Using a single online platform, the finest live chat software streamlines the process of handling sales inquiries and support requests, making it effortless and uncomplicated.
It is likely that you have already come across several instances of live chat boxes on company websites. However, it is worth noting that these chat boxes can also serve the purpose of internal staff support requests. The key advantage of live chat software is its capability to cater to employees working on-premises as well as remotely.
The significance of live chat should not be underestimated, particularly because it offers a prompt and tangible solution for addressing customer and staff inquiries in a straightforward and manageable way. This is particularly crucial given the increasing reliance on the internet for both internal and external communication.
Furthermore, live chat software has the capability to be omnichannel, meaning that communication can be carried out not only through a chat box on the company’s website, but also via social media, email, and phone support. This ensures that all requests, regardless of the channel they were made on, are accommodated to the fullest extent possible.
What’s even more impressive is the ease of setting up live chat software, as it includes standard integrations and analytics. This not only simplifies the integration with other software platforms for enhanced productivity but also enables real-time reporting.
We will now provide a list and evaluation of the top live chat software options presently accessible.
The best live chat software of 2023 in full:
LiveChat is our top pick for the best live chat software available, thanks to its user-friendly interface and extensive selection of features.
It enables the creation of a chat box on your website for customer communication. Through this chat box, you can send files, links, calendars, and predefined responses to address frequently asked questions. A useful functionality allows sending live chats to other customer support representatives, particularly beneficial for businesses with multiple teams.
You have the ability to view what customers are typing before they send their message, label chats with relevant tags, and retrieve past conversations from an archive in comparison to other live chat features. Furthermore, there are additional functionalities such as receiving chat notifications, requesting chat ratings and completing brief surveys, initiating chats with new visitors, informing customers about fresh announcements and products, and many other possibilities.
In addition, LiveChat provides a user-friendly dashboard for organizing all of your communications, such as emails, chats, SMS, and apps. Furthermore, it offers integrations with over 170 software platforms, such as Facebook, Messenger, WordPress, Salesforce, Shopify, Dropbox, and numerous others.
Additional plans offering more advanced features are also available, with pricing starting at approximately $20 per month when paid annually.
For businesses without the necessary budget for a comprehensive live chat solution, HubSpot provides a fully free alternative.
With HubSpot Live Chat, you have the option to start live conversations with customers and other visitors to your website. If you find that the person you are chatting with would be better assisted by another team, you can effortlessly transfer them to the appropriate individual.
You have the ability to customize the live chat widget with your business branding and create pre-written welcome messages tailored to various audiences. All live chat conversations are automatically saved in a centralized inbox for future use.
Not every business has the capacity and resources to attend to every customer chat, but you can conveniently generate chatbots to address frequently asked questions, arrange customer meetings, and more. The integrated chatbot builder makes it remarkably straightforward to create these bots.
You can also benefit from HubSpot Live Chat’s convenient integration with Slack, which enables you to receive notifications for live chats and communicate with customers directly within the Slack platform. Furthermore, you have the flexibility to conduct live chats via the HubSpot mobile application if preferred.
Hubspot provides paid content and marketing plans which allow you to enhance your live chat functionality into a comprehensive CRM software platform, although the free service has certain limitations.
Tidio is catered towards mid-size businesses seeking to address customer issues, boost sales, and offers a comprehensive live chat, chatbot, and ticketing solution. It provides a wide range of chatbot templates for support and sales situations, and for a higher cost, an advanced AI response bot is available for engaging in conversations.
Tidio stands out with its stylish design, fast messaging, and simple features, providing customers with various support choices such as live chat, chatbots, ticketing, Instagram messages, and Facebook Messenger chat. What sets it apart from its rivals is its self-learning AI response bot, and it also offers a free plan for those on a tight budget, giving them a basic option.
Although Tidio’s combination of live chat, chatbot, and ticketing is ideal for beginners or those in a growth phase, you may need to explore other options if you require advanced support and analytics capabilities.
If you are searching for a solution that offers both a powerful live chat and help desk system, LiveAgent is the perfect choice.
With this software, you have the ability to incorporate live chat boxes and email ticketing into your business website or app. By utilizing the live chat feature, you have the option to automate responses to commonly asked questions, allocate various support agents to chat conversations, gather customer feedback through surveys, establish multiple chat boxes or emails (depending on the chosen plan), and more.
During our evaluation of LiveAgent, we discovered that this platform offers integrations with popular messaging platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. However, we noticed that it lacks a chat-to-SMS feature like several other providers, which is a minor drawback.
Additionally, the platform provides a comprehensive ticketing system that enables you to automate ticket routing, allocate tickets to various agents and teams, move tickets between parties, and much more.
The backend platform offers a user-friendly experience and a variety of tools aimed at enhancing the efficiency of customer support teams. Among these tools is an internal messaging and ticketing system. LiveAgent also notifies agents when they are simultaneously addressing the same customer request.
The pricing starts at $15 per agent per month.
With Zendesk, you can communicate with your customers instantly, start chats based on targeted and customer behavior, share files in chats, request chat ratings from customers, and also keep records and analyze all live chats that occur throughout your entire business.
An additional benefit of Zendesk is its impressive chatbot feature. Whether you wish to address customer queries outside of business hours or alleviate your workload, you have the capability to develop chatbots that can autonomously respond to common customer inquiries.
You can customize the appearance of your live chat widget to match your business and website’s branding by adding a business logo and making other overall changes. Additionally, Zendesk provides a JavaScript API to enhance the intelligence of your live chats. Moreover, popular platforms like WordPress, Squarespace, Joomla, Drupal, Prestashop, Wix, and Shopify are integrated with Zendesk for seamless functionality.
Zendesk is a renowned and extensive live chat solution provider in the customer service software industry.
Olark is an excellent choice for small businesses that are new to such services because it is simple to set up and operate.
Olark offers a high level of customization, which means you can modify the colors, position, and shape of chat boxes. Furthermore, to personalize your live chats, you have the option to include welcome text and a photo of a customer support agent.
In addition, the platform provides various automation features that can be useful. This includes the ability to automatically interact with individuals, generate pre-written responses, route conversations to different departments, and more. Olark also offers live reports and analytics that encompass metrics such as your business’ chat volume, customer satisfaction, the activities of your support agents, and additional information.
Similar to numerous other live chat solutions, Olark offers integrations with CRM software such as HubSpot and Salesforce, automation tools like ActiveCampaign and Zapier, email services like MailChimp, reporting platforms like Google Analytics, ecommerce platforms such as Shopify and Magento, as well as content management systems like WordPress and Drupal.
Contrary to other choices, there are no separate plans with varying features; everything is encompassed in one package for $29 per agent. Although this may appear to be a costlier choice at first, it is actually highly competitive if you desire a comprehensive solution instead of a basic one that would require an upgrade in any case.
7. ChatBot
If you are looking to expand your small business using the capabilities of A.I technology, the ChatBot is a highly recommended tool to explore.
With its wide selection of pre-made templates, this tool greatly simplifies the process of customization.
Thanks to its intuitive drag-and-drop user interface, creating your own personalized ChatBot is possible.
One example is utilizing the eCommerce bot template to assist your users in navigating the entire purchasing process.
If you intend to schedule calls and increase your sales, the lead generation bot will be very useful.
The sales bot template enables you to make direct product sales through the chat window, making it an effective tool for selling via social media profiles.
There are similar bot templates available.
- Restaurant bot
- Recruitment bot
- Coffee shop bot
- Package tracking bot
- And many others
The templates offered by the ChatBot are one of its top features, allowing small businesses to effectively customize and automate their offerings.
In addition, it is possible to incorporate Chatbot with WooCommerce and WordPress.
8. SendinBlue
Are you searching for a live chat software that is both user-friendly and powerful, as well as simple to install?
Consider SendinBlue as an outstanding option.
A WordPress plugin allows for the integration of it into your website.
SendinBlue simplifies the process of turning your website visitors into customers by providing live chat support to address any last-minute inquiries.
However, there is more to it.
The integration of chat with SendinBlue market automation aids in capturing a greater number of leads for your business.
Furthermore, the application offers capabilities beyond those of live chat solutions.
It has the potential to assist your business in:
- Retargeting for Facebook Ads
- Segmentation
- Built-in email marketing
- Complete marketing automation
To top it all off…
SendinBlue offers a comprehensive marketing solution that includes features such as email marketing, landing pages, SMS, CRM, and other functionalities.
9. Intercom
Intercom takes pride in being recognized as one of the finest all-inclusive live chat platforms for customer communication.
One package includes marketing, customer service, and messaging products.
One of the most innovative live chat software available is distinguished by its machine learning and AI function, which is the most remarkable aspect of this product.
Nevertheless, we advise against using Intercom if you only require a simple live chat feature as it may be excessively sophisticated for your needs.
Consider Intercom if you are in search of an advanced customer support platform.
10. SnapEngage
When creating SnapEngage, the developers had two primary objectives in their minds.
- Customer retention
- Sales amplification
In addition…
Its flexibility is the main feature that stands out in this software.
The main focus of SnapEngage is seamless integration from any location.
Put simply, it seamlessly integrates with basecamp, Salesforce, and other widely used CRM tools.
In the realm of live chat, this feature provides it with a competitive advantage.
However, there is more information that you have not yet heard.
SnapEngage ensures that you will receive a high-quality chat experience that is suitable for enterprise-grade purposes. Additionally, it has an automatic detection and optimization feature for mobile devices, guaranteeing a smooth and interactive conversation.
Furthermore, there is additional information or another point to consider.
With its customized features, this live chat is equipped with a powerful design studio to assist in enhancing your business brand.
How to Pick Your Best Live Chat Software
If you know the key factors to take into account, selecting the best live chat software can be a straightforward task.
This is a detailed guide that you can follow to assist you in making your purchasing decision.
1. Know the Feature(s) Most Essential for Your Business
What is the purpose of having a live chat feature on your website?
Before making a purchasing decision, it is important to assess the urgent requirements of your business.
For your business, you would obtain a comprehensive understanding of the essential characteristics that the live chat software should possess by engaging in that activity.
Will you be responsible for managing sales, such as providing guidance to prospective customers?
Does your website aim to decrease the expense of hiring costly call center representatives to manage customer complaints?
Do you require a chatbot to offer technical assistance to customers who require guidance in using your product?
2. Identify the Type of Chat Solution You Want
Afterward, decide on the kind of chat solution you plan to implement.
Do you need chatbots that incorporate AI technology? Alternatively, do you aim to have live agent chats integrated with actual humans?
Choosing AI-based chatbots is the optimal option for small businesses that have a few employees.
However, if you have the necessary resources, it is ideal to have a live agent available to address your customers’ inquiries.
3. Is the Platform Easy to Customize?
Increasing your conversions is one of the reasons why acquiring the best live chat software is necessary.
Therefore, choosing a live chat software that is challenging to customize is not a wise decision.
What is the reason?
Branding goes hand in hand with customization.
Therefore, it is essential to have a software that can be easily customized to effectively promote your brand image through:
- Colors
- Styles and designs
- Fonts
- Customized messaging
- Chat Banners
4. Does It Allow Integration With Other Third-Party Tools?
When looking for the best live chat software, it is important to consider more than just the quality of its own features.
In order to enhance its overall quality, the software should have the capability to integrate seamlessly with other applications and online services.
It should be feasible to incorporate third-party apps such as CRM, social media, CMS, and email marketing tools.
However, there is significantly more…
Integrating it should be a simple task.
5. How Compatible Is It With Mobile Devices?
The next important aspect to consider is the compatibility with mobile devices.
If a live chat app is not designed to be compatible with smartphones, it might not be successful due to the widespread use of these devices.
Make sure that the software you plan to choose is accessible while on the go.
6. How Is the App’s Reporting and Analytics?
It is necessary to have the ability to store and retrieve previous chats as per your requirement, for the purpose of maintaining records.
Having a history of past conversations is anticipated by the majority of users who return, as nobody wants to spend time going over things again.
In addition, you can gather reliable information from your customers by reviewing the following:
- Location tracker
- Background analyzer
- Behavior analysis
In doing so, you ensure a proper understanding of your customers’ needs.
The following abilities should be possessed by a live chat of high quality, including excellent report and analysis capabilities:
- Manage sales planning based on the analytics report
- Generate automated sales history
- Store a substantial amount of information relating to your users’ details
7. What Is the Cost?
Certainly.
Once you have chosen a specific live chat, the next aspect to take into account is the price.
The factor is difficult to deal with.
You need to be cautious in avoiding the selection of something that is inexpensive but fails to meet your needs.
If you need to obtain something that suits your needs, it is advisable to slightly expand your budget.
8. Is Customer Support Reliable?
Experiencing inadequate customer support for a live chat app is among the most unfavorable situations one can encounter.
Isn’t it ironic?
The most effective approach to tackle it:
Make sure to select live chat systems that provide high-quality customer support around the clock.
You will be able to receive assistance at any given time in case any issues arise with their application.
In addition, the customer support team should possess various communication channels, including email, phone, and live chat.
