Every person wants speedy answers, personalized experiences, and seamless support without having to pick up the phone or wait for an email response. This is one of the primary reasons why the tool allows businesses to interact with customers in real-time.
Whether one owns an e-commerce site, a service-based business, or a SaaS business, live chat is no longer a luxury but a necessity. In the article that follows, let’s find out what live chat software means, who should use it, and how it can change the game for your business.
What is Live Chat Software?
It directly connects a business to its customers on its website, mobile app, or other digital interface. It will offer a chat interface where customers can type in questions or concerns and receive immediate answers from human agents or AI-embedded chatbots.
It is created to increase customer interaction, to standardize support processes, and to provide immediate assistance. Moreover, most live chat solutions contain more advanced features, such as chat history, file transfer, auto-response, and integration with CRM tools.
It is more than a simple customer support feature; it also forms an essential sales enabler, a collection channel for feedback, and even a medium for fostering brand loyalty.
Who Should Use Live Chat Software?
It is flexible and thus presents various benefits to different kinds of industries and business types.
E-commerce Stores
Live chat is indispensable for online retailers. Customers can always have questions about a product or the shipping or return policies, and a quick reply can make all the difference between making the sale and sending the customer away.
Service-Based Businesses
No matter if you are a healthcare service provider, financial consultant, or IT services company, this can help answer inquiries, schedule appointments, or offer quick troubleshooting support.
SaaS Companies
With technology businesses, live chat software helps address technical issues, onboard new users, and give directions as to how the product should be used.
Travel and Hospitality
Travel agencies, hotels, and airlines can help book customers through live chat or assist in changes to itineraries or travel schedule updates in real-time.
Education and Nonprofits
An educational institution can provide answers to admission-related queries, whereas a non-profit organization can connect with prospective donors or volunteers in real time.
The Benefits of Live Chat Software for Businesses
Better Customer Experience
Using live chat software gives businesses an opportunity to reply instantly, which dismantles customer frustration due to long response times. Customers enjoy the easy accessibility to your business without having to switch from a different platform; hence, interaction with your brand is easy and hassle-free.
Improved Conversion Rates
Live chat is a hotline for your sales team. Think of a shopper navigating on your site, now hesitating over closing the deal because she has a question regarding pricing or features. That question is going to be answered in real time by a live chat agent, who is nudging her closer to closing the sale.
The customers who use live chat are much more likely to convert than those customers who do not use it.
Cost-Effective Customer Support
Live chats are less expensive and more efficient compared to phone support. One agent can support multiple concurrent chats at once, ensuring that one does not have to employ a very large team of support. Even routine queries, like FAQs, can be automated by AI chatbots, freeing human agents’ time for more complex issues.
Higher Team Efficiency
Live chat software features some automated response capabilities, internal note-taking facilities, and routing tools to help support teams work smarter. Agents can easily bring up previous chat histories to understand the problem from the customer’s perspective so that the customer doesn’t repeat what’s already happened.
Improved Customer Insight
Most live chat solutions offer analytics and reporting. These will help you monitor customer satisfaction, understand pain points, and improve service quality. For example, after analyzing the chat logs, you might get a sense of repeat questions that you can proactively resolve either on your website or in the product.
Top 12 Live Chat Software Solutions in 2024
1. Chatra
- Rating: 4.7/5
- Best For: Small to medium-sized businesses looking for an accessible yet feature-rich live chat solution
Chatra is a free live chat software that integrates itself flawlessly with different e-commerce, and web-based systems. Intelligent behaviour-based pattern recognition results in making the system able to detect visitor behavior and automate response accordingly. The software provides a unique “group chat” facility, meaning that more than one agent can engage in complex customer queries.
What makes Chatra unique is its ability to retain chat history across sessions so that it can be personalized in case the customer comes back days later. This platform also offers good file-sharing functionality with real-time visitor monitoring, making it the best for companies engaged with customer care.
Key Features:
- Visitor behavior tracking analytics
- Multi-language
- iOS and Android mobile app
- Customizable chat widget
- Group chat
- Automated triggers based on user behavior
Pricing:
| Plan | Pricing |
| Free | 0 |
| Essential | $17 |
| Pro | $22 |
Website:
chatra.com
2. Zendesk
- Rating: 4.8/5
- Best For: Enterprise-level businesses require full customer service solutions
This live chat software for websites come as part of a much larger customer service system that offers seamless integration with Zendesk’s ticket management system and knowledge base. One feature that really makes this live chat solution shine is the contextual customer information available to agents during actual chat sessions. This means it directs all your queries to the agents best qualified to answer them in both expertise and availability.
The software also offers analytics tools to aid in tracking how satisfied the customers of a business are and how well the agents are performing. With its robust API and full-range customization, Zendesk adapts itself well to strong business needs at the same time staying simple.
Key Features
- Advance ticket management integration
- Customizable triggers and automation
- Real-time analytics and reporting
- Skill-based routing
- Multilingual support
- Proactive chat engagement
Pricing:
| Plan | Pricing |
| Support Team | $19/month |
| Advanced Ai | $50/month |
| Zendesk Workforce Management | $25/agent/month |
Website:
zendesk.com
3. LiveAgent
- Rating: 4.6/5
- Best For: Businesses looking for an all-in-one help desk and live chat solution
It is an all-in-one help desk and live chat solution wherein the single integrated platform of a complete help desk can power powerful live chat capabilities. Among its unique features are a real-time typing view and visitor monitoring that enable agents to know when to step in proactively. The universal inbox collapses all customer communications into one place, including social media messages, emails, and chat conversations.
Maintaining motivation and productivity among agents are the gamification features introduced on the platform through achievement badges and performance metrics. Additionally, the LiveAgent chat widget is very customizable and ensures the best complement to your brand identity.
Key Features:
- Universal inbox for all communications
- Video calling capability
- Time tracking and productivity tools
- Advanced automation rules
- Customer Portal
- Gamification features
Pricing:
| Plan | Pricing |
| Small Business | $15/month |
| Medium Business | $24/month |
| Large Business | $39/month |
Website:
liveagent.com
4. Gorgias
- Rating: 4.8/5
- Best For: The Enterprise businesses needing holistic solutions in customer service
Gorgias live chat is part of a larger customer service suite integrated smoothly with their ticket management system and knowledge base. The live chat solution scores ahead here, giving agents access to contextual customer information while chatting with them, which can be an added support in making the experience even more personalized. It forwards queries to the agents most capable of answering them by expertise and availability.
Analytics tools offered by the software will help businesses monitor the level of satisfaction that customers have and how well the agents are performing. With its robust API and wide-ranging customization, it adapts itself well to strong business needs while at the same time staying simple.
Key Features:
- Advanced ticket management integration
- Triggers and automation can be customized
- Analytics with reporting is in real-time
- Routing skill-based
- Multilingual
- Proactive engagement through chat
Pricing:
| Plan | Pricing |
| Pro | $300/month |
| Pro (10% automation) | $555/month |
| Pro (20% automation) | $675/month |
Website:
gorgias.com
5. Freshdesk
- Rating: 4.8/5
- Best for: For growing businesses in need of scalable customer support solutions
Freshdesk provides a highly robust live chat solution along with its customer support platform, with intelligent routing and automation capabilities. It is renowned for its AI-powered chatbot that can resolve routine questions by automatically handing over complex issues to human agents. There is an integrated knowledge base in the software, which allows agents to share relevant articles throughout a conversation rapidly.
Team collaboration features allow agents to work with complicated customer problems most efficiently. Another important capability is that Freshdesk has extensive reporting tools that empower businesses to identify and implement trends in the support operation.
Key Features
- AI-Powered Chatbot
- Team Inbox
- Knowledge Base
- SLA Management
- Advanced Reporting
- Omnichannel
Pricing
| Plan | Pricing |
| Free | 0 |
| Growth | ₹1,499/agent/month |
| Pro | ₹3,999/agent/month |
Website:
freshdesk.com
6. Tidio
- Rating: 4.6/5
- Best For: It’s best for small businesses and startups seeking an easy-to-use chat solution.
Tidio provides a very intuitive user-friendly live chat tool, which also offers powerful automation capabilities and chatbot functionality. Businesses can create complex conversation flows without writing a single line of code due to the visual chatbot builder. Tidio offers really great insights in visitor behavior as well as proactive customer engagement through its monitoring tool that uses live visitor tracking.
It supports multiple languages and time zones. Tidio’s integration with popular e-commerce platforms and CRM systems makes it especially valuable for online retailers to boost customer engagement and sales.
Key Features:
- Visual chatbot builder
- Live visitor monitoring
- Multiple language support
- Mobile app access
- Quick response templates
- Visitor behavior tracking
Pricing:
| Plan | Pricing |
| Starter | $29/month |
| Growth | $59/month |
Website:
tidio.com
7. Intercom
- Rating: 4.9/5
- Best For: SaaS companies and businesses that need advanced customer engagement tools
Intercom is an omnichannel customer messaging platform that does much more than just live chat. It has mighty targeting and segmentation capabilities in order to enable a business to deliver strong, personalized customer experiences at scale. The product offers user onboarding with its feature called Product Tours, aside from having a Solutions Bot capable of handling regular queries.
With advanced analytics, Intercom delivers deep insights into patterns of customer engagement and outcomes for conversations. Software excellently converts visitors of the website into leads through targeted messaging and automated campaigns, making it very useful to businesses that focus on growth and to keep customers.
Key Features:
- Advanced Customer Segmentation
- Product Tours and onboarding tools
- Custom bots and automation
- In-depth analytics and reporting
- Multi-channel messaging
- Team collaboration tools
Pricing:
| Plan | Pricing |
| Essential | $29/month |
| Advances | $85/month |
| Expert | $132/month |
Website:
intercom.com
8. Olark
- Rating: 4.5/5
- Best For: Small to Midsize Businesses, who want a simple, reliable chat solution
Olark eased the live chat product offering by emphasizing simplicity and effectiveness. It delivers strong functionality that does not burden users with complexity so it works just as well for first-time live chat adopters. The other great strengths include the ability that transcript search makes teams able to refer back to previous conversations quickly and even to keep track of recurring customer problems.
This software equips companies with detailed reporting capabilities, which will help them understand chat metrics and team performance. Business organizations can be proactive with the use of targeted messaging and automated chat rules via Olark, yet somehow manage to give that personal touch to the conversations.
Key Features
- Transcripts of conversation searchable
- Real-time reporting
- Auto-chat rules
- Managing the team
- Customizable chat box
- CRM integration
Pricing:
| Plan | Pricing |
| Standard | $29/month |
| Pro | Custom pricing |
Website:
olark.com
9. Smartsupp
- Rating: 4.6/5
- Best for: E-commerce businesses that need to have visual capabilities to support the customers
Smartsupp is unique owing to its video recording capabilities that can capture visitor behavior on your website, providing great context for customer support interactions. The chatbot AI will take care of answering common questions from the customer and will pass on the difficult ones to the human representatives. The mobile-first approach ensures quality output across all devices. The software provides rich analytics which help a business understand customer behavior patterns thus enabling them to optimize their support strategy. Integrating with many e-commerce websites is very helpful for those online retailers.
Key Features:
- Video recordings of visitor behaviour
- AI chatbot functionality
- Mobile application support
- Multi-language chats
- Advanced statistics
- Customizable design of the chat box
Pricing:
| Plan | Pricing |
| Free | 0 |
| Standard | $20/month |
| Pro | $30/month |
| Ultimate | $239/momth |
Website:
smartsupp.com
10. HubSpot Service Hub
- Rating: 4.8/5
- Best for: Organizations that are using the HubSpot ecosystem and necessitate fully integrated customer service solutions
The HubSpot Service Hub provides an all-in-one live chat solution fully integrated into its broader customer service platform. With automated integration with the CRM tool, HubSpot gives its agents full customer context even before a conversation has started. It also makes knowledge base access during a chat session, ensuring that help articles are quickly available for the right response.
The ability to route and manage the ticket pipeline assure the proper treatment of queries by the customer. Reporting in the Service Hub provides insights with detailed details on the satisfaction of customers and metrics for team performance, while automation tools promote the smooth completion of routine supporting tasks.
Key Features
- CRM integration
- Knowledge base
- Automated Ticket
- Customer feedback survey
- Team email
- Video messaging
Pricing:
| Plan | Pricing |
| Service Hub Professional | $90/mo/seat |
| Service Hub Enterprise | $150/mo/seat |
Website:
hubspot.com
11. Userlike
- Rating: 4.8/5
- Best for: Organizations using the Userlike ecosystem and require fully integrated customer service solutions
Userlike platform offers an all-inclusive live chat solution incorporated into its larger customer service platform. It offers agents complete customer context even before a conversation has started. Knowledge base integration gives agents fast access to help articles during chats for improved response efficiency. The platform routes and manages the ticket pipeline, ensuring that queries get the right treatment from the customer.
The reporting capabilities of Userlike provide insights into the level of satisfaction of customers along with team performance metrics while the automation tools support the smooth completion of routine supporting tasks.
Key Features
- All inclusive button integration
- Creation of the knowledge base
- Automated Ticket
- Customer feedback survey Solution
- Team email
- Video messaging
Pricing:
| Plan | Pricing |
| Free | 0 |
| Team | $130/month |
| Corporate | $350/month |
Website:
https://www.userlike.com/en
12. FreshChat
- Rating: 4.7/5
- Best For: Mobile-first businesses requiring modern messaging capabilities
FreshChat is a new-age customer messaging platform designed for the mobile-first era. It is a product of Freshworks. The intelligent routing of messages ensures questions are sent to the most relevant agents based on their expertise and availability. It is bot-first, with a smooth and seamless handover option in case of routine queries.
FreshChat’s campaign abilities will help organizations interact with the users proactively based on behavior triggers. The software is scalable, integrates well with other business tools, and can process enormous volumes of message exchange across an organization that focuses on digital customer engagement.
Key Features:
- AI-powered chatbots
- Create campaigns
- Advance routing
- Rich Messaging options
- Multilingual support
- Analytics dashboard
Pricing:
| Plan | Pricing |
| Free | 0 |
| Growth | ₹1,499/agent/month |
| Pro | ₹3,999/agent/month |
Website:
freshworks.com/freshchat-livechat-software
How to Select a Proper Live Chat Software
Choosing the right software for your business is contingent on knowing how much you need and what features are needed. Here are some tips:
Identify Your Requirements
Determine what your goals are. Do you want to use live chat for customer support, lead generation, or sales? Understanding your primary use case will guide your choice.
Discover Must-Have Features
Ensure the features of the software include real-time messaging, chatbots, file and document sharing, and analytics. Advanced features which are more critical that businesses want to have for scalability purposes in the near future, such as multi-language support or integration with CRM, are very helpful to businesses.
Make UX a top priority
Choose a software with an intuitive interface for your team and customers as well. The user experience is going to foster more adoption and satisfaction.
Scalability
Choose the software that will scale up to the size of your business. Make sure it can take more chat volume as your customer base grows.
Security and Compliance
Be sure that data is well protected and meet the needs of industry-standard privacy. Examples of such features could include encryption and especially GDPR compliance.
Steps to Install Live Chat Software
Once you have settled on the right software, here’s how to deploy it:
Plan and Set Goals
Identify what you want the live chat to help you accomplish such as response time decrease or increase in conversion.
Integrate the Software
Add it to your website, mobile app, or any other platforms. Make sure that it integrates well with your CRM and other support tools as well.
Train Your Team
Properly train your team about how to use the software and how to handle conversations professionally.
Create chatbots and FAQs
Automate common queries using chatbots and also store some pre-programmed responses to frequently asked questions to save time.
Monitor and Optimize
Track performance and customer feedback through analytics. Update the chat script regularly and work out ways to optimize workflows better.
Conclusion
Choosing the right live chat and properly implementing it can change the way your business engages with customers. Real-time support, automation of tasks, and valuable information culminating in improved customer satisfaction and bottom-line results this, provided by live chat software. Start with a strategy, invest in the right tool, and watch your business thrive.
FAQs
1. What is live chat software?
Live chat software lets companies interact in real-time with customers everywhere in the digital world.
2. Will live chat work for small businesses?
Yes, it is very scalable and a low-cost solution and pretty ideal for all businesses
3. Is multi-platform support possible with live chat?
Most live chat solutions integrate websites, apps, and social media into a multichannel.
4. Is live chat secure?
Top providers use encryption and compliance with data protection regulations for security.
