Learn More About Live Chat Software
What is Live Chat Software?
Live chat software allows website visitors to get a response in real time from a company’s customer service agents, sales representatives, or virtual assistants. These products are typically deployed as a widget in the bottom corner of a business’ website and may be activated when a user clicks on the widget. Alternatively, a pop-up chat window may prompt a user to start a conversation. Companies searching for the best live chat software for business websites typically weigh widget customization, chatbot capability, and integration with their existing customer support stack. Based on G2 reviews, customer support and sales teams evaluate live chat software by comparing real-time response speed, customer engagement features, and ecommerce platform integrations.
Live chat solutions can be used in a wide variety of contexts, including customer service, technical support, sales, and marketing. Most often, businesses implement live chat to provide website visitors with a direct channel to receive real-time customer support. For example, live chat agents can assist visitors with website navigation or answer questions about a business’ products or services. Live chat is also an effective method for lead generation. When a website visitor is interested in purchasing a product or service, live chat can be used to connect them with a sales representative. If a representative is unavailable, live chat widgets include a lead capture form to collect the prospect’s information so a salesperson can follow up with them as soon as possible.
Although live chat windows exist on a website 24/7, this doesn’t mean a business needs their agents to be available to answer inquiries all day. An offline mode allows website visitors to submit questions or concerns that can be handled either by a chatbot or by an agent when the live chat is back online. Live chat often serves as a company’s first line of defense to help chat agents answer quick questions and escalate deeper concerns in an organized way. The goal of these products is to increase efficiency for both the agent and the customer.
What Types of Live Chat Software Exist?
Text only solutions
Text-only live chat software allows agents and customers to communicate via text form. Typically, the customer will be approached by a pop-up chat window that helps initiate a conversation.
Voice or video solutions
Live chat software with video or voice capabilities--in addition to text--allow a more personalized conversation with customers. Video chat conversations are especially helpful for complex questions that require a visual representation. Face-to-face video conversations are not the only features of video and voice live chat; users can enable screen sharing to visually convey an issue that’s difficult to explain via text.
What are the Common Features of Live Chat Software?
Live chat functionality can vary from product to product. When considering a live chat solution for a business, it’s important to consider which features will be most beneficial to the particular use case. The following are some core features within live chat software:
Analytics: Reporting related to live chat analytics gives administrators insight into customer service metrics such as support response time, overall support performance, and customer satisfaction. These insights help managers understand the highs and lows of the customer experience and the team’s performance.
Visitor monitoring: Real-time visitor monitoring tracks where visitors are on the website and how long they stay on a certain web page. These insights give a sense of where visitors are gravitating to on a web page and can even help generate leads.
Response templates: For common questions, canned responses are very efficient. Agents can have responses ready to send as soon as a common question pops up.
Branding: Since live chat exists on a company’s website, it’s important for the widget and conversation window to match the company’s branding and website design. To accomplish this, live chat products offer customizable design options to change the colors and images of the application. Branding customization features ensure a seamless brand experience for customers.
Customer feedback: After a live chat conversation, a customer can rate the conversation and share feedback on whether or not their question was adequately handled. Managers can use this feedback to further understand the quality of an agent’s work.
Proactive messages: While live chat is already an approachable asset, it’s helpful for website visitors to be prompted with a friendly pop-up greeting to let them know they’re invited to chat whenever they’d like. A proactive message is an approachable way to entice visitors to communicate with the company.
Integrations: Live chat products should integrate seamlessly with a company’s technology stack to ensure the information shared in chat conversations is available across departments. Integrations with CRM software are important for storing and accessing customer information during a support conversation, as well as adding new contacts for lead generation. Live chat typically integrates with other customer service solutions, especially help desks, to improve omnichannel customer experiences.
Many live chat software solutions will also offer the following features:
What are the Benefits of Live Chat Software?
Businesses of all types benefit from using live chat software to provide instant and approachable customer support. Using live chat makes customer support more efficient for both the agent and the customer for several reasons:
Customer engagement: Live chat is a simple and accessible way for customers to approach a company. Customers are more likely to engage than if the company only offered phone and email support, because of its convenience.
Real-time support: With live chat, website visitors don’t need to wait very long for an answer to a simple question. Without a long turnaround, visitors are more likely to engage with the company, knowing their time is not being wasted. In comparison, inquiries submitted via email or social media have an unpredictable response time. Since questions are answered quickly, agents are more productive and get through more inquiries.
Improved efficiency and productivity: In comparison to phone calls, live chat is relatively cheap and takes less effort from both the customer and the agent. Additionally, it’s easy to multitask between different live chat conversations, allowing for more support in less time. Since live chatting requires reading and typing, conversations have more downtime between messages. This allows customer service agents to multitask and handle multiple chat windows at once. Depending on how many conversations are going on, agents can also use downtime to talk on the phone with another customer while handling live chat conversations.
Lead generation: Live chat is approachable for customers, so it’s an easy way to begin a sales conversation. The informality of live chat makes a sales conversation more comfortable for the customer, so it’s a great opportunity to bring in a sale.
Who Uses Live Chat Software?
Professionals who communicate with customers directly, such as customer service teams and sales teams, use live chat to instantly chat with customers or gather data on the conversations customers have with customer service agents.
Customer service: Customer service teams use live chat software to communicate with website visitors who use the feature to ask questions or voice concerns. If any complaints need to be escalated, chat agents can use routing features to transfer the conversation to a manager. When purchasing a live chat solution for customer service, businesses should remember to look for products that integrate with the company’s existing support software.
Sales: Sales teams can utilize live chat software to generate leads. Since the buyer is expressing interest in the company by initiating a conversation using the live chat feature, it’s a great opportunity to spark a sales conversation. If a company wants to implement live chat to accelerate sales and improve conversion rates, it’s important to find a product that integrates with the CRM or system of record.
Software Related to Live Chat Software
Related solutions that can be used together with live chat tools include:
Help desk software: Help desk software provides a ticketing system for customer service teams to organize and respond to inquiries regarding a company’s products or services. Traditionally, help desks take in customer inquiries from email and web forms, but these solutions are increasingly supporting omnichannel customer service by incorporating other channels such as social media, live chat, SMS, and call center technology. As a result, many help desk solutions include a live chat tool.
Customer self-service software: Customer self-service software provides a platform for end users, prospects, or customers to access information and perform tasks without the assistance of customer support representatives. Customer self service can take many different forms and may include chatbots, intelligent virtual assistants, knowledge bases, FAQs, and community forums.
Social customer service software: Businesses use social customer service software to assist their customers via social networks and social messenger apps. These solutions collect customer inquiries from social media and assign them to support team members. While live chat software allows customers to receive support when visiting a company’s website, social customer service enables support teams to respond proactively to customer complaints or questions. Some live chat tools offer the ability to transfer chat interactions to social messaging platforms, so the conversation can be continued on the customer’s preferred platform.
Conversational marketing software: Live chat tools may integrate with or include features of conversational marketing software. Conversational marketing helps businesses improve conversion rates by identifying and engaging with potential customers throughout their buying journey. These products accelerate the buying process by transferring qualified leads to sales representatives or facilitating follow-up conversations if a customer is not yet ready to buy.
Chatbots software: Chatbots, which are often called virtual agents or virtual assistants, are used in place of a human to conduct specific tasks or provide information based on written or spoken requests. Customer support tools, such as live chat, help desk, or contact center solutions, may already have chatbots implemented as a first line of defense when dealing with customers.
Challenges with Live Chat Software
Although live chat software can be implemented relatively quickly, the adoption of these tools can pose additional challenges. Before purchasing live chat software, businesses must make sure to have a plan to address potential issues before they arise.
Increase in support requests: Naturally, adding an immediate and accessible means for customers to contact the business will result in an influx of support requests and conversations. To avoid overwhelming the business’ chat support team, companies can roll out the live chat product gradually. Users may also wish to open it up to smaller segments of customers over time rather than all at once.
Staff training: A big part of customer support is empathizing with the customer. For even simple inquiries, it’s important for agents to come across as friendly and approachable via live chat. Tone is sometimes difficult to read through text, so it’s easy for website visitors to misinterpret a message from a support agent. Agents should be trained on how to express empathy in text form to prevent any tone assumptions.
Spam or inappropriate messages: While approachability is generally considered beneficial, it opens the possibility of potential scenarios involving inappropriate or irrelevant messages. Fortunately, many live chat offerings have a spam filter or block functionality, which allows agents to distinguish real messages or block aggressive customers.
Which Companies Should Buy Live Chat Software?
Any business with a website can use live chat software. These products are beneficial to companies of all sizes, from small businesses to large enterprises. However, there are a few types of businesses that are particularly suited for live chat.
E-commerce: E-commerce brands and any business that sells products online should consider buying a live chat solution. While customers browse an e-commerce site, they may run into technical issues or have questions about specific product specifications, shipping, or return policies. Live chat offers the opportunity for a business to answer a customer’s question right away, increasing the chance that the customer will complete their purchase.
Services: Live chat can be very beneficial for businesses in the service industry, especially banking, healthcare, real estate, travel, and hospitality. For these industries, exceptional customer service is paramount to the success of the business. Live chat provides clients and prospects with an instant connection to a business so they can quickly resolve issues or have their questions answered.
Based on G2 reviews, the most-cited evaluation criteria for live chat software on business websites are widget customization, chatbot quality with smooth AI-to-human handoff, and native integrations with the CRM and help desk already in use. For customer support teams, reviewers consistently call out omnichannel coverage across email, SMS, WhatsApp, and social messengers, alongside ease of use, as the day-to-day features that determine adoption. Ecommerce buyers specifically cite Shopify integration, mobile apps for responding to chats away from the desk, and visitor tracking as the difference between live chat solutions that drive customer engagement and ones that sit idle. Sales-led teams highlight high-intent visitor identification and real-time client support as the features that turn live chat from a support tool into a lead-generation channel.
How to Buy Live Chat Software
Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Live Chat Software
Whether a company is purchasing a live chat solution for the first time or looking for a replacement, the first step is defining a list of requirements the product must meet for the business to be most productive. These requirements will help buyers narrow down the list of products to consider.
First, buyers must evaluate the need for live chat software, and ask the following questions:
- Who will be using the product most often?
- How many users (or seats) do we need?
- Will it be used for customer service or technical support?
- Will the sales team use it for lead generation or guiding customers on their buying journey?
At this point, it’s also important to list the features that will prove most useful for the teams using the product. For improving customer self-service and freeing up team members’ time, companies may require a product that can automate workflows to resolve customer issues without human assistance. Buyers must consider if the product should integrate with any other software their business uses, such as CRM or help desk.
Compare Live Chat Software Products
Create a long list
Based on the list of requirements, buyers should create a long list of no more than 10 products that appear to meet the business needs. Consulting online review sites is a great way to start the long list. G2 has thousands of software categories with over 1 million verified user reviews. G2’s Live Chat software category can help buyers find the highest rated or most popular products based on reviews from verified customers.
Create a short list
After consulting customer reviews and creating a long list of live chat software products, companies must begin eliminating the options that won’t work for their business. The easiest way to do this is to first eliminate the products outside budget. Small businesses or startups should look at each product’s pricing plans to determine if the product will still be affordable as the company scales up. At this point, buyers should also eliminate products that don’t offer all the required features.
Conduct demos
Once a short list of about three to five products is ready, companies should begin reaching out to vendors to schedule demos. Demos allow buyers to take a closer look at each live chat solution’s functionality and ease of use. This may also be the first opportunity to glimpse each vendor’s onboarding style and service levels and determine if they are helpful and communicative and whether they are focusing too much on the sales pitch.
Selection of Live Chat Software
Choose a selection team
The company’s software selection team should already consist of a project manager to manage the process from start to finish and an executive sponsor to ensure buy-in from the company’s decision makers. Naturally, the selection team should also include several employees who will be using the live chat daily, such as sales representatives or customer service agents.
Negotiation
Before signing a contract, buyers should make sure to negotiate for the best price and ask about any discounts for which their business may qualify. This is also the time to discuss implementation and onboarding services and payment plans.
Final decision
Finally, it’s time to decide on a live chat software and sign the dotted line. In the days and months after the purchase, buyers must monitor the company’s progress with the new product. Is the live chat working as intended? Have users fully adopted all the features? Will the product scale with the company’s growth? If the answer to any of these questions is “no,” the buyer should consider raising the concerns with the vendor. If they are unable to resolve these issues, it may be time to look for alternatives.
Live Chat Software Trends
Screen sharing
Sometimes questions are easier to ask with visuals. To help prevent miscommunication, screen sharing allows the customer to show a support agent the basis of their question instead of communicating it through text. Since typing out questions can be a lengthy process for complex issues, screen sharing can help save time and prevent frustration for both the customer and the agent.
Automation
Using chatbots and automated responses for simple customer concerns means having an agent online 24/7 is not necessary. As artificial intelligence becomes more desirable to help businesses automate processes, live chat vendors continue to add features like intelligent responses and automated workflows to their products. These options ensure customers receive assistance at any hour, maintaining customer satisfaction and consistently generating leads.
