Today you can be pretty sure your customers expect immediate support when interacting with your brand. As a result, you have to become more responsive. While this might seem impossible as a smaller business, you can easily meet customer expectations using web chat tools. These tools help customers overcome common marketing challenges at every stage of their buyer journey and throughout their customer lifecycle.
Web chat tools are used on your website, providing a crucial method of customer communication. You can choose a live chat for real-time person-to-person interaction or a chatbot that uses IA to provide responses and qualify leads. To optimize performance, you can combine the two. When you remain responsive in real time, you can answer questions, resolve support challenges, and instantly share important information, such as links to FAQs or blog posts.
Here we look at the three best web chat solutions to enhance customer experience and boost sales.
1. LiveChat
This is the best web chat tool for overall functionality to meet the needs of smaller teams. It remains scalable as your business grows and offers an easy-to-use interface for both your team and your customers. You can also customize your chat widget, allowing you to set up your preferences for a customized solution.
Features include:
- Chat transfer
- Message sneak peek so you can read what the visitor is typing
- Chat transcripts
- Messaging Mode to send chats to email
- Automatic greetings
- Customizable pre-chat surveys to qualify leads
- Targeted chat messages based on customer profiles and history
- Ticketing system to track and save conversation transcripts
On top of the following plans, they also offer Enterprise customized solutions:
Starter
Ideal for: Small and home offices
Price: $20 per agent/month billed annually or $24 month-to-month
- 60-day chat history
- Basic widget customization
- Ticketing system
- Data security
- Team
- Full-time support team
Team
Ideal for: Full-time support teams
Price: $41 per agent/month billed annually or $49 month-to-month
- Unlimited chat history
- Full widget customization
- Ticketing system
- Data security
- Basic reporting
- Agent groups
- Multiple brandings
Business
Ideal for: Customer service departments
Price: $59 per agent/month billed annually or $69 month-to-month
All team features plus:
- Staffing prediction
- Work scheduler
2. Zendesk
Zendesk Chat is designed for companies wanting a full-featured service suite. It offers customizable web chat tools you can integrate with either Zendesk software or other platforms like Shopify and WordPress.
Features include:
- AI-powered chatbots for quick automated answers
- Targeted behavioral triggers as customers search and use your website
- Customizable pre-chat forms to collect information before the conversation begins
- Combined chat, talk, social, and help center
- Real-time analytics
- Tickets created with each chat and the ability to tag other team members during chat
- Zapier integrations
The following plans include free trial options:
Suite Team
Price: $49 per agent/month billed annually
- Industry-leading ticketing system
- Messaging across web, mobile and social
- Email, voice, SMS, and live chat support
- Help center – SINGLE
- Easy-to-set up automations & workflows
- Up to 50 AI-powered automated answers
- Unified agent workspace
- Routing based on agent status and capacity
- Pre-built reporting and analytics
- Standard data and file storage
- 1,000+ apps and integrations
- Robust APIs
- Online support from the Zendesk team
- Onboarding and adoption guidance
Suite Growth
Price: $79 per agent/month billed annually
All of the above features plus:
- Self-service customer portal
- AI-powered knowledge management
- Customizable ticket layouts
- Up to 50 Light access licenses
- Service Level Agreement (SLA) management
- Multilingual support and content
Suite Professional
Price: $99 per agent/month billed annually
All of the above features plus:
- Viewable live agent activity dashboard
- Integrated community forums
- Private conversation threads
- Customizable and shareable dashboards
- Advanced voice capabilities
- Data Location Options
- HIPAA compliance
- Events Connector for Amazon Web Services
3. Live Agent
This web chat software is best for agent gamification to incentivize support reps to do better. This unique approach doesn’t suit all cultures but could be right for some businesses. It also allows your sales or customer service team to work across multiple channels when chatting with customers. Ticket + Chat and Inclusive plans also offer a proactive chat feature to help speed people along their buyer journey to increase conversions.
Features include:
- Easy widget setup with copy-and-paste integration
- Chats route conversations to the right reps
- A universal inbox combines chats, emails, calls, and social media mentions
- Twitter and Facebook integration to manage social channels
- Self-service customer support option using a portal to manage forum posts, customer feedback, etc.
- Zapier integrations
Plans include:
Ticket
Price: $15 per agent/month
- Unlimited ticket history and email addresses
- Advanced reporting
- Customer portal + forum
- API + integrations
- Rules and Time rules
- Customer Service
- White Glove Setup
Ticket+Chat
Price: $29 per agent/month
Everything above, plus:
- Unlimited chat buttons
- Feedback management
- Real-time visitors monitor
- Proactive chat invitations
- Chat satisfaction surveys
- Social networks
- Time tracking
- Audit log
All Inclusive
$49 per agent/month
Everything in Ticket + chat, plus:
- Call center support
- Video call
- IVR
- Call routing and transfers
- Hardware IP phone
- Unlimited call recordings
Why You Need Web Chat
Web chat makes you call and improves team accountability. You can also ensure leads get to the right person immediately when customers indicate they are ready to move on. Live chat tools allow you to remain scalable, meeting your growing customer base’s needs without immediately resorting to hiring new team members. As a result, you can invest in other areas to develop your business.
Your customer service team also becomes more flexible, combining live chats with chatbots, so you never sacrifice your level of customer service. You can automate workflows between support and sales teams and ensure the customer interacts with the most suitable person to manage their needs based on the stage of their buyer journey.
Choosing the best web chat software really depends on what you want to achieve. You can go with a well-rounded software offering the best overall function like LiveChat, base your choice on price and the best full-featured plans like ZenDesk, or look for something that will help drive your team’s performance, like LiveAgent.
The bottom line is that your web chat software will help you enjoy improved customer satisfaction, less demand on support team hours, and smoother workflows between support and sales/marketing teams. As a result, you can qualify more leads and help customers make quicker purchase decisions to increase sales.
Do you need help with figuring out which web chat integration is best for your website? We’re happy to chat!.
