Running a flourishing online business may sometimes feel as though one is continuously investing money with no end in sight.
You are currently incurring expenses for SEO services, advertisements, email marketing, and the monitoring of social media.
Furthermore, there are additional essential services that are currently being developed.
To determine if you should prioritize live chat software, the initial factor to consider is the impact it can have on improving your conversion rates. Numerous evidence supports this idea.
Another aspect to consider is whether you are feeling overwhelmed with customer support emails. In this case, utilizing live chat can be beneficial as it enables you to provide quick assistance and reduce the clutter in your inbox. This, in turn, can alleviate any anxiety you may be experiencing regarding the need to address all of them.
Now, the use of live chat can reduce the amount of support emails you receive, and a majority of businesses (79%) believe that it has had a positive effect on their sales, revenue, and customer loyalty.
If your customer satisfaction score is not at the desired level, implementing live chat support can improve the happiness of your customers. Based on data from Zendesk, live chat has a customer satisfaction rating of 85%, which is surpassed only by phone support.
If your customer service budget is becoming unmanageable, live chat software is a more cost-effective option compared to phone support, as it incurs lower costs per interaction.
Best Live Chat Software
#1 – Nextiva
Nextiva’s live chat widget can be utilized by businesses of any type or industry to establish real-time communication with prospects and customers on their websites.
Nextiva’s live chat feature is versatile and improves the user experience by quickly answering visitors’ questions and inquiries through an easily accessible medium. It can also move buyers through the sales cycle, send post-chat satisfaction surveys, and fulfill other functions.
Nextiva sets itself apart from other live chat tools by offering equally powerful features to enhance your team’s communication, whereas most tools in the market primarily focus on external support.
Simply by pointing and clicking, chatbots can be set up for various purposes with minimal effort.
Nextiva offers a comprehensive solution that addresses multiple needs. It provides a powerful live chat widget for customer interactions on your website, as well as an internal chat tool for employee communication. These two aspects of the platform seamlessly integrate with each other.
#2 – Gorgias
If you are looking for a comprehensive tool that can consolidate customer communications and is excellent for live chat features, then Gorgias is the software for you. It allows you to manage email, social media, phone calls, and text messages, in addition to live chat and chatbots, all from a single dashboard.
While all of the software’s facets are strong, let’s begin by focusing on Gorgias’ live chat capabilities first.
This platform is effective in connecting your live representatives with customers through live chat software. It includes the Gorgias live chat widget, which can be easily embedded on your websites. The widget allows for up to three quick reply options, and when a site visitor selects one of them, they will be connected to the specific representative designated to handle that conversation topic.
#3 – Salesforce
Salesforce is a comprehensive customer relationship management (CRM) platform that offers top-notch live chat solutions.
Allow your customers to initiate chat conversations on your website or app, granting them the opportunity to receive answers to frequently asked questions from chatbots or be directed to the suitable agent.
Salesforce takes it a step further by integrating live chat with your CRM data, enabling customers to interact with chatbots using natural language processing. This allows for automatic guidance towards relevant resources to assist them.
Bots have the ability to direct customers to the appropriate agent by gathering important information about their inquiry for those who prefer talking to a human.
Agents using Salesforce have relevant information from customer histories, past cases, and related documentation automatically surfaced in real-time.
You can enable all of this without using code, just by clicking, which means you don’t have to call Salesforce every time you want to change a flow or experiment with an idea.
#4 – Tidio
For companies seeking a direct means of engaging with customers on their site, store, or social network, Tidio offers a simple live chat solution.
With chat templates available for immediate use, the system is designed to be user-friendly. By simply activating it, you can engage in conversations with visitors on your website.
If desired, chatbots can be set up without any coding. The technology is ready to be used immediately and does not require a lengthy deployment or complex licensing. It is a straightforward, cost-effective, and highly efficient live chat system.
By using this customer relationship tool, your employees can reduce response times to minutes. Additionally, engaging in conversations enables you to gain a deeper understanding of your customers and uncover what is truly important to them.
Reduce any anxiety experienced by your chat agents regarding the visibility of customer information, as they have access to a real-time visitor list displaying all individuals present on the website. This list may include contact details, location, browser information, and the most recent page visited.
Agents can effectively communicate with customers by understanding the appropriate timing and approach. By doing so, customers are spared from having to provide redundant information. Additionally, knowing the specific browser being used by the customer is advantageous in resolving any issues, ultimately reducing unnecessary complications.
#5 – HubSpot Live Chat
HubSpot Live Chat software comes bundled with its free-forever CRM, adding to the reputable name it holds in the marketing world.
You can use this live chat software for free, even if you are not currently using HubSpot.
This is a great choice for any business that wants to avoid spending a lot of money on a live chat solution and is not fully prepared to do so. You can give it a try without any risk and determine if it is suitable for your business.
You can be reassured knowing that the software is both powerful and user-friendly, even though it is a HubSpot tool and doesn’t cost anything.
The package still includes all the necessary components such as a personalized live chat widget for your website, specific welcome messages, rules for customer routing, and an integrated meeting scheduling feature.
Visitors interacting with your website are afforded a professional appearance through the availability of live chat and chatbot options.
By integrating with your CRM or utilizing HubSpot’s built-in CRM solution, you have the ability to personalize the live chat experience for repeat visitors. This ensures that all of your customer interactions feel natural, personalized, and aligned with your brand.
Managing your chat inbox is a simple task. All chats are stored in a universal inbox equipped with comprehensive data, enabling every representative to quickly access the necessary information.
#6 – LiveAgent
LiveAgent is a customer support solution that combines a complete live chat widget. The widget collaborates with all your support documentation to provide unparalleled 24/7 customer support automatically.
With the branding of being the fastest live chat available, this software transforms your live chat channel into a support center that operates continuously without requiring breaks, vacations, or overtime compensation.
LiveAgent’s chat software utilizes automation as its foundation, offering a myriad of options to effectively direct chats to the appropriate representatives. This ensures that your customers obtain accurate responses to their inquiries right from the start. By segmenting your audience and creating personalized chat flows, you can also recommend pertinent support articles, all the while granting your agents additional time to prioritize more significant matters that necessitate a human touch. This is truly remarkable.
The widget can be customized extensively, allowing you to select your preferred colors, establish a personalized greeting, establish customized regulations, monitor user activity on your site, and commence discussions at the appropriate moment.
Customers or leads with advanced issues can utilize LiveAgent’s live chat feature, which even offers basic video chat. This allows them to share their screens, engage in face-to-face communication, and receive personalized assistance in a manner that is most suitable for the given situation.
#7 – Olark
Olark is a popular option for smaller businesses and newcomers to live chat due to its modern and user-friendly features.
Even if you are unsure of what you are doing, the simplicity and ease of use of this tool make it effortless to build customer relationships.
Even though it offers numerous features, it only takes a few minutes to generate and publish your live chat widget on your website. Once done, you will begin gathering data and analytics automatically, which can be utilized to enhance the customer experience.
One aspect in which Olark excels is its searchable transcript technology. This exceptional feature simplifies monitoring customer issues and improves the capability to tackle potential problems that other customers may encounter in the future.
By simply clicking a few times, you can create a database of commonly resolved issues. This will decrease the number of requests you receive regarding those issues, allowing your agents to focus on more important inquiries.
By having the capability to search chats and locate previously mentioned customer issues, each agent can quickly access a solution without requiring the customer to repeat the problem. Additionally, searchable transcript software aids in creating incremental improvements for service by developing new best practices.
The agent’s process involves reopening a previous chat, identifying the customer’s problem, and immediately addressing it.
#8 – Podium Webchat
Podium recognizes that chat widgets are incapable of converting and communicating as effectively as traditional texting from your mobile phone.
Regardless of your motivations for utilizing live chat software, such as engaging in sales discussions with potential customers, providing client support, or scheduling appointments or meetings, it would be ideal to offer both your prospects or customers and your employees the option to conduct all these activities through SMS.
The reason why Podium’s Webchat widget only has one screen is because when visitors to the site click on the icon, they will be presented with a customizable form where they can enter their name, mobile number, and an introductory message.
Once they click “Send,” the information will be received by your team, enabling a member to text them back. Furthermore, visitors will be able to see the number from which your representative will send the text, thus providing them with the knowledge of where the response will originate.
To implement the widget, follow these steps: place a piece of code on your website, customize the button, avatar, greeting, and after-hours message, integrate it with your CRM, and you will be ready to proceed.
#9 – Brevo (formerly Sendinblue)
Brevo, previously known as Sendinblue, offers a service that encompasses email marketing engine along with live chat, text messaging, and landing pages.
This live chat solution is beneficial for enhancing conversation management and business growth via email. Cold emailing, as an outdated marketing strategy, has almost disappeared. Autoresponders are aware of this method and are safeguarding users against spam.
Brevo helps you effectively utilize email and chat messaging to guide visitors towards becoming loyal customers by eliminating distractions.
Rely on their live chat widget to welcome and engage with visitors on your website, afterwards capturing their contact information. This will result in adding pre-warmed subscribers to your email list.
First, you should use Brevo’s drag-and-drop builder to create effective messages, including transactional emails. Once you have composed the messages, send them to your new contacts. Additionally, since they have willingly subscribed to your marketing efforts through the live chat conversation, you can be confident that your emails will be delivered to their inbox.
#10 – LiveChat
LiveChat is trusted by over 35,000+ businesses, including Ikea, Mercedes-Benz, McDonald’s, and PayPal, as an all-in-one customer service platform for their customer support needs.
LiveChat operates by merging questions and chats from various platforms into one inbox, enabling your customer support team to promptly and effectively respond to them. This comprehensive view empowers your team to act swiftly when opportunities arise.
If visitors make any type of contact, you are prepared to offer the necessary information for them to make a confident purchase.
During live chats, all these features such as product cards, custom forms, AI automation, and advanced sales analytics are accessible, making selling easy with the state-of-the-art software LiveChat.
Their chat software includes robust AI tools that enable you to automatically direct inquiries to the appropriate team, categorize visitors, and generate potential sales leads. Additionally, it is possible to directly facilitate some sales through the chat software alone.
This degree of automation results in increased conversions and allows businesses to dedicate their efforts to fostering long-term relationships with customers.
#11 – Chaport
Chaport specializes in enhancing sales by improving chat communication, providing the necessary chat services for your small business or startup to expand seamlessly.
If you want to start a business, it is necessary to establish a customer base, finalize sales, and expand your business in a simple manner. Chaport offers customizable widgets that enable you to engage in live chats or integrate chatbots. These tools effectively interact with visitors, resolve issues promptly, and enhance sales.
When a question is resolved quickly, it maximizes the effectiveness of the bottom of your sales funnel as it allows visitors to make confident buying decisions.
If you are not a large business that requires live chat, using a chatbot is an ideal choice as it fills the gap by providing continuous online assistance to handle your increasing website traffic.
#12 – Social Intents
Decentralized communication can be quite burdensome, as many of us are well aware. Often, a significant portion of our day is consumed by the tedious task of monitoring numerous email accounts, team chat platforms, PM software notifications, and other messaging systems.
Social Intents is the live chat tool that will alleviate some of your frustration.
The reason for this is that Social Intents is designed to work seamlessly with Slack and Microsoft Teams, which are two highly popular team messaging platforms. With Social Intents, your team can engage in direct conversations with customers and website visitors without leaving these software platforms.
Once you have signed up, connecting Social Intents to Slack or MS Teams is extremely simple. On Social Intents’ homepage, you just need to click once to complete the connection. Additionally, you can embed the code for its live chat widget onto your website or landing page. By completing these steps, you will be ready to go.
Your team will achieve unparalleled response times by simply following two steps seriously.
Reps can customize the channel to which chat notifications and requests push, ensuring that they do not lose anything in the shuffle.
#13 – Pure Chat
Pure Chat is solely dedicated to providing live chat services. If you seek a straightforward live chat solution without any complicated features, Pure Chat is highly recommended for your consideration.
When starting and attempting to establish a successful business from scratch, it is already challenging enough. Therefore, any time you can minimize complications during your day, it is considered a victory. Pure Chat eliminates the need for guesswork when incorporating live chat, allowing you to concentrate on the crucial aspects of your business.
The main features offered by Pure Chat are:
- Unlimited chat
- Customizable chat widget
- Native iOS and Android apps
- Security rules
- Unlimited chat history and transcripts
- File transfer
- Trigger-based alerts and actions
- Real-time analytics
- Visitor tracking
With this simple yet feature-rich live chat solution, you can customize the tool according to your requirements. Pure Chat seamlessly integrates with over 1,000 apps such as Slack, Salesforce, MailChimp, HubSpot, Zoho, and more. Begin using the dead simple way to enter the realm of live chat for your small business or small team today.
14. ProProfs Chat
ProProfs Chat is a software tool for live chat that consolidates all of your chat communications in one platform. It allows you to engage your customers through personalized greetings and announcements, handle multiple channels and domains, and accelerate the process of closing sales.
With over 50 integrations available, ProProfs enables you to enhance your favorite e-commerce and content management system apps by adding a free live chat tool, allowing you to provide instant support.
The key features of ProProfs Chat are as follows:
- Welcome visitors with a chat invitation pop-up
- Customize operator greetings
- Add live chat to multiple domains
- Store all your chat history by connecting with a customer relationship tool
- Store leads in CRM platforms
- Build chatbots for 24/7 automation
- Create a support bundle with ProProf apps
- Track unlimited chat data and analyze summary reports
15. EBI.AI
EBI.AI is an AI platform designed to enhance your daily operations and facilitate your business in increasing profitability without requiring an in-depth understanding of AI. The platform is managed by experienced professionals with a minimum of 20 years of expertise, who are capable of handling complex tasks on your behalf.
Right from the start, EBI.AI is capable of assisting you in solving over 85% of your problems. In just a matter of minutes, you can set up a live AI assistant on any of your devices, receiving instant feedback on your audience’s preferences and suggestions on enhancing your services.
The key features of EBI.AI are as follows:
- Chat across a variety of channels anytime and anywhere
- Review expert analysis daily
- Brand and manage your AI assistant’s responses
- Connect your AI assistant with other business systems and integrations
- Add widgets to your chat window
- Access any AI service
16. Crisp
Crisp, a live chat software solution based in France, offers a wide range of features. One of its notable features is the team inbox, which collects all customer conversations in a unified location, simplifying the process of assigning team members to handle them. Similar to Drift, Crisp also has the capability to send automated messages to potential leads in order to swiftly incorporate them into your marketing funnel.
We are particularly fond of one of the features offered by Crisp, which is live-translate. This feature allows you to translate conversations instantly, enabling you to respond to visitors in your own language and have their messages automatically translated into their language.
The vital characteristics of Crisp are as follows:
- Build advanced chatbot scenarios to automate customer onboarding
- Share files, images, and documents directly from the chat widget
- Connect the Crisp Live Chat to social networks like Messenger and Twitter
- Create personal and modern conversational experiences using GIFs and videos
- Users can access help articles and resolve issues directly from our Live Chat
17. HelpCrunch
HelpCrunch is primarily focused on live chat and provides an extensive range of customer service tools. Its all-in-one customer service platform includes a customizable chat widget as well as standard live chat features such as chat ratings, file sharing, and canned responses.
You have the option to download the HelpCrunch app on your mobile device, which allows you to assist clients no matter where you are.
The key features of HelpCrunch are outlined below:
- See what your customers are typing before they hit “Send”
- Automatically send chat rating to visitors after closing conversation
- Share files with your customers to speed-up support
- Manage customer conversations from all channels in one place
- See visitor’s personal and behavioral data (e.g last page)
- Automatically send chat transcripts after closing a conversation
18. Zendesk
Zendesk initially began as a ticketing system in 2007 and subsequently introduced a live chat feature following its acquisition of Zopim. Although its live chat offering may seem somewhat restricted, it encompasses all the typical chat features one would anticipate (such as chat routing, tags, canned responses, etc.) along with features specifically designed for help desk solutions.
To have real-time access to Zendesk’s wide range of reports on customer satisfaction, site analytics, and agent performance, it is necessary to have an Enterprise subscription.
Zendesk Chat offers a variety of important features.
- Send targeted and behavior-based messages to customers
- Use pre-chat forms to ask visitors for their contact information before starting a chat
- Monitor website visitors and the pages they’re browsing
- Use chat ratings to gather feedback that will help you improve your performance
- Automate simple, time-consuming tasks with chatbots
19. Help Scout
Help Scout is a comprehensive solution that offers a variety of useful features. These include canned responses, tags, and private team notes, as well as a Help Bot that gathers emails instead of using the standard chat form. Additionally, Help Scout enables you to send personalized messaging campaigns to visitors using their data.
Help Scout provides a self-service solution for users with an integrated knowledge base. Within the chat widget, users have the option to select either “Ask” for live chat or “Answer” for accessing the knowledge base.
The Key Features of Help Scout: Step by Step Thinking
- Manage all your email, chat, and phone conversations in a shared inbox
- See who else is viewing or replying in real-time to avoid duplication of efforts
- Use the sidebar to see everything you need to know about the user
- Manage phone, email and chat conversations all from a single mailbox
- Trigger messages based on one or more conditions that you set
20. Tidio
Included on our list is Tidio, a free live chat software that can integrate with email and Facebook Messenger. With Tidio, you can have up to 3 agents on your account. Additionally, it provides features such as canned responses, customer profiles, email forwarding, and more. Even on the free plan, you can utilize basic trigger-based chatbot scenarios to engage and pre-qualify visitors.
Tidio offers live visitor tracking and new visitor notifications, enabling your agents to respond to site activity in real-time.
The key features of Tidio are as follows:
- Use browser, desktop, and mobile apps to provide customer service wherever you are
- Customize your chat widget to match your brand
- See who is browsing your website in real-time
- Automate chats with AI
21. Tawk
Tawk is essentially the most comprehensive free live chat software solution available. Their revenue is generated by providing outsourced chat agent solutions. This live chat solution is free and includes all necessary features: triggered automated messaging, canned responses, message sneak-peek, live visitor tracking, tags, departments, visitor information, and much more.
Although the customization options are quite limited, Tawk does not impose any restrictions on the number of agents you can have or the duration for which your chat archive will remain accessible.
Key Features of Tawk are:
- Deliver personalized and real-time customer service
- Monitor traffic on your website in real-time
- Initiate a chat with your website visitors and app users proactively
- Frictionless conversational eCommerce
Methodology for Choosing the Best Live Chat Software
When you’re shopping around and evaluating live chat solutions, it is important to take certain factors into consideration.
Below, we provide a more detailed explanation of these features, enabling you to evaluate them based on your individual requirements.
Chatbot vs. Live Chat
Before starting your search for live chat software, it is crucial to comprehend the distinctions between utilizing a chatbot or live chat feature.
Please rephrase the text below while maintaining the same meaning, step by step. Do not add new information and do not remove information. “Chatbot”
Once set up and customized to your brand, chatbots automate your communication.
By using chatbots, you are able to simulate a larger staff beyond your actual size.
If customers have detailed questions, they can access your website round the clock to obtain answers without needing to wait for regular business hours. Chatbots enable you to have countless personalized interactions efficiently.
It is time to integrate chatbots into your business to create a sales team that operates continuously and sells your products online effortlessly, without relying on any human interaction.
The issue of cart abandonment in ecommerce is significant. In order to prevent customers from reaching the checkout or leaving the page, chatbots can be employed to provide incentives.
By providing free shipping, you can engage your customers with exclusive promotions using your chatbot, while also addressing frequently asked questions about a product, thereby assisting them in ensuring that it is the optimal purchase.
Chatbots have the ability to assist even after the purchase. They enable customers to track their orders and simplify the return process, removing the necessity to wait on hold or contact customer support through email.
Chat that is conducted in real-time.
If you have a small business and a small support team, but you desire to enhance your availability to online visitors, the best approach would be to include live chat.
Live chat offers the advantage of having a human available to answer your visitors’ questions, unlike chatbots. The conversations you have with your visitors during live chat can reveal additional details that will aid in the growth of your business.
For instance, Pure Chat is specifically designed for small business owners who have only a few support staff members, offering real-time sales support data through its live chat feature.
Even with a reduced sales team, you can optimize various aspects of the customer’s experience to enhance your overall financial performance.
Live chat can help increase productivity by allowing agents to manage multiple conversations at once, which can be helpful if you have higher call volumes than desired and want to slow them down.
Searchable Transcripts
A good reputation is crucial in the business world as even a single negative review can have long-lasting consequences and result in significant financial losses.
When you log into Facebook, you come across a post that takes up an entire page, pointing out how your business lacks attentiveness towards its customers. The post mentions a customer who engaged in separate conversations with three different agents, none of whom were aware of the customer’s problem.
How will that impact your brand in terms of collateral damage and the level of trust your current customers have in you?
Moreover, potential customers will notice it and promptly have reservations about engaging in any business transactions with you.
Searchable transcripts address this issue by ensuring that all interactions between a customer and your chat system are captured and easily accessible. They allow for the retrieval of every detail with minimal effort, enabling the gathering of valuable data from the interactions. Furthermore, they enable the search for past chats, providing a reference point from prior conversations.
Conversation Management
Conversation management is the most beneficial feature offered by chatbots, among their other amazing features.
By utilizing automation tools, you are able to effortlessly guide customers to the appropriate team and categorize website visitors according to the specific areas of expertise of team members.
This process assists in generating leads and ensuring that the appropriate agent is connected with the suitable client to provide accurate assistance from the beginning.
Branding
Custom branding is a highly popular feature among many business owners for their chatbot and live chat software.
Be cautious, as there is a distinction between customizing the live chat widget and implementing custom branding on your website.
The integration of your business website colors and logo in the chatbox is part of branding for your website. While advanced live widget customization provides various additional features, it does not allow for the inclusion of images for your logo or custom color schemes that match your website design.
In any business, branding takes priority and it would be unwise to include a chatbot or live chat without considering it.
Easy Review Requests
Online reviews play a crucial role in determining the success of your business.
With the use of live chat, it becomes simpler to obtain a high-quality customer review while their memory of your exceptional service is still vivid. By utilizing the appropriate chat tool, you can easily craft a personalized script and swiftly send review links to paying customers via chat or text, enabling you to promptly acquire the desired feedback.
If you’re a business owner struggling to receive reliable reviews that improve your credibility, the implementation of live chat software can quickly transform the way you request reviews.
Integrations
Live chat aims to enhance sales and establish a more productive customer support team, which in turn improves customer assistance. Utilizing suitable integrations simplifies this process considerably, whereas the absence of such integrations hinders the growth of your business.
The live chat platforms listed here can seamlessly integrate with various popular CRMs, ensuring consistent synchronization of customer data. If you utilize the HubSpot CRM, the integration with LiveChat enables your team to efficiently handle contacts and generate CRM records. As a result, this eliminates unnecessary tasks in your workflow, ultimately saving time and generating revenue.
To ensure a convenient experience, it is essential to choose a live chat tool that provides all the necessary integrations. Otherwise, there would be no purpose in having this tool at all.
Benefits of Live Chat Software
Live chat is a highly cost-effective and time-efficient method of communicating with customers and other visitors to your website. This is because a single agent can manage multiple conversations at the same time, and customers can receive the support they require while carrying on with their computer activities.
Live chat conversations occur in real-time, allowing visitors to swiftly receive answers to their questions and complete their purchases, as stated by eConsultancy, 79% of live chat users appreciate its fast and timely responses. By incorporating a live chat software solution on your website, you can enjoy several benefits.
- Faster resolution. According to SuperOffice, emails can take 12–17 hours to get a resolution, but the average response time for live chat is 2 minutes.
- More sales and conversions. Live chat can boost conversion rates by 40% and average order values by 10%.
- Greater customer satisfaction. Live chat has a satisfaction rate of 92%.
- Better customer loyalty and trust. 63% of customers who used live chat said they were more likely to come back to that website again and 62% said they were more likely to purchase from that website again, according to eMarketer.
FAQ
What is chat software?
Live chat software is software that allows you to engage in real-time conversations or customer messaging on your company’s website. With live chat software, you have the ability to communicate with visitors, as well as loyal and current customers of your business.
Which is the software used for online chat conversation?
Intercom, a widely used live chat software for online conversations, particularly benefits SaaS businesses. It provides various features like live chat, chatbots, product tours, help desk tools, and app integration.
How can I live chat for free?
In the year 2023, the top five free live chat software tools for websites are as follows:
- Tidio Live Chat
- FreeChat
- Respond.io
- HubSpot’s Free Live Chat
- Smartsupp