There is no option for a free trial.
10. Drift
Drift, similar to other live chat software providers, assists businesses in fostering trust and boosting revenue by facilitating real-time, customized conversations with customers.
With Drift, you have the ability to create playbooks that specifically focus on capitalizing on open opportunities once visitors return to your website, directing them to their designated account executive. Furthermore, you have the option to initiate an immediate voice or video chat with your potential clients directly through the chat window, allowing you to assess their suitability right away. Additionally, Drift’s live chat software will promptly alert the appropriate sales representative whenever a target account is present on the website, enabling them to engage in the chat promptly.
Drift’s website chat software emphasizes live conversations, thus excluding forms for customer information collection, despite its numerous helpful features.
Characteristics: or Attributes: or Qualities:
- Proactive chat
- Canned responses
- Customizable branding
- Integration capabilities
- Chat routing
- Website visitor tracking
- Omnichannel agent workspace
- Pre-canned dashboards and real-time tracking
- Automated feedback triggers
- Saved replies
Pricing is the same.
- Premium: $2,500 per month
- Advanced: Contact Drift
- Enterprise: Contact Drift
There is no free trial option.
11. Tidio
Tidio is a live chat system that operates on the cloud, combining messages from live chat widgets, emails, and Facebook Messenger. It offers fundamental live chat functions, including a widget that adapts to customers’ screens, enabling them to contact you on their mobile or tablet. Additionally, Tidio can be linked to any websites and platforms using specific plugins. It also allows for the use of quick reply templates to respond to common questions efficiently.
Tidio’s chat systems allow you to automatically assess leads and collect the email addresses and phone numbers of your website visitors for your sales team. Additionally, it offers a mobile live chat application for your agents or sales teams who are constantly on the go. Nevertheless, Tidio has restricted built-in connections and the analytics provided are minimal.
Characteristics:
- Proactive chat
- Canned responses
- Offline form
- Customizable branding
- Integration capabilities
- Website visitor tracking
- Skills-based routing
- Auto-translation
- Omnichannel agent workspace
- Live typing
Cost:
- Communicator: $15.83 per operator/month
- Chatbots: $32.50 per operator/month
- Tidio+: $240.83 per operator/month
There is an option for a free plan.
The duration of the free trial is 7 days.
12. 3CX
With its advanced features such as customized chat greetings, chat and call reporting, and integration with Facebook, WhatsApp, and SMS messaging, 3CX is a leading live chat platform that enhances your conversational experience.
The 3CX live chat support service offers a distinctive capability where visitors can seamlessly transition from text chat to voice or video chat. Additionally, visitors have the option to choose their desired department for conversation. The interface is designed to manage chats in groups based on a queue system, and it automatically assigns tickets to the initial user who responds to the chat.
Characteristics:
- Proactive chat
- Offline forms
- Customizable branding
- Integration capabilities
- Skills-based routing
- Omnichannel agent workspace
- Multimedia sharing options
- Chat grouping and tagging
Price:
- Startup Pro: $175 per agent/month
- Dedicated Pro: $295 per agent/month
- Dedicated Enterprise: $330 per agent/month
The Free plan is accessible for up to 10 users.
13. Olark
With Olark, teams can engage with customers in real time using their straightforward and easy-to-use chat software. You have the flexibility to customize the appearance of your chat windows to align with your brand’s style.
It is convenient to customize live chat automation rules to determine whether the live chat window should be displayed or hidden, and to initiate chats automatically depending on website behavior. Additionally, it is simple to customize personalized greetings according to past conversations and smartly direct customers to the appropriate department.
By offering real-time updates on website visitors, Olark live chat enables you to engage with customers promptly and address their inquiries before they leave their shopping carts.
Characteristics:
- Automated messages
- Live chat analytics
- Searchable transcripts
- Custom chatbox forms
- Custom greetings
- Proactive chat
- Skills-based routing
- Auto-translation
- Omnichannel agent workspace
- Pre-canned dashboards and real-time tracking
The cost of the product or service.
- Standard: $29 per seat/month
- Pro: Contact Olark
There is a 14-day free trial available.
14. Thankful
Thankful provides a distinctive chatbot experience centered around AI and automation. The utilization of AI enables the interpretation of customer language, sentiment, and intent, resulting in a tailored user experience. The live chat software can be personalized to match your brand messaging.
Thankful is seamlessly integrated with Zendesk and can also integrate with other website chat services for a personalized experience. Thankful prioritizes effective problem-solving from the start and does not rely on approximations or guesses. In case Thankful cannot provide an answer, it smoothly transfers the conversation to a human agent, providing them with relevant context.
Characteristics:
- AI-powered chat conversations
- Self-service options and automated FAQs
- Product and service recommendations
- Customizable brand messaging
- Proactive chat
- Visitor list
- Skills-based routing
- Auto-translation
- Omnichannel agent workspace
- Pre-canned dashboards and real-time tracking
Pricing: Prices:
- Contact Thankful
There is no option for a free trial.
15. SnapEngage
SnapEngage is a live chat software solution that enhances customer engagement within different departments. By using live chat, support agents can deliver customized experiences to customers, while sales teams can increase sales opportunities. Moreover, the software is fully compliant with HIPAA and GDPR regulations, ensuring constant adherence to the latest data security and privacy measures.
By employing the omnichannel solution, your teams can engage with customers through multiple favored channels. SnapEngage offers automation choices, such as chatbots that retrieve assistance articles from your knowledge base, direct customers to the appropriate department, or link them with live agents capable of effectively resolving the issue.
Characteristics:
- AI and automation options
- HIPAA and GDPR-compliant
- Reporting and analytics
- Audit logs
- Proactive chat
- Skills-based routing
- Auto-translation
- Omnichannel agent workspace
- Pre-canned dashboards and real-time tracking
- Unlimited chats
Price:
- Contact SnapEngage
You can enjoy a trial period for 15 days at no cost.
Who uses live chat software and why is it important?
Live chat software is used by companies of all sizes and industries, from startups to large corporate enterprises, to enhance the experience of both customers and employees. Its main purpose is to offer immediate one-on-one support to prospects, customers, and employees without any disruption to their browsing activities.
Your business can benefit from the power of live chat.
- Increase sales by proactively engaging customers on your website
- Help more users in less time and boost satisfaction
- Anticipate user needs and offer help as soon as they need it
A lot of businesses that utilize live chat software are actively seeking ways to expand and enhance their digital service options. Live chat is often the preferred communication method over phone calls for these companies due to the following reasons:
- Live chat is more efficient (and cost-effective); agents can help multiple users at once
- It’s easier to scale
- It’s easier to analyze chat transcripts
- Teams can provide 24/7 support with the help of an AI-powered chatbot
Meeting your customers in the place where they feel most at ease conversing is facilitated by top-notch chat software. This holds significant advantages for businesses, as stated in the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report, wherein 64 percent of customers are inclined to spend more if their concerns are addressed on the platform they are already engaged in.
Enabling companies to engage in conversations with their employees anytime and anywhere, live chat for internal support holds the same level of effectiveness, enhancing both the employee experience and overall engagement.
Benefits of live chat support software
Drive more efficiency and cost savings
Live chat enables support teams to accomplish more with limited resources. Unlike phone support, agents have the capacity to manage concurrent chats on various platforms, resulting in enhanced efficiency and reduced costs. According to a recent study conducted by Forrester, incorporating live chat can enhance productivity by 25 percent, resulting in substantial savings amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars for your business.
Improve customer satisfaction
Customers desire fast support and they expect it to be delivered promptly.
With the appropriate live chat software, businesses offer users the opportunity to engage with prospects and customers promptly.
- Self-serve with relevant knowledge base content, delivered by a chatbot
- Request to connect with a live agent
- Leave a message for internal or external support
- Continue conversations from where they left off
Thanks to the availability of chatbots and self-serve options, companies are now able to provide round-the-clock support to customers. As a result, there is an increase in CSAT scores and the support team can now scale more efficiently than ever.
Boost sales and reduce shopping cart abandonment
Live chat engagement that is proactive can effectively decrease instances of online cart abandonment and boost sales. According to our CX Trends Report, providing immediate assistance to customers through conversational support can promptly address their concerns, enhancing their purchasing experience and prompting them to complete the transaction. As an illustration, suppose a customer encounters difficulties with the online shopping cart. By offering assistance in real-time while they are navigating the page, the obstacle hindering the sale can be promptly resolved.
Here are a few ways in which live chat can assist your agents, demonstrating that these statistics directly convey how live chat can enhance the lifetime worth of both your customers and agents.
- Chatbots and self-service options filter out easy, repetitive questions
- Automation handles tedious logistics (i.e., tagging and routing support tickets)
- Chat analytics deliver relevant insights
Chatbots allow live agents to concentrate on delivering customized services that encourage brand loyalty, leading to increased sales volume and larger purchases by to excluding basic queries.
How Live Chat Works
Live chat is essentially a basic window that appears on your website, allowing the display of text. Users have the ability to input text, and you can view and respond to their messages from your own backend. Similarly to a physical store, your agent can also identify and approach users on the website, posing questions as needed.
It should be highlighted that nowadays, incorporating live chat software has become quite effortless. The procedure generally involves copying a few lines of codes and integrating them into your website. Additionally, certain tools offer direct plugins for CMSs and website builders such as WordPress, Wix, and Shopify, among others, significantly simplifying the installation process.
Pros and Cons of Live Chat
As previously mentioned, the popularity of chat support software is growing, particularly among younger individuals who are more knowledgeable about technology.
The advantages for both users and companies are:
- Better customer service: it’s easier for your staff to “know all the answers.” They can answer multiple users at once, transfer to another team member or refer to the documentation for tricky questions. The customer won’t even notice it.
- Real-time and instant feedback: Unlike email support, the answers are fast, so users can quickly find what they are after.
- Improved user experience: A simple text box means no need to deal with cumbersome phone menus or extra contact forms. The answers are also clear, without any miscommunication due to strong accents or poor call quality.
- Great data-analyzing capacity: With live chats, it’s easier to log answers for review than with phone support. This is useful for analytics and to monitor the quality of your agents’ responses.
- Pro-active communication: One significant advantage of live chat software is the ability to proactively contact your website users. This means live chats can also be a powerful tool for sales and upsells.
Drawbacks:
- Not for everyone: The less computer-savvy users might dislike chat support and might rather talk with a real person. They could also not know how to use it, which is why live chats are a great addition to phone and email support.
- Not always great on mobile: Mobile users’ experience might suffer sometimes, as it’s a bit tedious to write on a small smartphone display.
- Requires real-time attention: While you can close the live chat and get email questions instead, live chat support does need someone’s full attention to be efficient. Ideally, you should also have regular live chat hours, so users can come back if it is their preferred method of communication.
How to Choose the Best Live Chat Software for your Business
When making any significant business decision, such as selecting the most suitable live chat software for your company, it is important to consider numerous factors. Drawing from our own direct experience, we have created a step-by-step guide to help you make the correct choice.
1. Create a list of all the features you need (and be clear on what you don’t need)
If your business receives many support requests, then having an integrated help desk to manage support tickets is likely unnecessary. However, if you are receiving numerous sales inquiries, having an automated chatbot could be beneficial.
To avoid overpaying for unnecessary features, narrow down your choices by prioritizing what you truly need.
Below are some of the features that you should take into consideration:
- Ease of use: is getting off the ground quickly important to you, or would you prefer to invest the time in a more advanced tool?
- Triggered messages / automated messaging: do you want to be able to proactively start chats with visitors (e.g. if they visit the pricing page on your website), or would you prefer to reserve chat for incoming messages only?
- Offline / asynchronous messaging: do you want to be able to receive messages and continue conversations while you’re offline?
- Tracking and live analytics: how important is it to have a live view of how many visitors are on your site, and which pages they’re viewing?
- Multilingual chat widgets: do you serve multiple markets, and is it important to be able to offer different language options for chat?
- Ticketing / help desk system: do you anticipate high volumes of support tickets? Or can you integrate it with your existing ticketing system?
- Chat routing and assignment rules: do you need to be able to set up automated rules for assigning chats to specific operators (e.g. based on languages or expertise)?
- Voice and video calls: is this an important part of your customer support or sales process?
- Screen sharing / co-browsing: this might be useful for demos or support of software products, but may not be strictly necessary otherwise
- Integrations and additional apps: do you need to be able to integrate it with your existing business apps?
- Support: what kind of customer support is offered to you? Are they reachable when and where you need them?
- Chatbots: these can be very handy in automating repetitive conversations, but are usually quite pricey too.
You will find in our comprehensive reviews of popular tools such as LiveChat, Tidio, Olark, and Userlike, an evaluation of each provider’s performance in terms of these features.
2. Set yourself a budget
Instead of providing enterprise-level solutions, we have specifically concentrated on presenting live chat tools suitable for small and mid-sized businesses. Consequently, the live chat software we have showcased falls within the price range of $8 to $50 per agent per month (and occasionally, they may even be free). Additional features such as chatbots and helpdesks typically come with extra charges (as seen with LiveChat), although there are rare exceptions like Tidio, which includes chatbots in its plans.
Ensure that you have a precise understanding of the amount you can feasibly allocate for a live chat software on a monthly basis. Keep in mind that discounts are commonly available for yearly or biennial plans, making them advantageous choices if you are completely committed to a particular solution.
Smaller teams may find it more beneficial to opt for certain providers (like Tidio and Pure Chat) that offer the option to have multiple users under one plan rather than charging per agent.
Transitioning to higher-level plans is generally straightforward, while downsizing to a more affordable plan can occasionally pose difficulties, if not outright impossibility. If you foresee changes in your requirements or prefer not to be tied down by a lengthy agreement, we suggest opting for more adaptable month-to-month plans.
3. Shortlist the best live chat software tools that meet all your needs
Once you have identified the necessary features and considered your budget, you can proceed with narrowing down your options.
To assist you further, make use of our live chat software comparison tool to assess and compare all the available options simultaneously.
4. Sign up for free trials and plans
It is great to know that most top live chat software apps offer a trial period to test their platform before making a purchase. This feature is very beneficial in determining if a particular live chat tool suits your needs.
5. Install your widgets – and get chatting!
It is the perfect opportunity to thoroughly assess the performance of these live chat applications! They can be effortlessly incorporated into your website through code embedding. We suggest installing them on specific pages instead of the entire site, such as heavily visited ones like the homepage or crucial pages like checkout or pricing.
You should configure your chat widgets, generate agent profiles, and experiment with more complex features like triggered messages, offline messaging, chat routing, and chatbots. Engage in some practice conversations with yourself and actual visitors to ensure you consider all possible scenarios.
It is advisable to test different live chat solutions individually rather than simultaneously if you are evaluating multiple options. For instance, you can dedicate a two-week trial period for each solution. By doing so, you can make a more precise assessment of their performance in similar settings.
Ensure to also evaluate the customer support provided by the live chat provider through various channels such as help center, email, telephone, and live chat itself. Determine if they are accessible when required and if they provide useful responses. This evaluation will provide insight into the type of support that will be available to you in the future.
At the conclusion of the testing phase, you should have gained insight into the advantages and disadvantages of each solution, and acquired a clear understanding of which live chat software is most suitable for your unique requirements.
Once you reach that point, all you need to do is cancel the undesirable plans (ensure it is done during the free trial period) and keep refining your live chat configuration with the chosen software, as it will likely be a continuous task.
