A powerful way to engage with people visiting your website is by using a live chat box. By answering their questions, you can boost their confidence in making a purchase, assist existing customers with your product, or offer valuable information to those in the early stages of their buying journey.
When done correctly, a live chat service can provide a customized and personalized interaction, which results in an excellent customer experience, regardless of the reason for using it.
In addition to this, numerous live chat tools allow you to gather essential customer contact details, enabling you to reach out to them later on, resulting in enhanced sales and improved customer loyalty.
Fortunately, the process of adding a live chat box, also known as a chat widget, to your website has become more uncomplicated and cost-effective. In this article, we will present you with five user-friendly tools that enable you to establish live chat functionality on your website without any monetary expenses.
Free Live Chat Tools for Websites
Tawk.to
Tawk.to is a live chat widget for websites that is free and packed with a wide range of beneficial features. We particularly appreciate its favorable reviews, simple setup process, and the extensive array of features available at no cost.
To set up, follow these easy steps: copy and paste a line of code provided by them. We highly appreciate the free features that include unlimited agents (team members who engage in chats with visitors), mobile apps, canned shortcuts, comprehensive reporting, screen sharing, and numerous integrations with other tools.
Although Tawk.to does offer paid options such as a charge for eliminating their branding, the majority of users will find the free version sufficient for their requirements.
HubSpot
If you are currently using the HubSpot platform, we suggest considering their Live Chat feature. It is an additional free option provided within the HubSpot CRM that can be integrated into your website without any need for coding. If you are not currently using HubSpot, it is still worth looking into it, regardless of the free chat service you choose.
HubSpot is our top choice because the free live chat is just the beginning. If you want to establish long-term relationships with customers and improve profitability, it’s important to consider the future rather than just instant results.
HubSpot’s platform offers a comprehensive solution that encompasses a free customer relationship management center, as well as tools for managing marketing, sales, content, customer relationships, operations, customer service, and more. With this platform, all the necessary functionalities are consolidated in a single place, and you are only required to pay for the features you require.
You can integrate HubSpot’s free chat box with Slack to easily manage your responses and promptly reply to potential or current customers. Additionally, it provides a simple chatbot to lessen your workload, and implementing workflows can assist you in automating lead nurturing.
WP Live Chat Support
If your website is built with WordPress, WP Live Chat Support is a fantastic choice. This free plugin allows you to handle your chats directly within the WordPress admin dashboard, removing the requirement to access a separate software tool.
The free version of WP Live Chat Support comes with a range of features, such as the option to personalize the chatbox’s appearance, the ability to have multiple chats at the same time, and the option to create customized offline messages. Unlike many other free website chat tools, WP Live Chat Support does not display their branding or a “powered by” link on the chat window, which is a pleasant surprise. This version is available at no cost for a maximum of 10 users.
The plugin also offers premium versions which provide additional functionality including triggers for the chat box, the ability to initiate chat with visitors, and improved reporting.
LiveSupporti
LiveSupporti is a live chat tool that offers a fantastic free plan. Setting it up is easy, and the Free Forever plan encompasses all the features required for a small business. Included in this plan are unlimited chats, unlimited concurrent chats, offline messages, and mobile apps.
For only $5 per month, LiveSupporti’s paid plan offers additional features such as the option to have 5 agents instead of 3, multilingual support, and a ticket system, as well as other customization options.
Userlike
Starting with Userlike’s free plan, their simple chat box offering includes one operator and a chat widget that allows for unlimited chats. It is an excellent starting point.
You have the option to enhance your operator skills through their paid plans so that customers can be connected with an expert in a particular field. Additionally, you can engage with customers using various services such as SMS, Facebook, and Telegram. Emphasizing personalization and feedback, Userlike’s chat features are their primary focus. The pricing for Userlike’s plans begins at approximately $90 per month, which includes fundamental customization and integration choices.
MyLiveChat
MyLiveChat is a website chat provider that offers a strong free option. It provides unlimited chat volume, easy setup, support for multiple languages, pre-written responses, and the option to email the chat transcript. For most small businesses, the free version should suffice.
Having a chat box tool that initiates each conversation by requesting an email address is an important factor we consider. This enables us to acquire leads for our email nurturing campaigns. MyLiveChat, Tawk.to, and a few other tools on this list offer this feature in their free versions.
If you find that the free option does not meet your needs, MyLiveChat offers paid plans starting at $15. These paid plans allow you to remove their branding and enable multiple agents to chat with site visitors simultaneously. The main difference between the paid plans is the number of seats available.
By incorporating a live chat option on your website or in your business, you can address these typical obstacles in customer support, enhance your support team’s daily efficiency, and gain a competitive edge in the following four ways:
4 Advantages of Using Live Chat for Customer Service
1. Greater Convenience
Two key factors in delivering a positive user experience are the accessibility of your support team and the timeliness of your response when it comes to providing high-quality customer service.
By incorporating a chat service into your website, you can effectively address these requirements as chat channels provide customers with a more immediate solution, thereby alleviating their stress. Unlike phone lines used for customer support, live chat providers generally do not have a call queue system where customers have to wait on hold before speaking to a representative. Instead, the chat widget on the webpage will either visually indicate the presence of a representative who is ready to assist or notify users that the chat service is unavailable if all representatives are occupied or offline.
Not only do chat channels save time by eliminating the need to wait for a representative, but they also address the issue of customers being put on hold during troubleshooting. According to a study from 2016, the most common complaint among customers regarding support teams was the extended duration of being placed on hold. In fact, out of the nine options presented in the study, being put on hold for excessive amount of time received the highest percentage of votes (42%) as the most aggravating factor.
By incorporating chat into your site, you can completely eliminate this negative experience. Your support representatives will have the ability to troubleshoot from their end and engage in a continuous conversation with customers. Chat communication naturally allows for 3-4 minute delays between responses, giving reps the opportunity to thoroughly investigate a case before continuing the interaction, without having to formally place the customer on hold.
On the other hand, customers have the freedom to engage in other tasks while live chatting with customer support, without being dependent on their phone or computer. If customers are concerned about excessive wait times, they may be reluctant to call your support line. By incorporating live chat into your support services, it reflects your dedication to offering prompt solutions through various platforms by eliminating time-consuming obstacles such as being put on hold.
2. Improved Efficiency
With the support team becoming more accessible, it is expected that your support representatives will experience an improvement in their work efficiency.
Most live chat services enable support reps to handle multiple cases at the same time, boosting productivity within the team. Due to the built-in delays between responses, reps usually have enough time to handle three or more cases simultaneously. The unique capability of handling multiple conversations at once allows reps to almost triple their chat output.
Even if they are not handling multiple chats simultaneously, the channel’s structure still enables smooth transitions between cases, saving time. After one chat ends, a new one appears, and the representative can easily click “accept” instead of making a phone call or dialing a number. While there is an initial learning process when transitioning from phone to chat support, once this challenge is overcome, representatives will notice enhancements in their multitasking skills and ability to communicate swiftly and urgently.
The introduction of a live chat service can enhance a reps’ statistical performance by improving the workflow. Additionally, it helps smooth out minor, everyday obstacles. For instance, reps no longer need to remember or repeat scripted opening and closing statements. Moreover, they are relieved from the discomfort of wearing an inconvenient headset throughout the day, which can hinder customers’ ability to hear them. Furthermore, reps can overcome language or audio barriers they may encounter with customers who struggle to hear or comprehend them.
Just by making small logistical improvements, a representative’s overall focus can significantly increase. These improvements eliminate the often-ignored distractions that can hinder an employee’s daily performance.
3. More Cost-Effective
By utilizing live chat, representatives can handle additional cases within a given timeframe, thus enabling you to enhance your support capacity by up to two or three times without increasing the number of representatives employed. Consequently, this efficiency can result in substantial cost savings for your business, as there won’t be a need to allocate additional payroll resources to meet heightened customer support demands during busy periods.
Live chat provides an opportunity to utilize chatbots for assigning cases to the appropriate support platform. When programmed properly, some chatbots are capable of addressing basic inquiries and resolving simpler tasks. This not only eliminates the need to compensate the bot currently but also allows your team to engage with a greater number of customers and at an increased rate. By expanding the reach of your support team, you not only enhance their capacity but also strengthen the rapport with your customers.
Your potential to influence customers during the evaluation and decision stages of their buying process will be enhanced by the increase in engagement. As online shopping and touchless purchasing gain popularity among consumers, it is crucial not to lose the personal interactions with your customers in this impersonal buying environment. This is highlighted by a Forrester survey, which found that 53% of customers stated they would abandon an online purchase if they were unable to receive an immediate response from the support team.
Fortunately, by prominently displaying the chat icon on every page, businesses can utilize live chat to engage in proactive communication with customers, offering ongoing support during the entirety of their purchase process. This advantageous approach establishes a direct line of communication with customers precisely when they are deliberating between choosing your product or your competitors’.
4. More User-Friendly
When considering different levels of customer support, chat can be seen as a middle ground between phone and web channels.
Chat, like the intersection of a Venn diagram, serves as a balanced option between these two channels, often becoming the preferred choice for the majority of support teams.
In comparison to phones, chat allows for a more flexible conversation without the need for an immediate response. As previously mentioned, the natural breaks in a chat conversation provide the representative with the opportunity to gather information or troubleshoot in order to provide a more effective response to customer inquiries. In a chat interaction, the customer can express their problem clearly, the representative can read and understand it, and then proceed to efficiently troubleshoot the issue.
In contrast, when having a phone conversation, the representative has to listen, quickly identify the customer’s need, and promptly troubleshoot. As a result, the representative has less time to be certain in their response to the customer. A study shows that 66% of surveyed customers anticipate an immediate response or solution when seeking support via a live interaction. Chat alleviates this pressure for the support representative, giving them sufficient time to thoughtfully consider how they can satisfy both the customer’s tangible and intangible requirements.
