Live Chat Software for Small Business

Customers expect instant answers to their questions, and any uncertainty with their purchase can result in you losing a sale. In fact, more than 67% of online shoppers abandon their carts without checking out.

In this article, we'll show you some of the best live chat software to help you instantly answer user questions and convert them into paying customers. All of these live chat services work perfectly with any WordPress website.

Why Add Live Chat Support to Your Website?

According to eConsultancy, 73% of customers who use live chat are happy with their experience. This is much higher than email, social media, or phone support, where only 44% of people are happy with their experience.

With that in mind, live chat can have a big impact on your online sales and marketing. It allows customers to get instant answers without leaving your website. A positive live chat experience can effectively help customers make a buying decision.

Adding live chat support is proven to reduce cart abandonment rates, increase sales, and boost conversion rates. But a lot of it depends on the live chat software that you use.

A poor live chat customer experience can have a negative effect. You may miss out on sales due to slow response times, or customers might leave with a bad impression of your brand. You could even end up paying too much for your live chat software or struggle to get the most out of software that's a bad fit for your website, your needs, or your skill level.

Basically, you need to find an affordable live chat service that's easy to use, works with WordPress or your website builder platform, and comes with everything you need to help your sales team increase profits. 

Some benefits of using live chat as your support channel:

• Increased customer satisfaction: Imagine having a magic wand that could make your customers happy with a quick wave. That's what live chat can do for your business! It's like having a personal assistant that's always available to help your customers out.
• Improved sales: Picture a shopping cart that's just about to roll away, with a customer hesitating to buy. Live chat is like having a superhero on standby, ready to jump in and save the sale with a quick chat.
• Cost-effective: Live chat is often less expensive than traditional customer service methods such as phone support.
• Greater efficiency: It allows multiple customers to be assisted simultaneously, increasing the efficiency of customer service.
• Insight into customer needs and preferences: Live chat transcripts can give you a glimpse into their thoughts and desires, helping you make better business decisions.
• Increased accessibility: Live chat is like a bridge that connects you to your customers, no matter where they are. Customers get help at any time and from any device, increasing accessibility for customers who may have difficulty reaching a business by phone.
• Better engagement: Think of live chat as the ultimate ice-breaker for your business. It allows customers to engage with your business in real-time, which can help build stronger relationships and increase loyalty.

LiveChat

LiveChat is the industry leader in live chat software. It's very easy to set up and install, thanks to their free LiveChat plugin for WordPress.

LiveChat offers beautifully designed live chat support apps that your customer support staff can use on their laptops, tablets, and mobile devices. That means you can chat with customers while on the go, and without having to log into your WordPress dashboard.

You can add pre-chat survey forms before and after a live chat session, so you can see exactly how well your support team members and sales staff are performing. When no one is available to answer questions, you can set up a workflow so customers can easily send a support ticket directly from the live chat window, and your team will get notifications.

LiveChat integrates with dozens of other services like popular CRM software such as Hubspot, Google Analytics, and Zendesk. It supports omnichannel conversations by integrating with WhatsApp and other messaging platforms, and you can connect to tools like join.me for screen-sharing capabilities. 

Pricing: LiveChat has different plans for businesses of all sizes, including startups. Their plans start at $16 per agent per month when billed annually, or $19 when paid monthly. Each plan comes with a 14-day free trial

2. HubSpot

HubSpot is a popular all-in-one marketing platform that offers live chat and a chatbot builder.

You can customize the live chat design to perfectly match your own branding, and create automated chatbots for when your team is offline without having to write a single line of code. HubSpot's live chat also seamlessly integrates all customer data with the HubSpot CRM platform, so you don't need to type in this information manually.

You can use HubSpot's built-in tools to personalize the chat experience for returning visitors, which is proven to help you get more sales.

Aside from live chat, HubSpot also comes with email marketing automation, optin forms to increase subscribers, a sales CRM, landing page software, help desk software, a self-service customer portal, and other powerful marketing functionality.

This allows you to communicate with your customers across multiple channels, including live chat, support tickets, and email automation. With that in mind, HubSpot has lots to offer both small business owners and large enterprise businesses. 

Pricing: You can add HubSpot chatbots to your website for free. However, if you want to use additional tools, such as HubSpot's drag and drop landing page builder, then you'll need to upgrade to a paid plan. These start at $45 per month.

Sendinblue

SendinBlue is a powerful yet beginner-friendly live chat platform.

SendinBlue allows you to easily convert your website visitors into customers by answering their questions in real-time via live chat. The chat integrates with SendinBlue's marketing automation which enables you to capture more leads.

SendinBlue comes with built-in email marketing integration, retargeting for Facebook ads, segmentation, and complete marketing automation.

SendinBlue offers a complete marketing package with CRM, SMS and email marketing, landing pages, and more. This powerful toolkit helps you convert even more visitors into paying customers.

Pricing: SendinBlue has a few different pricing plans, but live chat for one user is included in their free plan. If multiple people need access to SendinBlue, then you'll need to buy a Premium plan, which starts at $65 per month. 

Respond.io

Respond.io is a business messaging platform that allows your customers to contact you via any channel. Customers can message you using Respond.io live chat on your website or your social media pages. This live chat software provides a 360° view of your customer base to your team.

Omnichannel chat history, contact import, and real-time analytics can help you gain a clearer insight into each customer profile.Respond.io includes an AI feature that guides your chatbot responses by using "Smart Replies." Smart replies enable communicating faster and troubleshooting recurring issues based on repetitive questions.

Pros:

Respond.io's live chat software has both free and paid plans. The forever free plan includes:

• 5 team members
• Up to 100 contacts
• Unlimited messages
• All channels

Tawk.to

Tawk.to is a free live chat software that operates with a small JavaScript snippet on your site.

It works on your website, within your mobile app, or from a customizable page.

You can monitor customer activity in real-time and see which team member responded to a customer.

Tawk.to's live chat software comes with other features as well:

• Localized messages to chat with foreign customers in your native language
• Tawk.to has IOS and Android apps so you can chat with customers from your mobile device.
• Canned messages

Pros:

• Track the user's location, activity, where they clicked, etc.
• Browser-based, so you won't need to install any software
• A lot of customization features

Smartsupp

When it comes to multichannel management in one place, Smartsupp is a good option.

With this live chat software, you can respond to your customers' emails, chats, and Facebook messages in one place.

It comes as a mobile app as well to chat with your customers on the go.

What we like about Smartsupp is that it has a file-sharing feature that allows sending a photo or document with drag and drop.

Also, it has a chatbot that can send personalized messages to customers. Another prominent feature of Smartsupp is the video recording feature, which records visitor behaviors.

It has a forever-free plan and paid plans. The free plan covers the following:

• 3 agents (Live chat agents are the customer service team employees who answer chats.)
• Unlimited number of websites
• 3 chatbots
• All the core features

Pros:

• The ability to email when a user abandons the chat session
• User-friendly interface
• Records user sessions on screen
• Has a mobile app

Crisp.Chat

Crisp.Chat is a live chat software that brings together all your channels with its shared inbox feature. You can build chatbot scenarios, create GIFs and video previews, and share files.'

Also, Crisp.Chat allows connecting your live chat to social networks like Messenger and Twitter.

What caught our attention is that they offer a feature called CrispyBird, which is a game to keep your customers engaged while they wait for your response.

This live chat software has free and paid plans. Forever free plan is best for personal websites and anyone who wants a basic live chat to communicate with customers. It covers:

• 2 seats
• Team inbox
• Mobile apps

Pros:

• Auto-translate feature
• Has a mobile app
• Great sync between web, desktop, and mobile apps

JivoChat

Being the top-rated mobile customer support app at the App Store, JivoChat empowers support teams to handle chats from various platforms, including websites, emails, Telegram, Facebook, and WhatsApp.

Other cool features JivoChat offers are:

• Color-coded chats
• Message sneak-peek
• Canned responses
• Hotkeys
• Proactive chat

Free basic version is limited to the first five agents but covers unlimited websites and chats.

Pros:

• Provides visitor information (location, name, email address) under certain conditions
• Call back feature
• Ability to see the users type in before they click "send"

 Rocket.Chat

Rocket.Chat is designed to provide seamless interactions with your customers no matter how they choose to connect with you. With this tool, you can manage all customer collaboration from a single central location, whether it's through phone, email, chat, or social media. This platform makes it easy to respond quickly to inquiries and track interactions to ensure a positive experience every time.

Some of the important features of Rocket.Chat are

• Omnichannel help desk solutions.
• CRM integration, chatbots, and machine learning apps.
• One team inbox for all client communication.

Pros:

• Unlimited chat history.
• Ability to auto-close inactive chats.
• Canned responses.

Cons:

• Issues handling large numbers of messages and users.
• Might be buggy.
• Support service could be improved.
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Electric Blaze

Electric Blaze is Popup Chat. Add a chat button with multiple messengers to communicate with your customers easily! thumb.jpg. Facebook Feed. Stay in touch with your clients with the new extension - Popup Chat. The extension supports WhatsApp, Telegram, Viber, Signal, Discord, Messenger. Easy installation and customization.

Source/Photos: popupsmart.com