What is live chat software?

The marketplace for consumer engagement is saturated with live chat software of all shapes and sizes. If you google “live chat software” in Google Search, you will get over one billion thirty million results!

But you don’t have to parse through the entire cosmos of Google Search results to pick the right tool for your business. The most effective way to identify the right chat solution for you is to define your requirements and map them back to the tools that match them. There are a few must-have, non-negotiable things that you should look in a live chat software when you are evaluating to purchase one:

Don’t pick a live chat vendor that host their solution on-premise, unless you have strict operational and regulatory requirements that require you to do so. A cloud-based live chat software is faster to deploy, easier to set up, and integrates well with most modern tools.

Pick up a live chat software that offers cross-channel capabilities such as mobile-readiness and integration with the top marketing and customer support software. Live chat shouldn’t be a siloed system; hence, it is necessary it works well with other players in your software stack to improve customer experience.

When it comes to picking up a good live chat software, it’s very important to judge the book by its cover. Be very picky about the user interface, both on the end-user side and the agent side. Also, evaluate the level of customization the tool offers. E.g., changing the chat widget color, adding your brand logo, disabling features that you don’t want, etc.

Most businesses struggle to find the right chat tool mostly because of the confusion around pricing. Avoid live chat vendors whose pricing are vague and confusing, or at least get on a call to understand the plans clearly. Our advice, go for a SaaS-based live chat tool that has clear agent-based pricing.

This depends hugely on your use cases. If you are going to use the live chat software for your marketing team, you might want to have features such as automated campaigns, chatbots, and event-based messaging. If your use case is support-heavy, you want to look for intelligent chat routing options, co-browsing and screen-sharing, and priority inbox.

Although most live chat tools come with some level of reporting features by default, not all vendors do a great job at it. Make sure to demo the reporting feature of a live chat tool to understand what advanced insights (e.g, CSAT rating) it offers that could help you improve your existing processes.

Businesses are adopting live chat for their sales, marketing, and customer support needs at scale because it’s disrupting the traditional customer engagement model. Live chat is filling a huge void in the customer experience sector. Live chat has the power to touch customers’ lives, influence their decisions, and drive more sales. It’s trending as the hottest tool in the business world for a reason. Live chat is gaining traction among businesses across the board. Its adoption rates grew from 38% in 2009 to 58% in 2014.

 

Live chat has 73% customer satisfaction, much better than email (61%) and phone (44%). This is likely due to a combination of factors, like personalization and speed. 42% of customers across all industries say that live chat is their preferred method of interacting with brands. For support in general, at least 53% of customers prefer online chat than other channels of support. For B2B markets, live chat increases conversions by 20%. B2B customers who initiate a chat with a business are 3X more likely to buy than those who don’t engage in an interaction. For e-commerce websites, live chat help curb cart abandonment by 40%. And it doesn’t stop there — customers who use live chat support spend an average of 60% more per purchase than those who don’t.