Best Live Chat for Customer Service & Support

Live chat for customer service refers to the use of real-time messaging tools to provide immediate support and assistance to customers. It allows customers to interact with a company's support team or representatives in real-time, enabling quick resolution of queries, issues, or concerns. Live chat offers convenience, personalized assistance, and faster response times, enhancing customer satisfaction and improving the overall customer service experience. It is often integrated into websites, mobile apps, or customer service platforms to facilitate seamless communication between customers and businesses.

Buyer's Guide

Last updated on October 4th, 2023
Live Chat Support Software Is All About Enhancing Customer Interaction

Live Chat For Customer Service BG Intro

Live chat support software facilitates seamless online customer communication using instant messaging platforms. It allows customers to reach out to agents or chatbots to solve queries in real time. This live chat solution assists customers by providing immediate support and resolving complex issues via personalized responses.

It provides relevant responses to common questions by extracting information from chat histories. The chatbot can also reroute conversations to a human agent for complex queries via real-time chatbox. As a result, most companies find it ideal to employ chatbots and live chat support to enhance their business. 

Chatbots revolutionize the way customers interact with businesses, and the way to survive this competitive marketplace is by selecting an ideal live chat tool. This guide will take you through what you need to know before striking a deal with a vendor.

Executive Summary

  • Live chat support software provides instant reactive and proactive customer interaction.
  • It can expedite multiple tasks, including customer service, rerouting conversations to live agents, guiding users to purchase products, automating manual processes and more.
  • It increases customer engagement and improves lead generation by delivering consistent responses.
  • Prepare a list of potential questions to ask yourself and vendors before making your software purchase.
What This Guide Covers:

What Is Live Chat Support Software?

Live chat support software is a customer service channel that instantly responds to queries and resolves complex concerns. It provides a platform for users to interact with customer care representatives regarding issues or support questions.

It allows seamless integration into your existing system and favorite messaging tools, like CRM, Slack, Skype, Messenger, Telegram and more, allowing customers to stay connected from anywhere.

It eliminates customer wait times by providing immediate responses using real-time data or past chat history. It can manage multiple conversations through a single platform to reduce customer effort.

Implementing live chat customer service solutions helps scale support operations and boost overall customer experience. Integrating AI-powered chatbots strengthens your chat experience without needing to route conversations to a live agent. It keeps customers engaged by proactively responding with personalized messages.

Primary Benefits

Live chat support software offers various advantages to improve customer experiences, deliver relevant solutions, boost sales, generate leads and detect sales opportunities.

Live Chat For Customer Service Benefits

Improve Efficiency

With AI-powered chatbots, businesses can enhance the support process, gather relevant customer information and reduce ticket volumes. It provides self-service options such as FAQs, user manuals, chat widgets and messaging across multiple channels.

It resolves customer queries even when the agent is away, on a break or out of the office by automating workflows.

Strengthen Collaboration

Share tickets with the internal team via collaboration tools like Slack. Agents can work on multiple issues simultaneously while resolving a ticket. If there are multiple tickets, you can divide them into smaller tasks and assign them to different agents.

Analyze and track ticket resolution status using data-based insights to identify pain points.

Boost Scalability

Provide omnichannel routing to distribute workloads among agents based on availability. Ensure agents can instantly switch from phone to chat support if working remotely. The solution must offer a no-code platform for agents to modify processes within hours without needing IT support.

Enhance Personalized Support

Hosting your software on an open platform enables seamless integration and API access to create and retrieve customer information from existing systems like BI tools and CRMs.

Your agents must have access to customer information that includes current orders, past purchases, chat history and more.

Key Features & Functionality

Faster response time and instant customer support are two crucial factors a user expects from live chat support. Here’s a list of the top features to watch out for when selecting live chat customer service software.

Trend Forecasting

Implement accurate forecasting models to keep track of market trends. It considers multiple factors, including trend analysis, historical data and seasonality, to make future predictions.

You can check forecasting highlights daily, weekly, monthly and yearly by selecting a preferred time range.

Omnichannel Routing

Set up omnichannel routing on your favorite apps and engage instantly. The customer timeline showcases your past interaction via chat or email for agents to connect without wasting time.

It also converts conversations into tickets when agents cannot resolve customer queries due to high volumes.

Multiple Integrations

Offer multiple customer support by allowing seamless integrations with various communication channels and third-party apps like help desk software and CRM.

AI-powered Chatbots

Nurture more leads and sales by integrating with CRM tools. Gather customer information and chat transcripts to send personalized messages via email. Deliver more sales by tracking relevant and accurate customer information.

Build strong relationships and close better leads by understanding customer behavior and preferences.

Self-service Accessibility

Provide self-help resources like FAQs, a knowledge base and help center communities where users can raise queries to enhance customer support.

Solve common customer queries by rerouting them to the right resource.

Linked Tickets

Provide quick resolution by linking similar tickets under tracker tickets while sending status updates to agents immediately. Agents can track customers with similar queries and resolve them together.

This feature ensures none of those similar tickets are lost.

Serverless Applications

Let users build and run real-time chat apps and services via serverless architecture. It reduces cost by eliminating the need for OS maintenance, patching, capacity and cluster provisioning.

Custom Analytics

Monitor agent performance and gain customer insights like greeting conversations, missed and total chats, engagement percentage and more.

Create custom reports and send them to your email daily, weekly and monthly.

Software Comparison Strategy

Although basic features are similar, not all live chat support software performs the same functions. Therefore, it is essential to analyze your requirements and ensure the new software you select complements your existing operations.

Here are a few key factors to consider when choosing live chat support software:

  • Standard response
  • Chat department routing
  • Support automation
  • Low code
  • Cloud-based
  • Reports and analytics
  • Mobile compatibility
  • Pricing considerations
  • Multiple integrations

You can get in-depth details by checking online reviews and industry guides. Some vendors may even offer a free trial so you can see how your employees do with the program before committing.

Cost & Pricing Considerations

Pricing considerations may vary depending on software functionality. Although many types of software in the same category share similar factors in terms of cost, you need to consider certain factors like the number of users, initial and upfront costs, and maintenance and deployment models.

But with many software solutions available in the market, it can take time to get a headstart. Here’s a list of expenses you might need to evaluate before you finalize your budget.

  • Customization fees
  • Product training fees
  • Annual software upgrades
  • Data security
  • Perpetual license
  • Add-on features

The Most Popular Live Chat Support Software

Our analysts revealed some of the most popular live chat support software available on the market. Let’s take a look at the best examples listed below.

Olark

Olark is a cloud-based platform that lets businesses provide real-time customer support. It offers instant engagement via chat, email and phone, eliminating wait times. It also offers core features like automation, reporting, analytics, and customization to improve efficiency and boost overall workflow.

Olark

Customize chat box as per brand guidelines. Source

LiveChat

LiveChat is a customer service web app that offers instant support without needing installation or coding. You can easily set up the widget using the app’s WordPress plugin and add multiple features by clicking on the settings icon. Dashboard overview offers real-time metrics like logged-in agents, unassigned tickets and ongoing chats.

LiveChat

Route chats to available agents. Source

LiveAgent

LiveAgent is an all-in-one communication platform with over 200 integrations and 130 ticketing features. It offers personalized real-time support and interacts with customers by studying their browsing history. It increases sales and customer satisfaction by providing unlimited support and decreasing hold times.

LiveAgent

Automatically assign tickets to support agents available. Source

 

 

Questions To Ask

Ask yourself these internal questions to narrow down your software selection.

  • What’re my organizational requirements?
  • Am I currently using live chat software? If so, what additional features are missing?
  • What problems can this software help me solve?
  • Will my employees need training to use the software?
  • What are the key pain points I’m facing?

Live Chat For Customer Service Key Questions

Here are a few questions to ask potential vendors before finalizing your purchase:

  • What kind of support and self-service options do you provide?
  • How many years of expertise do you have in the industry?
  • What integrations does the software offer?
  • Is the live chat interface customizable?
  • What’s the pricing structure?

Next Steps

Interacting with customers in real time and providing round-the-clock assistance gives businesses an edge over their competitors. Live chat support software is excellent for modern businesses looking to revolutionize the customer experience.

Still feeling overwhelmed by all the options? Grab a free copy of our comparison report to easily compare top solutions.

Product Comparisons

Additional Resources

Podium

User Sentiment:
User satisfaction level icon: excellent

Podium is an interaction management software that enables businesses to boost communication with customers, leads and teams. It includes messaging, listing management, reporting, customer sentiments and more. It enables online review management by combining customer interactions and online reviews from several websites (including Google, Facebook and Tripsor) into a single dashboard. Customizable surveys and follow-up options allow teams to gather real-time feedback across all touchpoints and initiate a two-way conversation for quick issue resolution. Users can streamline customer conversations by accessing remote connections and collaborating on leads from one inbox. SMS campaigns help teams foster better customer relationships and gain insights by delivering personalized content to segmented groups. Organizations can leverage the integrated Google Analytics module to gauge website performance and analyze customer interactions. It offers automated and smart responses to initiate leads and answer FAQs. It enhances business exposure to significant websites when searching for local SEOs. It is available on desktop, Android and iOS devices and serves industries like auto, entertainment, healthcare and more.

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Pipedrive

User Sentiment:
User satisfaction level icon: excellent

Pipedrive supports sales professionals in managing every phase of the sales process, from lead generation to customer contact. Forecasting enables sales reps to close more deals, and visual pipelines clarify what stage a lead is in and what action is required. Users can simplify and streamline tasks with automation and AI capabilities. It offers integrations and an open API, so companies can plug in third-party apps to further extend its capabilities.

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Nextiva

User Sentiment:
User satisfaction level icon: great

Nextiva allows users to combine customer service and internal business with VoIP phones, analytics and AI all located in a single platform creating a user-friendly, simplified experience. Accessible from anywhere, at any time, it includes video chat, email and message modules for communicating within the business and with customers. It’s equally suitable for small, medium and large companies.Analytics track sales pipelines, allowing for in-depth insights on how customers interact with the business and what they want and need. Keep customers satisfied with automated switching to direct them to the correct person to help with any questions they may have.

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Brazen

User Sentiment:
User satisfaction level icon: excellent

Brazen is a self-serve, virtual career fair and hiring event platform that hosts networking events, webinars, interviews and more, especially geared towards colleges and universities. The third-generation interface delivers an easy-to-use, reliable space for users to administer fun and accessible events for potential employees.

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ChatBot

User Sentiment:
User satisfaction level icon: excellent

ChatBot is a customer service management platform that offers features like machine learning, multimedia support, data security, reporting, widgets and more. Its drag-and-drop visual builder allows users to create chatbots from customizable templates for bookings, eCommerce, recruitment and sales. Built-in natural language processing (NLP) technology analyzes human speech and generates personalized responses. Businesses can develop, release and manage virtual assistants across websites, social media and messaging apps. It integrates with third-party providers such as WordPress, Zapier and Facebook.

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Drift

User Sentiment:
User satisfaction level icon: great

Drift is a cloud-based conversational marketing platform that helps businesses acquire customers and streamline sales processes. It generates leads through customizable campaigns, intelligent reports and real-time engagement with website visitors. It offers AI chatbots, offline and mobile access, geo-tagging, conversation histories and more.

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Intercom

User Sentiment:
User satisfaction level icon: great

Intercom is a conversational platform that personalizes messaging throughout the customer journey using customer, company and behavioral data. It offers chatbots, marketing campaigns, self-service functions, proactive tours and more. Collaborative inboxes, reporting and automated workflows help users interact with customers across all channels. It integrates with out-of-the-box modules to automate actions and sync data and allows users to build their setups based on business needs. Businesses can see who uses their products and communicate with customers via targeted, behavior-driven emails and in-app messages.

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ActiveCampaign

User Sentiment:
User satisfaction level icon: excellent

ActiveCampaign provides cloud-based marketing services, with robust capabilities ranging from automation and reporting to lead scoring and contact segmentation. It’s ideal for businesses of any size, as it offers a flexible, device-agnostic deployment model. It also functions as a marketing-oriented CRM with different integrations and exporting options to assist sales. It provides machine learning that can be used on data including phone calls, emails and sales. Machine learning enables predicting win probability and using predictive sending. Customers can also take advantage of a consultant directory with certified consultants from different countries.

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Call SelectHub for a free 15-minute selection analysis: 1-855-850-3850

Bitrix24

User Sentiment:
User satisfaction level icon: great

Bitrix24 facilitates the execution of the customer journey. It supplies organizations with tools for marketing, sales and customer service activities such as lead generation, marketing automation, campaign management and call center support.It comes with a free edition for companies with less advanced needs or a smaller budget. Deployment is available in the cloud and on-premise. It’s suitable for smaller businesses as well as enterprises with up to 50,000 employees.

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LiveChat

User Sentiment:
User satisfaction level icon: excellent

LiveChat is a customer service chat app that allows companies of all sizes to more easily connect with website visitors and supports the efforts of sales departments as well. It offers capabilities for complete communication and measurement via chat, agent monitoring, ticketing, e-commerce, engagement and reporting. It can be deployed across multiple websites and used on mobile, desktop and web-enabled devices.

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Birdeye

User Sentiment:
User satisfaction level icon: excellent

Birdeye is a marketing and reputation management platform that helps businesses be discovered by new customers. It allows users to monitor, organize, respond to and track reviews and convert feedback into actionable insights. Users can leverage the built-in Natural Language Processing (NLP) engine to understand customer sentiment, analyze trends, assess competitor reviews, and compare and measure performance. It also includes open APIs, a unified communications inbox and a customizable CRM.

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LivePerson

User Sentiment:
User satisfaction level icon: good

LivePerson is a cloud-based conversational platform that helps businesses improve customer relationships through real-time, intelligent engagement. Brands can use the omnichannel workspace to engage with customers at scale. It also helps benchmark, track and optimize sales, marketing and customer service KPIs. It’s accessible from desktops and iOS or Android devices, simplifying collaboration across distributed workforces.

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Kayako

User Sentiment:
User satisfaction level icon: great

Kayako is a fully integrated, cloud-based customer service platform that helps simplify customer interactions. Agents can offer 24/7 support through various communication platforms, including email, Facebook and Twitter, and in multiple languages. It also offers self-service options, a visual timeline of customer interactions, integrations and more.

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Rocket Chat

User Sentiment:
User satisfaction level icon: great

Rocket.Chat is an all-in-one open-source communication platform that centralizes collaboration and support to boost team productivity. Its omnichannel interface allows users to embed real-time chat widgets into any website or mobile app to derive more value from team chats and provide better customer service. It allows self-managed or cloud-based workspace adaptation, customization and unlimited integration, and centralizes data for stakeholders and teams. It is available on Windows, Linux, macOS, Android and iOS devices, and supports CCPA, HIPAA, LGDP and GDPR compliance.

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Olark

User Sentiment:
User satisfaction level icon: excellent

Olark is a cloud-based messaging platform that provides seamless interactions between businesses and customers. It offers real-time channels to communicate with customers and generate leads while improving customer support. It prioritizes chats that need follow-up and forwards them to the CRM. It provides instant screen sharing for agents to assist website visitors. It also offers modules to upload files, images and videos for immediate support. It supports over 100 languages.

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LiveHelpNow

User Sentiment:
User satisfaction level icon: great

LiveHelpNow provides omnichannel support solutions to make customer interactions smooth and convenient for agents. It offers real-time customer service communications over email, Facebook messenger, live chat and SMS. Customers can benefit from its self-help knowledge base. Other notable attributes include ticketing support, instant language translation, analytics and reporting, tracking and more.

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HappyFox

User Sentiment:
User satisfaction level icon: excellent

HappyFox is a ticket management and customer support software that integrates with the user's website and email accounts to collate customer requests. It helps agents organize, track and respond more effectively. They can also assign emails to appropriate persons. The ticketing lets agents solve customers' issues productively while streamlining the customer support workflow. It also has a built-in knowledge base, end-user support portal and community forum.

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UJET

User Sentiment:
User satisfaction level icon: excellent

UJET is a cloud-based, AI-powered platform that consolidates and optimizes customer support for sales and marketing. Its major offerings include predictive, contextual communications routing, a conversational AI-based virtual agent, specialized bots and smooth integrations with CRM, WFM and QM.

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LiveAgent

User Sentiment:
User satisfaction level icon: excellent

LiveAgent is an online communication platform that supports personalized, multilingual customer service. It provides in-suite and standalone offerings for live chat, online self-service portals, ticket management, change and license management, and more. It offers all-in-one helpdesk support by combining all communication channels, including email, live chat, phone calls and social media, in a single company inbox. LiveAgent offers additional services through third-party companies to provide CRM, including sales and marketing automation. Users can analyze helpdesk performance and generate multiple reports to reward high-performing support agents and track customer satisfaction.

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Comm100

User Sentiment:
User satisfaction level icon: excellent

Comm100 is a live chat solution that offers real-time, personalized customer engagement. It supports multilingual services with a flexible ticketing and messaging system, automated chatbots, a self-serve knowledge base and security measures for data protection. The product connects via third-party integrations such as CRMs, eCommerce, social media and website content management channels with a systematic API. Live chat lets users engage with customers in real time using text, routing, audio, video, co-browsing, file transfer, auto-translation and more. Reports help evaluate team performance, chat expertise and overall service efficiency.

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Genesys Cloud

User Sentiment:
User satisfaction level icon: great

Genesys Cloud is a consolidated, cloud-based contact center solution. It allows employees to field inbound and outbound communications, predict potential customer issues and collaborate efficiently using chat, voice, video and search functions.

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EngageBay

User Sentiment:
User satisfaction level icon: excellent

EngageBay is a customer relationship management platform that helps businesses engage and convert leads, acquire customers and nurture existing relationships. Key features include SMS marketing, automation, web analytics and live chat.

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